morra 2007 art history

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UTOPIA LOST: ALLEGORY, RUINS AND PIETERBRUEGEL’S TOWERS OF BABEL

J O A N N E M O R R A

Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.

Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama1

One of the most common attributes ascribed by art historians to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder is its allegorical character. What is meant by this claim isthat the content of the art work depicts one thing while having an alternativemoral or didactic meaning. This familiar understanding of allegory – oftenemployed as a means of obtaining a singular, iconographic meaning for Bruegel’s work – is being supplemented by more recent methodological discussions whichexplicitly focus and utilize the ambiguous, contradictory and dialectical aspectsof his art. These analyses are also concerned with his work’s social, political,historical and phenomenological contexts. 2 Bruegel’s two paintings of the Tower of Babel – the focus of this article – are no exception to this transformation. Withinthe art-historical literature on the Babel paintings, their allegorical character isoften discussed in relation to history, nature, sovereignty, Utopia and ruins.Intriguingly, these ideas and tropes resonate with Walter Benjamin’s important writings on allegory – and ruins – within the early modern period. It is this echo,as yet unnoted, between the works of art, the ideas they elicit, and Benjamin’sdialectical philosophy that interests me in this text.

In order to arrive at the allegorical and dialectical character of the paintings,

it is important to remember that they depict a fundamental allegory within Western thought: the story of the Tower of Babel. As such, I consider whatBreugel’s representations have to say about the narrative, in light of the story’sphilological, philosophical and genealogical signicance. And I do this with theassistance of Jacques Derrida’s reading of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel. What emerges is a correspondence between the paintings, the art-historicalliterature and the philosophical analysis. This correlation revolves around ideasthat are relevant to Bruegel’s work, his time and the various discourses brought to bear on them: notions such as contradiction, incompletion, translation,authority, genealogy and history.

In bringing these art-historical and philosophical concerns together here, Ihope to make an intervention into our understanding of allegory and its dialec-tical nature in both Bruegel’s and Benjamin’s work. The dialectic posited by thesepaintings and writings recongures both our knowledge of Bruegel’s work, and

ART HISTORY. ISSN 0141-6790 . VOL 30 NO 2. APRIL 2007 pp 198-216198 & Association of Art Historians 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing,

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.


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the methodological concerns it elicits; as well as Benjamin’s oft-quoted statement‘allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.’

S I T U AT I N G B R U E G E L’ S T O W E R S O F B A B E L Between 1553 and 1568 Bruegel produced at least three paintings of the Tower of Babel. The earliest is a miniature painted on ivory, produced while he was working in Giulio Clovio’s studio in Rome. Dated around 1553, this work ismentioned in Clovio’s inventory of 1577 and is now lost, leaving only two extantpanel paintings. 3 The second, ‘large’ Tower of Babel panel, now housed in theKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, is signed by the artist and dated 1563 (plate3.1). It is likely that the Vienna painting was commissioned by the nancierNichalaes Jonghlick, and then owned by Emperor Rudolph II. The third, ‘small’Tower of Babel, possibly also purchased by the Emperor, and now in the MuseumBoymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, is neither signed nor dated, and is attrib-uted to various dates between 1563 and 1568 (plate 3.2).

The art-historical literature on the Tower of Babel paintings offers a microcosmof the more general methodological and interpretive interests in Bruegel studies. The differences between the two extant paintings as well as the ambiguities andcontradictions within each of them has elicited much scholarly debate abouttheir iconographic and formal qualities, as well as their allegorical, literary,theological, social, political and geographic references and contexts. Throughoutthese discussions, the story of the Tower of Babel is duly noted, and many scholarspoint to the Genesis narrative as the paintings’ point of departure. 4 The biblicalnarrative begins in Genesis 10:8–10 and continues in 11:1–10. Nimrod, the leaderof the Shem and the Kingdom of Babel, settles with his people in the land of Shinar. There they share ‘one language, and one speech’. Together they begin to build a city, and a tower that would reach the heavens so that they can make a‘name’ for themselves. In witnessing their endeavours, God recognizes theirimminent omnipotence and authority, and decides to halt their progress. Hepronounces the polysemous and contradictory word ‘Babel’ thereby ‘confoundingtheir language’; ‘scattering them abroad’; and ensuring that the project remainsincomplete forever. The result of these events is the instigation of multiplelanguages and genealogies, and with that, the need for translation in order forcommunication to take place.

Interpretations of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel are plentiful.However, the most useful for my purposes here is the one by Derrida in his essay ‘Des Tours de Babel’ because he considers issues that I nd relevant to Bruegel’spaintings. As I will go on to examine, the paintings provoke and echo many of theconcerns already highlighted through the biblical narrative, as well as thosetaken up by Derrida, issues such as authority, contradiction, genealogy, trans-lation and incompletion. 5 For Derrida, the biblical narrative initiates a people’sdesire to build a city and a tower and give themselves a name so that they canclaim an identity and genealogy, and empower themselves with their own law and authority. However, this is not to happen, of course, because, as Derrida and

so many before and since have pointed out, a jealous God metes out punishment.God obstructs his people’s desires and plans by pronouncing ‘Babel’. As Derridareminds us, it is important to recall that Babel means God the father, the name of the father, and the city of God, as well as confusion. Babel is polysemous, confused

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and means confusion. With this in mind, Derrida spells out how the wordthat is both a proper noun and means confusion, is annunciated so as toconfound a people’s singular tongue. This brings about a confusion of languagesand with it linguistic and epistemological ambiguity, contradiction and incom-mensurability. In order to communicate, translation is now required, and yettranslation between languages and full communication is always, like Babel,impossible. Moreover, for Derrida, this biblical event reveals how God initiatesdivisions amongst his people and their aspirations for authorial and genealogicalsingularity, and how God mandates that the project of Babel remain foreverincomplete.

Although Derrida’s text is not referenced within the Bruegel scholarship,some of the issues he analyses, such as authority, genealogy, translation,language and the incomplete project of Babel, are implied. And it is to these art-historical discourses that I now turn.

