ABSTRACT
The years 1562-63 marked a major change in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's creative process. Bruegel's substitution of traditional subjects for original allegories helped safeguard both his life and his livelihood. The Suicide of Saul gave Bruegel the opportunity to showcase his abilities both as a miniaturist and as a landscape specialist. As a record of sixteenth-century technology Bruegel's Tower of Babel is an impressive achievement, an effective strategy for holding the interest of viewers and satisfying the Horatian principle that successful art should include something for everyone. In 1563, at the time when Bruegel painted his Tower of Babel, Granvelle was engaged in his own expensive building projects. In any era in which extremists drown out moderates, dogmatic assertions supplant dialog, and those who remain independent are attacked as timid and self-serving, it may take more courage to steer a middle course than to respond to the pressure and take sides.
