The Sacrifice of Isaac

This is late work. Allori painted the Sacrifice of Isaac in 1601, at 66, near the end of a career that had begun among the last great Florentine Mannerists. The scene is the test from Genesis: Abraham with the knife raised over his bound son, the angel arriving to catch his arm, the ram waiting in the thicket. Allori tells it in his smooth, controlled way, the horror kept at a courtly distance. What makes the date worth knowing is what came next. Around 1603, only two years later, Caravaggio painted the very same subject in Rome, all harsh shadow and a boy who really seems to scream, and that picture hangs today in this same gallery, the Uffizi.