The issue of a proper ‘authority’, of pride punished, while being one of themore obvious allegorical interpretations of the biblical narrative, is used tosupport a reading of Bruegel’s two paintings as commentaries on social mores. Thus, the appearance of a Tower of Babel painting (artist unspecied) in theprocession of the Feast of the Assumption in Antwerp in 1561 is said to signify thechastisement of pride and presumption. The architectural similarities of Brue-gel’s tower to the Coliseum and thus to the power, ‘authority’ and ‘genealogy’ of Imperial Rome, as well as its collapse, is noted in much of the art-historicalliterature. Edward A. Snow has written that the reference to the Coliseum alludesto ‘the crown of a civilization that Renaissance humanism sought to recover andsurpass, but also a symbol of pagan arrogance and a reminder of contemporary ‘‘Romanist’’ oppression of the Flemish Lowlands’. 6 More contemporaneously,Luther referred to the biblical narrative as a means of unifying his forces againstthe Curia whom he saw as ‘the novelle Babylone’. 7 Importantly, the art-historicalliterature notes that both Catholics and Protestants cite the Tower of Babel duringthe sixteenth century as a ‘symbol of the dissolution of Christianity into warringfactions’. 8 Such a reference to factions reminds us of Derrida’s reading of the‘genealogical’ multiplicity initiated by Babel and the need for translation. ThisBabelian ‘dissolution’ into ‘warring factions’ in the sixteenth century is witnessed, for example, in the loss of the Spanish Catholic king Philip II’s control

over those whom he considered to be Flemish ‘heretics’ and the failure and‘incompletion’ of his project; and in the philological and theological discussionson the ‘translation’ of the vernacular Bible by Reformist and humanist scholarsduring this time. 9

In more broadly social terms, the iconography of the Tower of Babel is said toreect the ‘linguistic’ and cultural challenges faced by an economically pros-perous, cosmopolitan and multicultural centre, such as sixteenth-century Antwerp – possibly the city represented in Bruegel’s Vienna painting 10 – about which Lodovico Guicciardini wrote in his Description of All the Low Countries of 1567:

It is indeed amazing to see such a mass of men of so many different temperaments and kinds. And . . . more wonderful still to nd such a variety of languages, differing so much from one

another . . . Without leaving one town you can see, and even imitate exactly, the manner of living and habits of many distant nations. 11




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response to the Spanish king’s harsh and brutal political and religious treatmentof the ‘heretical’ Flemish population in the 1550s and 1560s. Third,

[w]hereas Nimrod’s ambition was only confounded by the diversication of language after

beginning the symbolic tower, Philip’s enterprise might have been perceived as foredoomed

before even starting, since the Spanish king and his Flemish subjects were already estranged by

language: the king being unable to speak either Dutch or French. 17

Like many liberal-minded Catholics and Protestant intellectuals – some of whom were Bruegel’s friends and acquaintances – who put their lives and live-lihoods at risk in order to make even the most subtle criticism towards theirforeign oppressor, Mansbach suggests that Bruegel also attempted to do thisthrough his work. The art historian proposes that the artist’s critical appraisal of contemporary events can be discerned in his representation of Philip II as a latter-

day Nimrod. Therefore, for Mansbach, the Vienna painting congures the presentas a continuum of the past; a continuum of tyrannical rule leading from Babel to

the confusion of multiple religions and tongues during the Reformation, and toPhilip II’s extremely brutal methods of attempting to re-establish religious andcivic order out of what the king saw as chaos. As such, the Vienna paintingultimately represents for Mansbach the failure of the biblical project and by extension that of Philip II. He notes:

upon closer inspection the ant-like labourers are engaged in transforming a mountainous

rock into a colossal turret. This incredible task is nothing less than the total transformation

of nature and the natural order through the compulsion of kingly hubris. But such atransformation is necessarily a gargantuan failure, for within every level a completed section

is juxtaposed with an area just begun. No level is nished nor is there evidence that any ever will be. 18

Plate 3.3 Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum.




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The failure is unmitigated. A transformation of ‘nature’ and the ‘natural order’in the Vienna painting is, for Mansbach, impossible, because the historicalcircumstances under Philip II’s rule ensure that it is a failure. At every stage, thelabourers and thus the king’s entire enterprise are thwarted. As one area of thetower is being built, another remains incomplete and falling to ruins, thereby resembling the past grandeur of the Coliseum and its ‘ruined imperial might’. 19

For Mansbach, the ruinous Vienna tower and the historical conditions itreferences – Philip II’s hubristic agenda, his authority and genealogy – are‘gargantuan failures’.

The ruinous failure represented in and by the historical Vienna paintingis, for Mansbach, inversely depicted in the allegorical, utopic Arcadia of theRotterdam Tower of Babel (plate 3.2). Mansbach writes:

[t]he absence of [Bruegel’s] signature [in the Rotterdam painting] is paralleled by the absence of

the king and his retainers. Deleting reference both to the power of the royal patron and to the

painter’s own power of creation would remove the extreme emphasis on human vanity which

was so pronounced in the earlier panel [. . .] Indeed, all earlier references to individual

personality – both narrative and artistic – have been subordinated to architecture. 20

Thus, in Mansbach’s view, the references to individual personality and power –to authority and genealogy – so pronounced in the Vienna painting have beensubordinated in the Rotterdam work (plate 3.2) to a tower that occupies most of the painting’s composition, and whose architectural components, although a‘motley composite’, can be identied as Near Eastern, Roman and Romanesque.For Mansbach:

[t]he Rotterdam tower is not a transformed rock pile [as is the Vienna tower]; rather it is a spiral

ramp rising heavenward from a solid man-made foundation. Each level is complete; in fact, a

full two-thirds of the depicted tower is nished . . . [So] advanced is the tower that episodic

vignettes of daily life are captured by the painter, as in the religious procession winding its way

upward which may indicate the regularity of an established community life. 21

As for the crisis in theological authority brought on by humanist and Reformistintellectuals – particularly in their vernacular translations of the Bible, embodied

in Christophe Plantin’s publication of the Polyglot Bible (1568–73) – Mansbach writes that:

the attempt to investigate the original languages of the sacred texts may be seen as comple-

mentary to Bruegel’s message in his Rotterdam Tower of Babel panel. Both painter and printer

