The Bible of Borso d'Este:
The Tower of Babel
1455-1461
Manuscript miniature
Biblioteca Estense di Modena, volume 1
MS. Lat. 422
In Genesis 11:1-9 the people of the world set out to build a tower of bricks mortared with bitumen that will reach the sky. The image gives a sense of how this would be done in the Middle Ages. The man in blue in the foreground uses a hoe to work the clay that will be made into bricks. Behind him the man in green stirs the black bitumen. Behind him is a pile of finished bricks, and in the middle distance men are assembling the tower.
This photo is actually from a facsimile of the Bible of Borso d'Este on display in the Castello Estense in Ferrara.
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Read more about images based on the Book of Genesis.
Photographed at the Castello Estense by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.