Worship of the Statue of Nebuchadnezzar

This unusual panel at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen depicts the Old Testament episode from the Book of Daniel in which King Nebuchadnezzar commands all peoples to worship a golden statue. Painted in 1560, it represents Pieter Aertsen applying his genre and crowd-scene skills to a subject more typically encountered in altarpiece cycles. The Babylonian episode carried implicit political resonance for sixteenth-century viewers: it was a standard proof-text for the proposition that legitimate rulers should not demand religious worship, and in the context of Philip II's increasingly oppressive religious policies in the Netherlands, the image of enforced idol worship had obvious contemporary relevance. Aertsen treats the scene as a crowd spectacle.

The panel technique is consistent with Aertsen's 1560 production. The crowd scene allows him to deploy his full range of physiognomic observation, differentiating the assembled peoples of Babylon through costume, posture, and facial type. The golden statue is rendered with a warm, impasto surface that distinguishes it from the surrounding crowd. An implied distance between the statue's plinth and the bowing crowd creates the scene's spatial structure.