[Plantin] shared the (basically humanist) hope that through returning to the atavistic sources of sacral language somehow a harmonious and religious world might be posited for the future. 22

In Mansbach’s reading the Rotterdam tower projects into the future this hopeas it spirals upwards, so that it ‘cannot be contained or imaginatively completed

within the picture plane [in fact . . .] the structure will soon transcend the spaceof the picture support.’ The imminence of this moment ‘gives little hint thatthis architectural undertaking will result in tragedy.’ Unlike the ‘necessarily gargantuan failure’ of the Vienna project, the Rotterdam tower, set in an idyllic,




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bucolic landscape – the natural world seemingly unburdened by any signs of power and authority – is, for Mansbach, the tower which promises linguisticunication: the tower of the future, a utopic tower of Babel. Mansbach notes thatin the Rotterdam painting, Bruegel ‘has shown us the greatness and power of human productivity made possible in the absence of a tyrant’s hubristic will. Theartist has given his contemporaries and us a glimpse of the humanists’ ideal city,a terrestrial Utopia.’ Mansbach concludes this less historical, and more philoso-phical, analysis of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel with the following impliedProtestant ethic: ‘In a word, Bruegel has provided a visual metaphor of mankindin a state of grace: Babel has been remedied.’ 23 But the questions to be asked are:has Babel been remedied? can Babel be remedied?

A N A L L E G O R Y I N R U I N S : T H E V I E N N A T O W E R O F B A B E L Mansbach’s reading of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel paintings juxtaposes the twopaintings and their interpretations. On the one hand, he proposes that the Vienna painting (plate 3.1) represents humanity’s ruinous attempt to controlnature and the natural order through history – the latter embodied in thehistorically specic gure of Philip II, his genealogical power and authority, andBruegel’s signing and dating of the work. On the other hand, Mansbach suggeststhat the Rotterdam painting (plate 3.2) is an allegorical, philosophical and utopic visual metaphor of humankind in a natural and idyllic state of grace – a momentof imminent transcendence. The main issues raised by Mansbach that interest mein this article are the relationships he posits between: history and nature; a king’sauthority, power and genealogy versus a state of grace; ruins as opposed to alle-gory. While keeping Mansbach’s reading in mind, I now offer an alternativeinterpretation of the paintings that takes up these same tropes, but to differentends. My aim is to establish an analysis of the paintings separate fromMansbach’s, and then to bring our readings together under the auspices of Bruegel’s dialectical practice and Benjamin’s dialectical philosophy.

Mansbach’s interests in allegory and ruins, history and nature, authority,power, genealogy and a state of grace are all tropes that emerge from his analysisof Bruegel’s paintings. As I discussed earlier, these tropes are implied also withinthe biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and are taken up by Derrida in his readingof the narrative and its relationship to language, knowledge and genealogy.

Building upon all these works – the paintings, the art-historical, the biblical andthe philosophical – I would now like to add another layer to the analysis by considering these paintings and tropes through Benjamin’s writings on allegory and ruins. I am particularly interested in the relationship between Benjamin’sunderstanding of allegory and ruins, and his notion of the dialectic betweenhistory and philosophy as founded upon his concept of natural history. Thesetropes – allegory, ruins, history, philosophy, nature – are specically those that Ihave already shown to be central to the art-historical reections evoked by Bruegel’s Tower of Babel paintings, and the philosophical considerations that haveemerged out of the biblical narrative.

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama , Benjamin states that, ‘[i]t is by virtue of astrange combination of nature and history [natural history] that the allegoricalmode of expression is born.’ 24 The ‘strange combination’ to which he is referringis his understanding of the dialectic. Despite the echo of an ‘indebtedness to a




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certain Hegelianism’, the dialectic is not Hegel’s dialectic, because the ‘reconci-liation’ found in Hegel is nowhere to be found in Benjamin. 25 For Benjamin, thedialectic is on the one hand a ‘process of restoration and reestablishment, but, onthe other hand, and precisely because of this, [. . .] something imperfect andincomplete’. 26 This is quite clearly then a process of growth and regeneration based upon irreducible difference and necessary incompletion.

Benjamin continues his discussion of the dialectic by stating that: ‘[t]heretakes place in every original phenomenon a determination of the form in which anidea will constantly confront the historical world, until it is revealed fullled, inthe totality of history.’ (author’s emphasis) 27 Natural history is a dialectic that brings together an idea and its own hidden history, as it simultaneously gureshistorical data in the representation or staging of the idea. 28 Natural history is both an idea and its historical, material representation. It is philosophical andmaterial. In other words, natural history is constituted by a duality: on the onehand, an idea or philosophical thought; and on the other, a phenomenon as historicaland material manifestation.

Thus, natural history sets a dialectic in motion which, at one and the sametime, inscribes a process of restoration, of becoming, and yet denes an incom-plete project; it represents the historical materiality of the dialectic while alsoguring the philosophical relations between the material elements. It is by way of this ‘strange combination’ that ‘the allegorical mode of expression is born.’ It isthis dialectic, between the philosophical and the historical-material withinnatural history, that circumscribes allegory, and its relationship to ruins; and isfundamental to my reading of Bruegel’s paintings’ as dialectical. With this inmind, I will turn, once more, to the paintings, to their history, and to thephilosophical concerns represented in and by them.

