Isaac's sacrifice

This was painted as one half of a pair, and the two canvases still hang together. Its companion shows Adam and Eve grieving over Abel, the first child ever killed. Here the story runs the other way. Abraham, told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, has already raised the knife, and at the last instant an angel catches his arm, so the boy is spared. What stays with you is how quietly Liss tells it. Rather than crowd the canvas with the terror of the raised blade, he opens a wide, calm landscape around the figures and lets the long lyric lines of the hills and sky carry the feeling. The knife never falls, and the whole scene settles into the landscape as if the danger had already passed.