Bronze Plaque XVI

This plaque was cast from an original intaglio by Annibal Fontana created around 1570 in Milan and mounted, in the years that followed (along with five others of the same dimensions, one larger, and thirty smaller ones), on a large casket in Augsburg.The plaques were purchased and the casket commissioned by Albrecht V of Bavaria; the casket is still preserved today in the Residence Treasury in Munich. The scene of the Sacrifice of Isaac is located on one of the casket’s short sides (see last photo). The five other large intaglios that adorn the casket were, as far as we know, not cast, and no plaques depicting them have survived. Given the distinctly Italian style of the preserved plaques based on the intaglio of the Sacrifice of Isaac, it is likely that the casting was done in Fontana’s workshop in Milan. Since the relief is much more pronounced on the plaque than the recesses on the intaglios, it is also possible that the plaque was cast from a terracotta model created by Fontana prior to the intaglios and preserved by him (see Rossi 2011).Several copies of the plaque, of varying quality, are known to exist in museums, including one in Bologna (Museo Civico Medievale) and one at the Met (see here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/sea