The Binding of IsaacGenesis 22:1-19
32 hands · 1492–1754
And he put forth his hand and took the sword, to sacrifice his son.
Genesis 22:10
1492Andrea Mantegna
1511Raphael
1511Mariotto Albertinelli
1525Antonio di Donnino di Domenico del Mazziere
1525Brunswick Monogrammist
1527Andrea del Sarto
1527Andrea del Sarto
1528Andrea del Sarto
1530Lucas Cranach the Elder
1531Lucas Cranach the Elder
1540Master of the Augsburg Ecce Homo
1540Herri met de Bles
1542Titian
1549Unknown
1585Paolo Veronese
1588Paolo Veronese
1590Caravaggio
1599Annibale Carracci
1599Jan Brueghel the Elder
1603Caravaggio
1607Cigoli
1607Abraham Govaerts
1612Pieter Lastman- 1612Peter Paul RubensThis record
1616Pedro Orrente
1616Pieter Lastman
1635Rembrandt
1645Rembrandt van Rijn
1685Giovanni Antonio Burrini
1750Unknown
1750Jean Jacques Spoede
1754Francesco Guardi
What it depicts
Genesis 22:1-19The Akedah. Nineteen verses that painters have returned to for six hundred years, almost always at the same instant — the knife raised, the angel arriving — which is the tenth verse and not the first. Where the picture stops is itself an argument about the passage.
1After these things, God tempted Abraham, and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.
2He said to him: Take thy only begotten son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and go into the land of vision: and there thou shalt offer him for an holocaust upon one of the mountains which I will show thee.
3So Abraham rising up in the night, saddled his ass: and took with him two young men, and Isaac his son: and when he had cut wood for the holocaust he went his way to the place which God had commanded him.
4And on the third day, lifting up his eyes, he saw the place afar off.
5And he said to his young men: Stay you here with the ass: I and the boy will go with speed as far as yonder, and after we have worshipped, will return to you.
6And he took the wood for the holocaust, and laid it upon Isaac his son: and he himself carried in his hands fire and a sword. And as they two went on together,
7Isaac said to his father: My father. And he answered: What wilt thou, son? Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust?
8And Abraham said: God will provide himself a victim for an holocaust, my son. So they went on together.
9And they came to the place which God had shown him, where he built an altar, and laid the wood in order upon it: and when he had bound Isaac his son, he laid him on the altar upon the pile of wood.
10And he put forth his hand and took the sword, to sacrifice his son.
11And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.
12And he said to him: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou any thing to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake.
13Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw behind his back a ram amongst the briers sticking fast by the horns, which he took and offered for a holocaust instead of his son.
14And he called the name of that place, The Lord seeth. Whereupon even to this day it is said: In the mountain the Lord will see.
15And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, saying:
16By my own self have I sworn, saith the Lord: because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake:
17I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the sea shore: thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies.
18And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice.
19Abraham returned to his young men, and they went to Bersabee together, and he dwelt there.
Seen
Not yet checkedSuggested by an AI model, 2026-09-08 (hf.co/mradermacher/iconclass-vlm-GGUF:Q4_K_M), asked “Generate Iconclass labels for this image”. No one has checked these against the picture yet.
- Iconclass
- 71I324The judgement of Solomon
Of
The subjects are the library’s own joins, each marked with who made it. The other rows are claims by the holder and by Wikidata, read 2026-09-04, and join nothing until an editor confirms them.
- Subject
- The Binding of IsaacGenesis 22:1-19joined by editor
- Iconclass
- 71C1313117131D14adult man11Gangels
Means
No reading yet.
Rights
- Credit
- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 66-3, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Licence
- PDM-1.0
- Evidence
- wikidata:P6216=public domain on Q64577274 (found by iconclass+subject); commons:License=pd (Public domain) on File:Peter Paul Rubens - Het offer van Abraham, Een engel weerhoudt Abraham om Isaak te offeren (Genesis 22-10-12) - 66-3 - Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.jpg (read 2026-08-14)
- Record
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64577274
How this join was made
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gives this object the Iconclass notation71C131311 71 31D14 11G, and the library's map reads that notation as Genesis 22:1-19. An editor has checked the picture against the passage and confirmed it.
Rubens takes the interruption as a physical collision: the angel comes in from the left with enough force to turn the old man’s whole body.
Also by Peter Paul Rubens
14
Within fifty years of 1612
859
Similar picturesFound by visual likeness
8 picturesVisual resemblances suggested by the model. A match does not establish a shared subject or historical connection.
In the stacks
Not yet checked3Passages in the library’s own holdings that name this maker. The model ranked them; nobody has checked that the name means this person.
The baroque antithesis to Raphael and Diirer is here represented by Rubens’ Christ Bearing the Cross* (engraving by Pontius with a variant anterior to the picture in Brussels). The recessional movement most brilliantly developed, and made still more interesting by an upward movement. The stylistically new factor we are looking for certainly does not lie in the merely material motive of the direction of movement, but, as it is a question of a principle of present- ment, in the way in which the theme is handled, how every recessional element
0.71PAINTING 75 tion. It is not a question of the degree of recession in the space represented, but in what way recession is made effective. Even where the seventeenth century apparently indulges in pure compositions in breadth, a closer com- parison must prove the fundamentally different point of departure. The spiral into-the-picture movement which Rubens loves will certainly be sought for in vain in Dutch pictures, yet this system of Rubens’ is only one type of re- cessional composition. There need even be no plastic oppositions of foreground and background:
0.70The course of the development of art, however, cannot simply be reduced to a series of separate points. Individuals fall into larger groups. Botticelli and Lorenzo di Credi, for all their differences, have still, as Florentines, a certain resemblance when compared with any Venetian, and Hobbema and Ruysdael, however divergent they may be, are immediately homogeneous as soon as to them, as Dutchmen, a Fleming like Rubens is opposed. That is to say: to the personal style must be added the style of the school, the country, the race. Let
0.69
Connections
Depicts
- The Binding of IsaacRubens takes the interruption as a physical collision: the angel comes in from the left with enough force to turn the old man’s whole body.