The Sacrifice of Isaac, Franz Anton Maulbertsch

To Your Correspondent, it’s one of the most inexplicable passages in the Old Testament.  In order to assure himself of Abraham’s devotion, God orders him to kill his son, Isaac.  And … Abraham agrees. 

In Genesis 22, you will find the tale of how God had Abraham take Isaac up to the land of Moriah (a great distance away), separate the boy from the bearers and others that travelled with them, and then had the poor boy cut and carry wood for his own sacrifice.

Abraham readies the alter and wood, only to then bind Isaac and place him upon the pyre.  He is about to stab the boy to fulfill God’s command when God sends an angel to stop him.  God provides a ram, stuck in the nearby bushes, as a substitute, and one assumes that they went home, with Isaac never to turn his back on his father or trust him again for an instant.

It is stories like this that make Your Correspondent, a product of 13 years of private Catholic schooling, wonder if anyone reads this stuff critically.  The Biblical point here is that Abraham, after luring his son away from witnesses and making the poor boy carry the wood for his own funeral pyre, is viewed heroically because he valued God’s word more than he did the life of his own son.  The religious reading of the story puts a smiley face on an act of stupefying barbarism.  It’s an act of religious obligation counter to common sense, ethics and even fundamental morality.  This is the kind of thinking that leads to jihadism, suicide bombings, and the murder of abortion providers, much less countenancing child abuse.

We have looked at a number of brilliant depictions of this fable in the past, and to that list we must add that of Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796), currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.

Looking at Maulbertsch’s work, one marvels at his ability to tell a story vertically.  For much of his work, the story sweeps up and down, rather than across.  Maulbertsch packs a great deal of drama in this picture, mostly communicated through composition and coloration.  Indeed, though Maulbertsch was a capable painter, his true genius lie in color and composition.  Weaknesses in drawing and painting are more than compensated for by his use of both to drive the narrative.  He has an artistic point of view – something that some more technically skilled painters lack, leaving their work sterile or unmoving.

The painting swoops from lower left (the angel’s wings and Isaac’s wonderfully lit legs), though the body of the boy and leading up to Abraham’s face, the light reflected on his helmet, and his upraised knife.  In that bottom to top arc, we have the entire story of the near sacrifice, told with impressive narrative thrust and significant drama.

No one would accuse Maulbertsch of delicacy when rendering the human face; indeed, many of his faces are indistinct or only adequately drawn.  Look, however, at Abraham’s face, which is very striking indeed.  Shown only in half light, this is the look of religious mania at its worst – the satisfaction evident on his face is consistent with people who have gone blood simple, and relish the act of murder.

Another reading is, of course, that Abraham’s face is lustful.  Time and again in depictions of Abraham and Isaac from artists as diverse as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Titian, we have seen something in the myth that seems to inspire dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.  All of these painters have fetishized Isaac to some degree, and Maulbertsch is no different.  Note the radiant, heavenly light specifically highlighting his muscular legs and flat stomach, focusing its spotlight on his private parts.  Discreetly covered by the torn fragments of his robe, there is no mistaking that the focal point of the painting is Isaac’s groin. Indeed, if the eye flows up in a straight line, Abraham’s knife is directly over Isaac’s genitals.

Though rendered without “fussiness” or fine detail, Maulbertsch’s take on the Abraham/Isaac myth has an almost Mannerist monumentality and epic feel.  It is not my favorite painting of the myth, but it may be one of the most idiosyncratic.

Titian’s Abraham and Isaac

Like the earlier David and Goliath we examined by Titian, this representation of Abraham and Isaac is now in the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. It was originally made as a ceiling painting for the Santo Spirito in Isola; Titian’s other ceiling painting for that church depicted Cain and Abel.  (If the composition and foreshortening seems “funny,” remember this would ideally be seen from below.)

