Although he spent most of his adult life living in Paris, the painter and graphic artist Konstanty Brandel often visited his native Poland and continued to consider himself a Polish artist. His work may be described as Symbolist and has much in common with that of figures such as Odilon Redon and Gustave Doré, although Hieronymus Bosch, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Francisco de Goya have also been cited as possible influences.

Brandel’s imagery often includes architecture fantastically interpreted, with exaggerated and highly improbable structures, scale and perspective. These fantasies are frequently inhabited by men, women and animals engaged in strange or ritualistic behaviour, sometimes endowed with supernatural powers such as the ability to float or fly. Here Brandel has created a kind of Tower of Babel with vast arcades spiralling heavenward and inhabited at different levels with floating horsemen, elephants, a Buddha, a winged couple and, at the top, a female torso with belly disclosing an embryonic child. Near the foot of the image an inscription in Italian reads ‘Potrebbe qui dubitarre’ (‘One may here doubt’).