Tower of Babel Bible Craft

Your Tower of Babel Bible craft is based on this great painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1568.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder actually painted three versions of "The Tower of Babel." This one is housed in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Facts about Pieter Bruegel the Elder:

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born in or around Breda in modern-day Netherlands sometime between 1525 and 1530.
• He died in 1569 in Brussels, in what is now Belgium.
• Pieter Brueghel dropped the "h" from his last name and was referred to as "the elder" because his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564-1638) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) were also painters.
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born less than ten years after Martin Luther nailed The Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, really kicking off the Protestant Reformation.
• He painted during a time when earnest efforts were made to paint biblical subjects in a more realistic way.
• In a time when painters often depicted royalty and the supernatural, Bruegel painted scenes of peasants. That was unusual, as was the depiction of people who were disabled.
• He liked to incorporate proverbs into his paintings, or to paint scenes from the Bible as they likely looked to the people in the stories.
• When you see peasant scenes in art all the way until 1900, they were most likely influenced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
• You can take a look at a few of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's paintings here. Talk about what you see.
  • What kind of colors does Bruegel use?
  • How detailed are his paintings?
  • Do you see how he could work proverbs into each painting to teach biblical lessons?

You and your kids can make a representation of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel in the 1568 The Tower of Babel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Tower of Babel Bible Craft