The Vienna Tower of Babel (plate 3.1) privileges a king, his law, authority andgenealogy, and once again, we hear the echoes of Derrida’s interpretation of Babel. For Mansbach, the king (plate 3.3) represents Philip II. However, otherscholars have found this identication debatable because, ‘[i]n Europe, subjects went down before potentates on only one knee; going down on both, the kowtow,is Bruegel’s sole indication that the king in question here is from the MiddleEast.’ 29 The impossibility of denitively pinpointing whether the king is Nimrodor Philip II concurs with the more recent art-historical understanding of Bruegel’s

work as ambiguous and contradictory. Having said that, the depiction of a king ina representation of the Tower of Babel does imply an interest in the issues of sovereignty, authority, law and genealogy, issues raised by Derrida in relation toBabel – and Bruegel through his painting. In considering the Vienna Tower of Babel,I would like to follow Mansbach and wrap the king in the robes of Philip II. But I doso for different reasons. Mansbach interprets the king as the historical gure of Philip II in order to establish his vanity and pride as the grounds for his downfalland that of his agenda in the Low Countries. In contrast to this, I would like toconsider Philip II as a representative , an allegory of sovereignty. More precisely, I would like to suggest that the king in the Vienna Tower of Babel represents both the

historical and philosophical aspects of allegory, and their guration in Benjamin’s writings on sovereignty, authority and law in early modern Europe.For Benjamin, the prince is an allegorical gure during the early modern

period, and, as such, he is not only:




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the hero of an antique triumph but he is at the same time directly associated with divine

beings, served and celebrated by them: thus he is himself deied. Earthly and heavenly gures

mingle in his train and contribute to the same idea of glorication. 30

In other words, the king is representative of both an historical and divinepresence on earth. If the sovereign falls, he does so, ‘in his own name, as anindividual, but [also] as a ruler and in the name of mankind and history [. . .] hisfall has the quality of a judgment.’ 31 As an allegorical representation, the king’spresence in Bruegel’s Vienna Tower of Babel embodies both ‘earthly’ and ‘divine’law and authority, and, as such, is both an historical and philosophical gure. Thehistorical and philosophical judgement pronounced in his fall, is the judgementof Babel.

Historically, Philip II’s inauguration has an echo of Babel. Being unable tospeak any language but Castilian, and not having taken the advice to learn otherlanguages, the king was ensconced in a complex linguistic dilemma. And he wasin constant need of a translator. 32 An example of this is the king’s inauguralspeech in the Low Countries that was not in French or Dutch, but in Spanish. This serious disregard for cultural and linguistic difference continuedthroughout his reign. 33

The difcult and acrimonious start to the relationship between the king andFlanders was compounded by his unwavering alliance with the Catholic Churchand the position he took within it as the absolute representative of God’s law. Hisstatecraft was premised upon his ability to carry out God’s duty to rid his empireof ‘heretics’. 34 The king rallied against the confusion that he thought was brought about by the spread of Protestantism in the Low Countries in the‘formation of the Compromise, the hedge preaching, the conventicles [secretmeetings], the image breaking, and the alliance between Calvinist nobles and burghers and the formation of the gueux’, otherwise known as the Beggars. 35

Phillip II ensured that the spread of Protestantism was brutally repressed by setting up secret consulta, which spied on the Flemish and their representa-tives, and by instigating new bishropics, which enabled him to maintain controland authority within the Church’s administration so as to achieve religiousunication. 36

As well as Philip’s linguistic, cultural and authoritative vanity, and religious

intolerance, the Flemish were also concerned about their lack of political repre-sentation; the rapid industrialization of large cities and the spread of thesemetropolisies into the countryside; the extremely high rate of unemploymentand the food shortages; and an overstretched political project, burdened by continual warfare, which led to unbearably high taxation. In the face of thesecrises, the breach between the people and their noble representatives, andthe king’s political and religious ambassadors, is symptomatic of larger problemsand changes.

One of the rst important moments in the people’s challenge to the king andhis representatives came in 1563, the same year that Bruegel painted the Vienna

Tower of Babel. In March 1563 the noblemen Egmont, William of Orange, Philippede Montmorency and the count of Hornes sent a letter to Philip II criticizing hispolicies and threatening to resign from their governmental posts if Granvelle (the bishop of Arras, cardinal of Mechlin and head of the States General) was not




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dismissed. At this point, the crisis was gathering momentum. Despite a series of political promises by the king and his representatives, the provinces and towncouncils remained loyal to their own people, who refused to pay the king’s taxes,or uphold the placards against heresy because they believed in religious toler-ance. From the noblemen’s point of view, the crisis was political; from theperspective of the king and his representatives the problem was a religious onefought under the rubric of political stability. Ultimately, Philip II’s conception of himself as the bearer of God’s authority, which he considered as sanctioning hisagenda to rid his empire of heretics, and produce unity out of what he saw aschaos, cost him the Low Countries.

Under these complex historical conditions, the Vienna Tower of Babel can besaid allegorically to represent the king’s inability to maintain what Benjamin hascalled his ‘historical’ and ‘divine’ authority, law and order. The duality of alle-gory’s structure, based upon its formation through natural history, precipitates areading of the king’s body in the painting – historically and philosophically.Historically, Flanders as Babel, with its cosmopolitan city centres, such as Antwerp and Brussels, along with its own governing Council, would not abide by a singular, foreign sovereign’s control. Terrestrial divinity is, like God, a jealousgure that ends up punishing his people for their supposed crimes – their desireto name themselves, build their own tower and city, and set up their own politicallaws and religious beliefs. It can be argued, as it has been by Mansbach, that the Vienna painting depicts the sovereign’s inability to maintain rule in a chaoticsituation. The king’s impotence in the painting resembles Philip II’s position inrelation to an increasingly powerful oligarchy that came to represent the politicaland religious rights of the Low Countries.

The king’s authority in the Vienna Tower of Babel is undermined by the chaos,ambiguity and contradictions represented in the building project itself, issues which Derrida raised in his reading of the biblical story. In the painting, thenatural, rock pile out of which the tower is being carved contradicts the need forthe building materials shipped to the port. The tower has contradictory archi-tectural forms and styles. It is inappropriate that the homes that are inhabited arelocated underneath freshly built buttressing that is propping up an unstable anddeteriorating structure. There is the matter of the perplexing organization of thecity wall and its unresolved relationship to the city gate. And nally, the matter of

the king’s ambiguous identity that undermines his authority and power: some workmen genuect, while others are seemingly oblivious of his authority, andignore his presence (plate 3.3). The sovereign is undermined by his own ineffec-tual signiers of power and genealogy: his robe, sceptre and crown. The Viennapainting represents an allegorical judgement: the failure of the king’s agenda, hispower and authority, and the project of Babel.

