Leandro Bassano

Leandro Bassano, or Leandro dal Ponte, was an Italian artist from Bassano del Grappa who lived from 1557-1622. Leandro was one of four children in his family, who, including his father, were all artists. Many of Bassano’s paintings were actually family collaborations, where one member of his family had started the painting and another finished it. Leandro began as a follower of his father’s work in religious paintings, but then progressed to portrait paintings as well. His father had a studio in Bassano del Grappa and after his father died, Leandro and his brother, Francesco took over the studio. Francesco committed suicide, leaving the studio to Leandro. With the studio, Leandro became very successful in painting portraits.

The people in the painting are all shown working toward their common goal of building a tower to the heavens, which relates to Genesis 11:4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth”. Everybody is busy and being productive with nobody standing around or watching. There are ladders and scaffolding which support the idea that this tower will be very tall, rather than a building covering a large amount of land. This is a dark painting, which could represent God’s anger toward the people for their arrogance, or “leaving them in the dark”.

The fact that the people in this image are in such a small area shows how thy wanted to build up, instead of out. This was against God’s wish of spreading his creation across the Earth. This angered God, causing him to confuse the language of the people, so that they could not understand each other or work together, and then spread them across the face of the Earth (Genesis 11:7). This confusion of their common language led to the naming of the city. “Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth…” (Genesis 11:9). In Hebrew, the word “balal” means to mix, confuse, or confound. The city of Babel is therefore named after this action of confounding or confusing the people’s language in order to separate them.

Derek Camenga