Abel Grimmer

His father Jacob Grimmer had established a name for himself by imitating the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder on small panel pictures and selling these on the market at low prices.

[1] Abel Grimmer married Catharina Lescornet on 29 September 1591 and became a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1592.

His landscapes show splendid colour harmonies and a certain linearity, through their slightly schematized compositions and their tendency to represent buildings as geometric shapes.

[2] A favourite theme of Abel Grimmer was the Tower of Babel of which he produced several versions, clearly inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's treatment of the same subject.

[6] The story of the Tower of Babel is in essence a reflection on human impiety and hubris, a moral message already implicit in both Bruegel's paintings.

The architecture of the Tower of Babel in Grimmer's paintings of the subject echoes that of the Colosseum, which in the 16th-century symbolised the decay of imperial Rome.

His home country - the Spanish Netherlands - was at the time he created the paintings engaged in a struggle with the breakaway Protestant provinces in the north.

This paralleled the 16th century, when the once united Netherlands became divided between a Catholic south and a Protestant north which vigorously debated the interpretation of the bible and the role of the church.

His interest in perspective and the use of a golden light anticipate the work of the Dutch painter of church interiors Pieter Saenredam.

Both works are clearly inspired by Hans Vredeman de Vries who also painted a Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary (Royal Collection).