Titian was born Tiziano Vecellio in Pieve di Cardore in 1489 (dying in 1576, quite an old man by Renaissance standards).  He was perhaps the greatest Venetian painter of his era; his contemporaries called him The Sun Amidst Small Stars (after the final line of Dante’s Paradiso).  Titian was equally at home with landscapes, portraits and large narrative pictures.  Despite his compositional felicity and superior draughtsmanship it is perhaps is his unique mastery of color upon which his reputation rests.  His style changed often throughout his lifetime, but his serious study and application of color was a constant throughout his career.  His later works were, perhaps, muted compared to his earlier pictures, but his overall approach also grew in subtlety.

By any yardstick, this is a remarkable picture.  The painting is characterized by the spiraling movement of the figures, the counterpoised pose and the strong intersecting diagonals.  Like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian chooses the moment when the angel appears just before Abraham can murder his son in an act of devotion to God.  But it would be hard to imagine a painting more unlike the other two – let’s start by looking at his characterization.

If Caravaggio’s Abraham is an unthinking zealot and Rembrandt’s a confused duffer, Titian’s muscled prophet seems to our eyes more like Samson or Hercules.  Though he holds Isaac’s head down (like Rembrandt), this sword thrust would most likely cleave Isaac’s head from his body.  (And note, too, that this is no simple knife – it is a sword.  This Abraham is a figure of potency, indeed.)

The angel here is unlike the celestial interlopers of Caravaggio (who seems oddly human) and Rembrandt (who is definitely otherworldly) – this angel is more in line with the putti seen decorating various religious paintings of the period.  That so simple and childlike an angel can stop so massive a human seems incredible; however, the face of Titian’s angel seems to us the most urgent of the three.  This angel will stop this madness, regardless of his relative size.

Which brings us, as is almost always the case in this story, to the artist’s depiction of Isaac.  Caravaggio showed us an adolescent clearly terrified and abused; Rembrandt a heavenly youth of beautiful whiteness, his face brutally hidden by his father’s massive fist.  The Isaac of Lievens is clearly conflicted, unable to see the angel above him and clearly uncomfortable in his father’s grasp.  But Titian’s Isaac is different – this is no adolescent, it is a young boy.  And despite straddling a funeral pyre, with his father holding his head and face away, he seems curiously nonplussed.  This Isaac is too innocent of his father’s intention, too young to fully appreciate that he is about to die, and that makes the scene doubly horrible.  (Indeed, his face is eerily similar to that of the ass and the lamb, all of them, to Abraham, little better than dumb animals.  Note that the older man seems to stand on one and put his full weight on the other.)

Note, too, that, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, here Isaac seems to be lit from another source.  Caravaggio’s Isaac is horribly white – perhaps in terror, perhaps rendered so by the artist in a mode of self-identification.  Rembrandt’s Isaac looks as if a hot spotlight lit his youthful lines, focusing the picture on his boyish innocence.  Titian, however, aligns the light of heaven alongside his Isaac – the clouds are highlighted with white, heavenly light, throwing Isaac’s simple robe into stark outlines.

Interesting, too, and again like Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Titian cannot help but fetishize Isaac.  The most luminous focal point of the picture is Isaac’s bottom, and it can not be unintentional.  There is something in this myth that seems to inspire in even the most devout of souls dark contemplations of parental abuse, sexual and otherwise.

Though this is bound to raise hackles, to my eye Titian’s picture is far superior to that of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Lievens.  Possibly because of its intended use as a ceiling picture, the composition is more dynamic, more energetic and more frenetic than the other pictures we’ve looked at in this series.  (Note the train of Abraham’s robe trailing behind him.)  Titian was also a draughtsmam of prodigious ability: the rich musculature of Abraham and the soft lines of both Isaac and the angel are wonderfully captured, and the triangular quality of the composition keeps the eye going from victim to angel with zealot locked between them.

Also, Titian’s sense of color cuts through the haze of sanctity that usually envelops the story, making more clear and more terrible just what was about to happen here.

