"Flemish School" Tower of Babel: a huge Hendrik van Cleve III?

Retiro Subastas, from Madrid, Spain, sells on 15 June 2016 a huge (154 by 232cm!) "Flemish School, 17th century" Construction of the Tower of Babel estimated at 20,000 Euro.

The auction house points to the many other versions of this story painted in Flanders in the late 16th and early 17th century by artists like Pieter Bruegel, Tobias Verhaecht, Frans Francken and Lucas van Valckenborch.

This specific type though, with a square foot of the tower pointing at the viewer, and a round tower where the first floor seems  to bulge upwards (highly exaggerated perspective with the vanishing point between the square floors and the round floors), can be traced back to one painter, Hendrick van Cleve III (Antwerp, 1525-1595), the most famous of the four Hendrick Van Cleves. He was the brother of Marten van Cleve, who will appear by coincidence on this blog next week. This version, from the Kroller-Muller museum in the Netherlands, measures 41 by 47 cm.

The example in the previous paragraph is clearly superior to the one for sale, but other variants attributed to Cleve are rather comparable to the one we have here. The above black-and-white photo is a version sold at Tajan, Paris in 2001 (found on RKD). The second, rather ornagey example also shows many of the same characteristics and similar figures in the foreground.

Most of these examples are significantly smaller than the one for sale though, and one would expect a version this large to be more detailed. Still, a work of this considerable quality, huge size, popular topic, and with a possible artist (or by a close follower) should easily fetch the estimate. All other versions which were sold over the last few years and which were associated with Cleve (from by him to followers) fetched about 20,000 Euro or a lot more, and none of those I checked even comes close to the size of this one.

Note also the one for sale at Sotheby's on 16 June 2016, again a somewhat better but much smaller one with many identical features, especially the strange perspective in the Tower, but also the bridge on the right, or the position of the King or main figure in the foreground.

UPDATE: this work is now for sale at Hampel, 5 July 2017, with the attribution "Dutch Painter, 17th century" and an estimate of 15,000 to 25,000 Euro. I don't know whether it sold last time and the seller won't get the expected profit, or whether it didn't sell and this is a well-deserved second try in a perhaps better auciton house for this kind of thing. They didn't recognise or accept my Hendrick van Cleve III attribution though ;-)