Allegory’s presence during the Reformation denotes a specic type of auth-ority. Benjamin writes:

the allegorical form [. . .] nds expression in the form adequate from a historico-philosophical

standpoint to those ages in which man’s relation to the absolute has become problematic – i.e.,in which that relation has ceased to be immanent to life. Consequently, allegory devalues

everything tainted by this – worldliness – the material content of its personages, emblems, andsituations – turning them instead into lifeless signposts of an enigmatic path to the absolute. 37




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It can be argued that it is this path, the allegorical one on the way to the absolute– always an imperfect and incomplete project as Derrida has informed us aboutBabel, and Benjamin about the dialectic – that is gured in the Vienna painting.In such a reading, every natural detail in the Vienna painting, its materiality represented in the historical present, becomes tainted by decay: the mountainousrock pile; the tower’s architectural rise to ruins; the immanent Babelian outcomefor the city and countryside; the king’s fall from grace. The painting representsthe viewpoint of the king’s divine authority, and yet, the decaying, materialfragments of the tower and its surround are reminders of the sovereign’s ailingauthority in the historical present. In other words, the Vienna Tower of Babel can be said to represent the becoming of allegory becoming ruins.

H I S T O RY I N R U I N S : T H E R O T T E R D A M T O W E R O F B A B E L In an inversion of Mansbach’s interpretation of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel (plate3.2) as guring an allegorical Utopia, an idealization of nature, and imminenttranscendence, I would like to put forward a reading of it as representative of thetyranny of the authority of the historical present: a tyranny founded upon theunfeasibility of completing both the tower and the Babelian project, in thecontext of major historical crises and upheavals.

Between 1563 and 1568 – the time within which Bruegel is said to havepainted the Rotterdam work – the hostilities towards Philip II escalated. In orderto placate the nobles, Philip removed Granvelle from Flanders. This did not solvethe crisis. Many of the nobles would simply not abide by the anti-heresy laws thatthe king had implemented. Fearing the Spanish Inquisition, and yet disagreeing with the king’s policies on religion, the Flemish began systematically to defy Philip’s anti-heresy placards, and several prominent noblemen privately agreed tochallenge them. The king, however, refused to be swayed. He believed that adecrease in heretical laws would only lead to revolt and the political upheaval of the Low Countries. Philip II was preparing for military action.

In July 1566 the king was informed of the spread of Calvinist preaching andthe insurrection that was being planned by the noblemen. Philip II’s resolve grew stronger; in a letter to Emperor Maximilian II and the German princes, he wrote:

you can assure His Holiness [the Pope] that rather than suffer the least injury to religion and

the service of God, I would lose all my states and a hundred lives if I had them, for I do not

intend to rule over heretics. 38

The Flemish response to the king’s position was the Wonderyear: a time of widespread mass rioting, plundering of churches and monasteries and the‘breaking of the images’. 39 In December Philip II decided to take the military option. In an attempt to avert this attack, Margaret of Parma (the Regent andgovernor general of the Low Countries, who was sympathetic to her people’scause), Orange, Egmont and other noblemen began to ‘cleanse’ the Low Countries

of visibly public Calvinist markings. But it was too late. In the spring of 1567 theDuke of Alva and his troops marched into the Low Countries. On 22 August Alvaentered Brussels with an army of 10,000 troops. On 5 September the ‘Council of Troubles’ was set up. The Inquisition had arrived.




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Alva’s reign of terror was absolute. Both Protestants and Catholics wereindiscriminately condemned for heresy. Those that participated in the rebellionsof 1566 were the rst to be executed or otherwise punished. Thousands of people were executed for heresy under the laws of the Council of Troubles, also known asthe Council of Blood. Alva described Antwerp as ‘a Babylon, confusion andreceptacle of all sects indifferently and as the town most frequented by perniciouspeople’. 40 By the end of 1567 the Low Countries had been ‘cleansed’. On 5 Junethe following year, counts Egmont and Hornes were beheaded for high treason.Later in his life Philip remained unrepentant; he wrote:

the ruinous and sad state in which matters of religion stand. The example of events in the

Netherlands, caused by laxity, license, and consentment, is sufcient to make one see clearly

that a different road has to be pursued. If there is division and disagreement over religion,

neither government nor state nor the authority of princes nor peace and concord and tran-

quillity among subjects can be maintained.41

It seems, then, that the historical crisis of sovereignty coincided with thedissemination of divine power, authority and genealogy. The turmoil that took place between 1563 and the end of 1567 began as a political crisis but came to berepresented as an overtly and singularly religious one. During this time, Bruegelpainted the Rotterdam Tower of Babel. With the sinister repercussions of the king’simposition of the Inquisition, and the Council of Blood’s brutal reign of terror,Bruegel returned to the myth of the Tower of Babel. This time he painted it without a king, without a signature, and without a city. Instead, he placed anarchitecturally ambiguous tower in the countryside, dark storm clouds ominousand threatening above, and a religious procession wending its way up its side, visible in the centre of the third level. The Rotterdam painting is radically different from the earlier Vienna version. As I have discussed, the political crisishad become rst and foremost a religious one. Within this historical context, I would like to suggest that we consider the Rotterdam Tower of Babel as repre-sentative of the critical state of the Church’s authority.

For Mansbach, the Rotterdam painting represents the moment of the tower’scompletion, its imminence; and this achievement is highlighted by the religiousprocession. However, this same procession is also a sign of the people’s present,

historical and temporal worship of God’s authority. Some scholars have discussedthe presence amidst the procession of a Catholic baldachin or canopy 42 – and if so, what exactly is the ‘state of grace’, with its Protestant echo, that Mansbachimplies in his reading? Unlike Mansbach who interprets this temporality of thepresent, as a sign of ‘Utopia’, of ‘linguistic unication’, of ‘Babel remedied’, I would like to consider the Rotterdam Tower of Babel as representative of history inthe transience of its ruins.