The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1635)

Yesterday we looked at how Dutch artist Jan Lievens envisioned the Biblical story of God’s edict to Abraham to murder his own son, Isaac, as a sign of his devotion.  Lievens was a contemporary (and sometime studio partner) of Rembrandt van Rijn, who also painted his own version of the story.  Unlike Lievens, who painted the scene after Abraham spared Isaac and killed a ram instead, Rembrandt, like Caravaggio before him, chose the more dramatic moment of the story when the angel appears and stops Abraham in his murderous intent.

Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), of course, is one of the world’s most famous and celebrated painters.  His is one of the few names (like Leonardo and Michelangelo) that have become shorthand for “artist.”  His revolutionary use of light and color, in addition to the sensitivity with which he portrayed the human condition, were combined with a supreme sense of composition and narrative.  He is truly one of the great masters.

Rembrandt was born into a middle class family; he showed an early aptitude for art and studied first with Jacob van Swanenburgh, and later (alongside Jan Lievens) with Pieter Lastman.  Lastman was deeply impressed by Caravaggio’s use of light and color, and it’s probable that Lastman held up the Italian Renaissance master as a model to his students.  (Caravaggio himself painted a deeply disturbing version of the Abraham and Isaac story.)

Rembrandt became one of history’s most celebrated portrait painters.  He married Saskia van Uylenburg in 1634 and her father, an art dealer, was able to secure a great deal of work for his son-in-law.  The couple lived and worked in the Breestraat, a busy street on the boarder of the Jewish neighborhood.  Rembrandt studied many of the faces he saw there, and this study stood him in good stead for his masterful pictures depicting Old Testament figures.  Rembrandt created more than 300 Biblical works, including drawings and etchings. 

Despite his success, Rembrandt was never very competent when it came to financial affairs.  He lived way beyond his means, using much of his money to buy art and antiquities.  He sold much of his collection to avoid bankruptcy in 1656 including Roman busts, Japanese armor and his collections of minerals and gems.  The art establishment, always out to get him, represented by the painters guild actually created a rule that artists in Rembrandt’s financial position could not trade as painters.   Rembrandt was forced to move into a smaller house and he died in dire financial straits.

The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac was painted around 1635 and, as is usually the case with Rembrandt, he finds the decisive, dramatic moment of the story to illustrate with his brush.

Rembrandt was much the same age as Lievens when he painted his version of Abraham and Isaac.  And though both men are great masters in their own right, I think that the Rembrandt is by far the superior picture of the two.  Both artists focus on Isaac, but where Lievens pinpoints the ambiguity of the boy’s emotions, Rembrandt details his lily white youth and supple boyhood.  Indeed, the bleached white of Isaac’s torso shows that the heavenly light is not on Abraham, but on Isaac.

Nor is Isaac any willing murder victim; like Caravaggio’s possible self-portrait in the same role, this is an Isaac who is clearly being abused by his father.  Abraham’s hand covers the boy’s face and mouth – he cannot cry out, nor can he breathe.  His hands are tied behind his back, but his body and legs twist and squirm in terror. 

It is curious, too, that Rembrandt’s Isaac, like Caravaggio’s, is nude or mostly nude.  This curious fetishizing of Isaac links the work of these two masters, and will also be in evidence tomorrow when we look at Titian.

Where Caravaggio paints Abraham as an emotional blank, though, Rembrandt creates a very different picture of the prophet.  Here, Abraham is clearly a confused old duffer, dropping his knife in surprise at the arrival of the angel.  There is no sense of purpose, as with Caravaggio, or perhaps continued malign intent, as with Lievens, but, rather, simply infirmity and, possibly, dementia.  One wonders how the old man managed to subdue the boy in the first place.

Also interesting is the angel.  It appears here that the angel arrives in the proverbial nick of time – and the look on its face seems to indicate more than a touch of disapproval of the entire incident.  (What, it seems to ask, are you crazy…?)

