Le Sacrifice d'Abraham

Rembrandt painted this in 1635, when he was in his late twenties and building his name in Amsterdam as a painter of high drama. He chose the hardest possible instant of the story of Abraham, ordered by God to kill his own son and stopped at the last second. Abraham has already forced the boy's head back and bared his throat. His huge hand covers Isaac's face completely. Then the angel seizes his wrist, and the knife, which he has just let go, hangs in the air, still falling. Look at Abraham's face and you see not relief yet but shock, a man caught between one command and another. A second version of this composition exists in Munich, made a few years later in his workshop. This one, the original, was bought in 1779 by Catherine the Great of Russia as part of the collection of a former British prime minister, and it has been in the Hermitage ever since.