In Mansbach’s reading of the Rotterdam painting the crisis in biblicaltranslation during the Reformation was transformed by Bruegel into an‘harmonious and religious world [. . .] posited for the future’. 43 However, it can

also be argued that the crisis of authority in sixteenth-century Europe was aproduct of the destabilization of the theological and philosophical para-digms inherited from the Middle Ages, due in part to a new desire amongstthinkers to translate the Bible. 44 We are once more reminded of Derrida’s




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reading of Babel. A novel interest in the literary, rather than solely theological, value of the Bible and its exegesis led to an alternative understanding of theScripture. A philological analysis of the word of God proved to have devastatingconsequences for the Catholic Church and its sovereign representative. As G.R.Evans writes:

[u]nderlying [Biblical translation . . .] is the question [. . .]: which is the true text of Scripture, andhow far can it be said to subsist in a version in a language different from the original. Where

lies the authoritative version? 45

The philological and theological translation of the Bible during the time in which Bruegel painted his Tower of Babel paintings makes it appropriate to ask, asdoes Derrida of the translative beginnings within the Babel narrative: where doesauthority lie?

Throughout the sixteenth century the desire for unity in the word of Godduring the act of biblical translation was deemed impossible. As humanists andReformists continued to translate the Bible into polyglot texts, the CatholicChurch (and the sovereign) found itself in a state of authorial crisis. Each new translation meant a testing of the Church’s authority because the word of God,upon which it was based, was being debated, argued over and transformed. Thiscrisis is quite simply the result of Babel. And it brings to mind Derrida’s reading of that narrative in terms of the dissemination of one language into many, theconcomitant need and impossibility of translation, and the effects this had onauthority and genealogy. Europe in the sixteenth century played out the reper-cussions of Babel in that the unication of authority in God’s word (and itssingular translation) became an impossible dream.

As opposed to Mansbach’s reading of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel as a state of grace, of Babel remedied, the painting can be understood as representing theBabelian problematic through the historical and political impasse discussedabove, and as embodied in a translative crisis in theological authority. As Derridahas shown us, the story of the Tower of Babel is one in which linguistic, episte-mological and genealogical authority are cast into doubt. During the sixteenthcentury, the furore around biblical translation had the same effect, and resultedin the execution of ‘heretics’.

In this historical context, Bruegel depicted an alternative version of the biblical narrative, this one including a religious procession. It is difcult to say whether the Rotterdam painting is a critique of the Church’s repression of alternative religions, and by extension Philip II’s brutal and oppressive treatmentof ‘heretics’, or a commentary on the breakdown of Church authority, but aconnection can be drawn between the theological and political crisis in authority and the philosophical crisis of the Tower of Babel. Rather than representing astate of grace, it can be argued that the Rotterdam Tower of Babel represents thenecessary and impossible task of translation as a necessary impossibility. The workers keep building, translations of the Bible persist, the tower is never

complete, the true word of God is unobtainable, and yet the tasks remain; they plead for completion in their ruinous decay. As Mansbach argues, it is possible to view the plea represented in the

Rotterdam painting as one for unication. He proposes that the Rotterdam Tower




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of Babel represents a humanist desire for a utopic community and city, for a stateof grace in which religious tolerance produces a situation in which Babel isremedied. However, it is important to point out that the Rotterdam painting doesnot include a city, a sign of communal Utopia. Rather than representing a utopicfuture, nature idealized, a state of grace, it can be argued that each brick in theRotterdam tower, each task and event represented in the painting, is functional,useful, material. It represents, in Benjamin’s terms, the materiality of history. Theconfused architectural design of the tower is made up of specic historical styles which can be identied: Near Eastern, Roman, Romanesque. The thunderousclouds in the painting darken its sky warning of a foreboding storm, the historicalcrises loom large. The painting’s vantage point is terrestrial, human, and thus of the historical present. The tower will not have continual access to ever moregrowth, as Mansbach suggests, because the completion of the tower, and Babel, isimpossible, and indeed, the frame literally cuts off the tip of the tower. 46 It can beproposed that the painting is repeatedly inscribed with the markings of history,of materiality, of a transient present.

Moreover, as Mansbach informs us in his analysis of the Vienna painting, theBabelian project is an a priori failure. The evidence in the Rotterdam Tower of Babelas well, with its present, historical and temporal conditions, concurs with whatthe biblical story has foretold: that there will never be linguistic unication, asingular community, a state of grace. The narrative of the Tower of Babel isinappropriate for the conveyance of a state of grace. In 1567, after Alva’s religiousmassacres and the effects of the Wonderyear, it would be difcult to interpret areference to the Church – the procession in the Rotterdam painting – as tolerantor utopic. Its conservatism and repression during this time can be said to denotethe impossibility of building a united church and theology, of completing theproject of Babel. In this alternative reading of the Rotterdam Tower of Babel, itshistorical materiality situates a political and historical crisis in the Church’sauthority, not as Babel remedied, but as the ruins of Babel.

B R U E G E L’ S D I A L E C T I C : B E N J A M I N ’ S D I A L E C T I C As a testament to the complexity of Breugel’s paintings of the Tower of Babel – totheir internal contradictions and ambiguities, and to the differences between thetwo works – it is vital that my interpretation of them is maintained, simulta-

neously, alongside Mansbach’s reading. Both readings are supplemental to oneanother: contradictory and irreconcilable. The historical and philosophicaldifferences that they shed on Bruegel’s Tower of Babel paintings bring to light anunderstanding of the works as dialectical. In recognizing this relationship withMansbach’s work, and the impact that it has on our knowledge of the paintings, I would like to propose that this dialectic also enables a reciprocal understandingof Benjamin’s theory. By this I mean that the analysis of the paintings can be usedto rethink Benjamin’s notions of allegory and ruins as dialectical in a very particular way.