I would draw your attention to the hands of both Abraham and the angel – they seem, to me, curiously deliberate.  The hand smothering Isaac is quite massive, and the hand that held the knife seems quite powerful indeed – hardly the hands belonging to so old a man as Abraham.  The angel’s hand clutching Abraham’s wrist also seems powerfully delineated, with dark patches between fingers, while the hand heavenward seems curiously feminine and small. 

As is often the case with this story, one wonders what happens once the angel drifts heavenward.  Isaac is already tied and lying on what would be his funeral pyre.  The ram that will be killed in his stead is nowhere in evidence – so we have to ask, how does one move from this moment of supreme drama and religious mania back to normalcy?

Abraham and Isaac by Jan Lievens (c. 1637)

Yesterday we looked at how Caravaggio depicted the dramatic moment in Genesis 22 when Abraham is about to murder Isaac at God’s command, and how he is stopped in his bloody work by an angel.  Today, we travel north to see how artist Jan Lievens envisioned the immediate aftermath of the story.

As Genesis 22 reads: And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

Jan Lievens (1607 – 1674) was a celebrated North-Netherlandish painter and etcher. He is often compared to his friend and colleague Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), and both artists were the pupils of Dutch painter and teacher Pieter Lastman.  (Lievens and Rembrandt would share a studio for some five years, and some scholars had trouble attributing work between the two artists.)  Lievens was a child prodigy, and he left his humble origins when he was 10 years old (his father was a tapestry worker) to train with Joris Verschoten.  Lievens was only 12 years old when he began his career as an artist (!) and, like Mozart, was celebrated for both his talent and his preciosity.

One of Lievens’ paintings found its way into the hands of James I, who invited Lievens (who was then 31) to become a painter to the English court.  After that, Lievens knocked about the European art world, working in Antwrep, acting as court painter in The Hague and Berlin, and later returning to Amsterdam in 1655.  He met with great success throughout his life, but in 1672, after the Rapjaar (the “disaster year” that found the country ravaged by war and internal strife), Lievens was nearly destitute.  Despite once having a considerable fortune, his family found that there was no inheritance to be had.

This picture, painted around the time Lievens was 30 years old, shows Abraham holding Isaac immediately after sacrificing the ram.  Lievens was living in Antwerp when he painted this canvas, and it is possible that the years he spent in London with Anthony van Dyck (1599 – 1641) influenced his coloration and brushwork. 

Where Caravaggio perhaps saw nothing but zealotry and madness in the situation of Abraham and Isaac, Lievens enigmatically captures something of the (necessarily) conflicting emotions of Issac.

The bloody carcass of the ram lies in the foreground, along with the knife almost used to end Isaac’s life.  The sacrificial pyre is lit and, in contrast to Caravaggio, there are no houses or sign of people in the distance, only a sky heavy with dramatic heavenly portent.  Where Caravaggio provides Abraham with the bland and placid visage of a zealot “just following orders,” Lievens portrays a web of complex emotions on the old prophet’s face.  As Abraham looks up – one cannot help but ask is Abraham thinking, thank you Lord for saving my son or is he thinking are you sure you don’t want me to do this?  Look at the arm that embraces Isaac – one cannot be terribly sure if that is the clutch of affection, or the vice-like grip of someone reluctant to let his victim go.  The right hand, too, wraps around the boy’s shoulder – in that hold, Isaac is not going anywhere.  (And it’s all fairly moot, as is implied by Abraham’s empty scabbard and spent knife – in this affair, at least, Abraham has been rendered impotent.)

Much more interesting, to my mind, if the face of Isaac.  Though looking heavenward in roughly the same direction as Abraham, is his the face of a child looking up into God’s majesty, or of a terrified boy in the clutch of a madman?  The ambiguity of Isaac’s face is hiding in plain sight:  where one might easily see a boy staring up at God, another might just as easily see a child looking for whatever it is his father is gazing at and missing it.

And that is leads to another question that is certainly implied here but never addressed in the Old Testament: how could Isaac ever again trust Abraham?