Renaissance paintings glorified machines as organizers of human power

Evidence

But the machine also functioned symbolically as an image of the power of technology to order human life. For example, two of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s paintings, both entitled “Tower of Babel,” depict huge twenty-foot waterfront cranes operated by human-powered treadmills (Fig. 21). … Such paintings not only dramatize the human-overpowering qualities of machine technology but also symbolize the role of the machine in organizing human life. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 840

Categorization

• CANDY: Bruegel’s Babel cranes towering over workers as symbols of machine power is a vivid image worth casual mention.
• XREF: connects to: Modernist writers and artists modeled creative work on machine rationality. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 240; Natural magic and everyday machines jointly supplied mechanism’s power concept — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 829

Broader Connections

• Modernist writers and artists modeled creative work on machine rationality. #expands (0.82) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 240
• Natural magic and everyday machines jointly supplied mechanism’s power concept #complicates (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 829