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama Benjamin precedes what will become one

of his most famous statements on allegory with the following thoughts:

The word ‘history’ stands written on the countenance of nature in the characters of transience. The allegorical physiognomy of the nature–history, which is put on stage in the Trauerspiel is




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present in reality in the form of the ruin. In the ruin history has physically merged into the

setting. And in this guise history does not assume the form of the process of an eternal life so

much as that of irresistible decay. Allegory thereby declares itself to be beyond beauty. Alle-

gories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things. 47

By holding together Mansbach and my interpretation of Bruegel’s Tower of Babelpaintings – the Vienna version as historical ruins and allegorical; the Rotterdam work as a philosophical allegory in a state of historical ruins – a subtle under-standing of the dialectical play between Benjamin’s allegory and ruins is offered. The two art-historical readings form necessary parts of a dialectical interpreta-tion. That is, Mansbach’s reading of the Vienna painting as historical decay is to be held alongside my analysis of it as allegorical: as his discussion of theRotterdam work as an allegory of a humanist Utopia is to be held alongside my interpretation of it as historical ruins. This dialectical formation, then, gives methe tools with which to look back on Benjamin’s theory of allegory and ruins, andpropose that we consider their relationship to one another differently. I wouldlike to suggest that we think about the ways in which the dialectic of naturalhistory, with its reliance on philosophy and history, plays itself out in bothpaintings, as a guide with which to consider a dialectical play within Benjamin’stheory of allegory and within ruins.

On the one hand, we have seen how ruins are the material embodiment of thedialectic of natural history. They physically merge into the setting: as materiality,ruins gure the simultaneous becoming of history and nature as a process of human history. Ruins present the primacy of the historical and material. On theother hand, allegory gures the primacy of the philosophical conguration of natural history.

Although allegory may give primacy to the philosophical and ruins to thehistorical – as the different interpretations of the paintings have suggested – eachelement – the historical-material, and the philosophical – must remain at play inboth paintings, and in the gurations of both allegory and ruins. Like a combinedreading of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel paintings – Mansbach and my own – allegory and ruins can be read as dialectical, representing the historical and philosophicalduality of natural history. As such, allegory and ruins between them form theirown dialectic. This anti-reconciliatory dialectic is central to an understanding of Bruegel’s Towers of Babel as both allegory and ruins; and to Benjamin’s statementthat: ‘Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.’ Ruins then are the historical material of allegory’s philosophical idea;and allegory resides in ruins as ruins reside in allegory.

Notes

I would like to thank Barbara Engh, for discussions about Benjamin many yearsago, Marie Fitzsimmons, Hertha Koettner-Smith, Fred Orton and Marq Smith fortheir long-standing and incisive advice and support, and the anonymous readers

sought by the editors of Art History for their thorough and very helpful comments.I would also like to thank Fintan Cullen for his ne-tuning of the text. The nalstages of this research were funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and Central SaintMartin’s College of Art and Design, London.




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1 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama , trans. John Osborne, introduction GeorgeSteiner, London and New York, 1990 (1963), 178.

2 The contradictory aspect of Bruegel’s work has been mentioned from as early as 1938 (CharlesDe Tolnay, ‘La Seconde tour de Babel de PierreBruegel L’ancien’, Annuaire des Museés Royaux des Beaux-Arts, 1938, 113–21). However, there is anoticeable shift in the taking up and using of these contradictions in more recent debatesaround methodology. See, for instance, DavidFreedberg, ed., The Prints of Pieter Bruegel the Elder , Tokyo, 1989; Jan de Jong, et. al., eds, Pieter Bruegel,Zwolle, 1997; Ethan Matt Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise , Cambridge, 1999;Keith Moxey, ‘Pieter Bruegel and PopularCulture’, in David Freedberg, ed., The Prints of Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 42–52; Edward Snow,‘‘‘Meaning’’ in Children’s Games: On the Limita-

tions of the Iconographic Approach to Bruegel’, Representations , 1:2, Spring 1983, 27–60; Edward A. Snow, ‘The Language of Contradiction inBruegel’s Tower of Babel’, Res, 5, Spring 1983, 40–8;Edward A. Snow, Inside Bruegel: The Play of Imagesin Children’s Games, New York, 1997; PerezZagorin, ‘Looking for Pieter Bruegel’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64:1, January 2003, 73–96.

3 De Tolnay cites Bertolotti, Giulio Clovio principe deiminiaturistis (Modena, 1882), who writes, ‘Unatorre di Babilonia fatta di avolio di Mro PietroBrugole’: Charles Tolnay, Pierre Bruegel l’ancien ,Brussels, 1935, 80.

4 As well as the biblical narrative, see, for example, Arrian of Nicomedia, Anabasis , trans. Aubrey deSélincourt, Harmondsworth, 1971; Herodutus,The History of Herodotus, vol. 1, trans. GeorgeRawlinson, S.I., 1927 (1910); Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. Ralph Marcus, ed. Allen Wilkgren, Cambridge, MA, 1998. Wazbinskiconsiders this tradition, rather than the biblicalone, as the antecedent for Bruegel’s Viennapainting (Zygmunt Wazbinski, ‘La constructionde la Tour de Babel par Bruegel le Vieux’, Bulletindu Musée National de Varsovie , 3:4, 1992, 441–77).See also Klamt for a consideration of theRotterdam Tower of Babel as a critique of the Curiaand Rome, by way of Augustine, who alignsRome with Babylon in his Civitas Dei (Johann-Christian Klamt, ‘Anmerkungen zu Pieter Brue-gels Babel-Darstellungen’, in Pieter Bruegel undSeine Welt , eds Otto von Simson and Matthias Winner, Berlin, 1979, 43–50).

5 Jacques Derrida, ‘Des Tours de Babel’, in Differencein Translation , ed., trans., and notes Joseph F.Graham, Ithaca and New York, 1985, 165–207.

6 Snow, ‘The Language of Contradiction’, 43.7 Wazbinski, ‘La construction de la Tour de Babel’,

116.

