Sacrifice of Isaac (Caravaggio)

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The Sacrifice of Isaac is the title of two paintings by the Italian master Caravaggio (1571-1610).

[edit] Princeton version

Sacrifice of Isaac

Caravaggio, c. 1598

Oil on canvas

116 × 173 cm

Piasecka-Johnson Collection, Princeton, New Jersey

The Sacrifice of Isaac in the Piasecka-Johnson Collection in Princeton, New Jersey is a disputed work which, if genuinely by Caravaggio, would seem to date from the 1590s. According to Giulio Mancini, a contemporary of Caravaggio and an early biographer, the artist, while convalescing in the Hospital of the Consolazione, did a number of paintings for the prior who took them home with him to Seville. (The hospital had a Spanish prior from 1593 to around mid-1595). This would date the work to the mid-1590s, but it seems far more sophisticated than anything else known from that period of Caravaggio's career, and Peter Robb, in his 1998 biography of Caravaggio, dates it to about 1598. The model for Isaac bears a close resemblance to the model used for the John the Baptist now in the museum of Toledo cathedral, which suggests that the two should be considered together. The presence of paintings by Caravaggio in Spain at an early date is important for the influence they may have had on the young Velazquez, but there is also strong evidence that they may have been the work of Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, a talented early member of the Caravaggisti who is known to been in Spain about 1617-1619.

The painting shows the moment when Abraham, about to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to God's command, is stayed by an angel who offers him a ram in Isaac's place. The scene is lit with the dramatically enhanced chiaroscuro (tenebrism) with which Caravaggio was to revolutionise Western art, falling like a stage spotlight on the face of the youthful angel; the faces of Abraham and Isaac are in shadow, but show acute emotions; the gestures of the hands are acutely eloquent, the angel's resting on the ram's head in imitation of the way Abraham's left hand rests on the head of his son, the Patriarch's other hand holding the knife but already relaxing as he listens to the angel. The three figures and the ram are shown without background or context, with nothing to distract from the powerful psychological drama as God's promise is delivered.

[edit] Uffizi version

Sacrifice of Isaac

Caravaggio, 1603

Oil on canvas

104 × 135 cm

Uffizi, Florence

The second Sacrifice of Isaac is housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. According to the early biographer Giovanni Bellori, Caravaggio painted a version of this subject for Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII, and a series of payments totalling one hundred scudi were made to the artist by Barberini between May 1603 and January 1604. Caravaggio had previously painted a Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, which presumably pleased the cardinal enough for him to commission this second painting.

The artist thrusts the action to the front of the picture frame like a sculpted frieze. Old Abraham, with features reminiscent of the saint in the second St. Matthew, is intercepted in the act of slitting his son's throat by an admonishing angel who with his right hand prevents the sacrifice and with his left points to the substitute victim. Light directs the viewer to scan the scene from left to right as it picks out the angel's shoulder and left hand, the quizzical face of Abraham, the right shoulder and terrified face of Isaac and finally the docile ram. A continuous movement links the back of the angel's neck to Isaac's profile.

Caravaggio combines a hint of horror with pastoral beauty. In the foreground the sharp knife is silhouetted against the light on Isaac's arm. In the distance is one of Caravaggio's rare landscapes, a glimpse perhaps of the Alban Hills round Rome and an acknowledgement of the skill of his one serious rival, Annibale Carracci, whose landscapes were particularly admired.

Isaac has been identified as Cecco Boneri, who appeared as Caravaggio's model in several other pictures. Recent X-ray analysis showed that Caravaggio used Cecco also for the angel, and later modified the profile and the hair to hide the resemblance.