16th Century, Sacrifice Of Isaac

16th century
Sacrifice of Isaac
Sanguine on paper, cm 76 x 56 With frame 93 x 73 cm
In Genesis (22, 1-13), we tell how God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac. The patriarch obeyed and it was only when he was about to slit the child's throat that an angel descended to stop his gesture and communicate God's satisfaction to him. The scene, which is not uncommon in Florentine art, symbolized a foreshadowing of God's willingness to sacrifice his son Christ for the good of mankind. Andrea del Sarto solved the task with monumental figures of the protagonists, elegantly composed to generate a serpentine movement that unfolds along a diagonal. Isaac is half naked and with one knee and one foot resting on the wooden altar; he has his wrists tied on his back and is bent over in fear while turning his pained face down. Abraham towers titanic behind him, the dagger firmly in his left hand, already outstretched to deliver the blow, and the right which holds the child steady, while his head turns back to hear the angel's message freshly descended from the sky to stop the gesture. The robe of the patriarch, blown by the wind, gives his figure an almost heroic relief and a strong expressive charge. The background is composed of a rarefied landscape in which a tree can be seen, on the left the sheep that Abraham had carried to the sacrifice so as not to arouse suspicion, on the right the servant who waits unaware of what is happening. The Michelangiolesque debts are evident, above all in the figure of Abraham, which recalls both the Prophets of the vault of the Sistine Chapel and of the Tondo Doni; From the latter derives the serpentine rotation and the presence of the ignoramus in the background. But the particular dynamic accent also recalls the Laocoon Group, discovered in Rome in 1506 and immediately becoming very popular, all seasoned by the particular "sfumato sartesco", derived from that of Vinciano but more lively in the chromatic range and in the sandy consistency, and of a well-balanced arrangement of figures, derived from reflection on the Florentine works of Raphael. The work is inspired by the canvas representing the Sacrifice of Isaac, oil painting on panel (213x159 cm) by Andrea del Sarto, dated around 1527-1529 and kept in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden. There is also a less refined version, generally considered a draft, in the Cleveland Museum of Art (178x138 cm) and a third version, on a reduced scale, in the Prado Museum (98x69 cm), datable to around 1527-1530. The work was commissioned in 1527 by Giovanni Battista Della Palla as a gift to the French King Francis I, who had lodged the artist in Fontainebleau about ten years earlier, without however succeeding in retaining him at his court. In the stormy political events of the time, Della Palla ended up being imprisoned in 1530, before the work was shipped and shortly before the artist died, after having made three versions of it, as Vasari recalls, in different stages of finish and different sizes. The Cleveland proof was probably unfinished, abandoned early for a larger work and with some variations. That of Dresden, the largest and best finished, was perhaps that intended for the King of France, but the painting was requisitioned by Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis del Vasto, to whom the monogram on the rock in the foreground refers, added later. Others believe that the Madrid version is the one possessed by the Marquis; the latter being the smallest and identical to the Dresden version, it is supposed to be hardly later. The Madrid version is known to have been purchased by Charles IV of Spain and is first documented in the Casita del Principe in the Escorial Monastery in 1779, after moving to Aranjuez Palace in 1814 it was finally converged at the Prado.