The Sacrifice of Isaac

Abraham has the knife in his right hand and Isaac is already held down on the altar when the angel catches his arm. Veronese gives the light to the angel and the boy, and it is that light which throws the father's face into shadow. The picture is late, painted between 1585 and 1588, in the last years of his life, and like other late canvases it lets the figures sink into the landscape along a long diagonal. The episode from Genesis was read as a foreshadowing of the Crucifixion, with the lamb standing for Christ and the altar for the cross. The canvas hung in the sacristy of El Escorial before it came to the Prado in 1839.