A Man No Bigger Than a Grain of Rice

High up on a ledge of this tower, a man no bigger than a grain of rice is hauling a stone. There are hundreds like him, and every one of them is working on a building that's going to fail. Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted The Tower of Babel in 1563. We zoom all the way in: a Roman Colosseum stacked into the clouds, a tower wrapped around a mountain, arches that already lean, cranes driven by men walking inside wheels, King Nimrod and the bowing stonemasons, and the busy city of Antwerp behind it all. 00:00 A tiny man 00:25 The painting 00:45 The story 01:11 The Colosseum 01:35 Built on a rock 01:52 Leaning, unfinished 02:35 The machines 03:10 Antwerp 03:38 King Nimrod 04:06 Into the clouds 04:22 Bruegel's eye 05:01 Other versions 05:29 What is it really about? Painting: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel (1563), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Public domain. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Google Art Project). Music: "Cave 1", "Cave 5", "Cave 4" by HoliznaCC0 (CC0). End title: Modest Mussorgsky, "Night on Bald Mountain" — public-domain recording via Wikimedia Commons. #bruegel #towerofbabel #arthistory #hiddendetails #vienna