8 See, for instance, Walter S. Gibson ‘Mirror of the Earth’ The World of Landscape in Sixteenth Century Flemish Painting , Princeton, 1989, 67; and S.A.Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 45:1, 1982, 43–56, 47.

9 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 49and 52–3. See also Joanne Morra, ‘Translationinto Art History’, Parallax , 14, January 2000,129–38.

10 Gibson, ‘ Mirror of the Earth ’, 67.11 Quoted in H. Arthur Klein and Mina Klein, Pieter

Bruegel the Elder: Artist of Abundance, New York,1968, 12.

12 Snow, ‘The Language of Contradiction’, 41.13 Fritz Grossmann, Bruegel: The Paintings, London,

1955, 195.14 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 43.15 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 43.16 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 45.17 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 48.18 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 47.19 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 47.20 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 49.21 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 49.22 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 53.23 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’, 49

(all quotations).24 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 167.25 Samuel Weber, ‘Genealogy of Modernity: History,

Myth and Allegory in Benjamin’s Origin of theGerman Mourning Play ’, MLN , 106, 1991, 465–500,467–8.

26 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 45.27 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 46. In

this book Benjamin’s thoughts on the dialecticare tied up with his discussion of ‘origin’. I haveelided the question of origin so as to simplify what is, in Benjamin’s writings, an already complex analysis of the natural history dialecticand its relationship to history, materiality andphilosophy.

28 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 45–6.29 Rose-Marie Hagen and Rainer Hagen, Pieter

Bruegel the Elder, c.1525–1569: Peasants, Fools and Demons, Cologne, 1994, 18.

30 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 67.31 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 72.32 Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain, New Haven and

London, 1997, 220.33 On Philip II’s reign, see, for example, Kamen,

Philip; H.G. Koenigsberger, Estates and Revolutions: Essays in Early Modern European History , Ithaca,1971; David Loth, Philip II of Spain, London, 1932;Geoffrey Parker, Philip II, London, 1979; SirCharles Petrie, Philip II of Spain, London, 1963;Pieter Pierson, Philip II of Spain, London, 1975; William Thomas Walsh, Philip II, London and New York, 1937.

34 On the religious controversies during the Ref-ormation, see Alastair Duke, ‘Salvation by Coer-cion: The Controversy Surrounding the ‘‘Inqui-sition’’ in the Low Countries on the Eve of theRevolt’, in Reformation Principle and Practice: Essaysin Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, ed. PeterNewman Brooks, London, 1980, 135–56; Alastair




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Duke, ‘Building Heaven in Hell’s Despite: TheEarly History of the Reformation in the Towns of the Low Countries’, in Britain and the Netherlands , vol. 7, Church and State Since the Reformation , eds A.C. Duke and C.A. Tamse, The Hague, 1981, 45–75; Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolution in the Low Countries, London and Ronceverte, 1990; Alastair Duke, Gillian Lewis and Andrew Pette-gree, eds and trans., ‘The Netherlands’, inCalvinism in Europe 1540–1610: A Collection of Docu-ments , Manchester and New York, 1992, 129–81; G.Groenhuis, ‘Calvinism and National Conscious-ness: The Dutch Republic as the New Israel’, in Britain and the Netherlands , vol, 7, Church and StateSince the Reformation, eds Duke and Tamse, 118–33; Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations ,Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1996; Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands 1544–1569, Cambridge, 1978; Guido

Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Under- ground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis,1550–1577 , trans. J.C. Grayson, Baltimore andLondon, 1996.

35 H.G. Koenigsberger, ‘Orange, Granvelle andPhilip II’, Bijdragen en Medelingen Betraffende deGeschiedemis der Nederlanden , 99, 1984, 573–95, 588.

36 On Philip II’s representation within the Nether-lands and opposition to it, see Koenigsberger,‘Orange, Granvelle and Philip II’; H.G. Koenigs- berger, ‘The Beginnings of the States General of the Netherlands’, Parliaments, Estates and Repre-sentation , 8:2, December 1988, 101–114; H.F.K. vanNierop, The Nobility of Holland: From Knights to Regents, 1500–1650, trans. Maarten Ultee,Cambridge, 1993 (1984); James D. Tracy, HollandUnder Habsburg Rule, 1506–1566: The Formation of a Body Politic , Berkeley, 1990; Guy Edward Wells,‘Antwerp and the Government of Philip II 1557–1567’, PhD diss., Cornell University, 1982.

37 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 66.38 Kamen, Philip, 115.39 Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the

Dutch Revolt 1555–1590, Cambridge, 1992; H.G.Koenigsberger, ‘Why did the States General of the Netherlands Become Revolutionary in theSixteenth Century’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation , 2/2, 1982, 103–111; E.H. Kossmanand A.F. Mellink, eds, Texts Concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands , Cambridge, 1974, 53–88; Irving L.Zupnick, ‘Bruegel and the Revolt of the Nether-lands’, Art Journal , 23:4, 1964, 283–9.

40 Alva to Philip II, 29 February 1568, in Epistolario Alba, 2: 33–4, quoted in Marnef, Antwerp in the Ageof Reformation, xi.

41 Quoted in Kamen, Philip, 125–6.42 Hagen and Hagen, Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 21.43 Mansbach, ‘Pieter Bruegel’s Towers of Babel’,

53.44 See, for instance, Paul Arblaster, ‘‘‘Totius Mundi

Emporium’’: Antwerp as a Center for VernacularBible Translations 1523–1545’, in The Low Coun-tries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs, eds Arie-JanGelderblom, Jan L. de Jong and Marc van Vaeck,Leiden, 2004, 9–31; W. Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation: Some ReformationControversies and Their Background , Cambridge,1955.

45 G.R. Evans, Problems of Authority in the Reformation Debates, Cambridge, 1992, 51–2.

46 The Rotterdam panel may have been trimmed onall sides: see Friso Lammerste, ‘Pieter Bruegel theElder. The Tower of Babel’, in 1400–1550, Van Eyckto Bruegel: Dutch and Flemish Painting in the Collec-tion of the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam , Rotterdam, 1994, 400–403.

47 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama , 177–8.



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