Mountains in Italian Renaissance Depictions of “The Sacrifice of Isaac”

Penny Snyder

The Italian Renaissance marked a flowering in production and innovation in art. Inquiries into the nature of art itself, such as Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise De Pictura,1 along with such factors as competition and an interest in math and science, motivated a dedication to realism in art. This push for increased realism occasioned a growing interest in landscape in art. The natural world became a subject worth depicting as real space, rather than as an abstraction or a backdrop, as was typical of medieval art. The depiction of the natural world in art was not limited to the heightened realism of landscapes; it became a source of symbolism and meaning as well. Mountains in four different works depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac create realistic, believable spaces, but they also perform a symbolic function. Occupying a physical space between the terrestrial and the heavenly, mountains in this otherworldly space become a place of communication with God.

Mountains are the location for several important stories in the Old Testament. The revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Sacrifice of Isaac both occur on mountains, Mount Sinai and Mount Moriah respectively, establishing mountains symbolically and literally as holy places in the Bible. In both stories, mountains become a setting in which God reveals himself, either directly or through angels, to chosen humans. In the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son on a mountain, demanding Abraham to, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”2 Abraham unquestioningly follows God’s directives; leaving his slaves and donkey at the foot of the mountain, he brings Isaac to the top of the mountain and binds him to an altar for slaughter. As Abraham prepares to wield the knife against his son, an angel of the Lord intervenes, stopping him. Elevated above the earthly realm, Mount Moriah becomes a space for communication with God. However, the mountain also becomes a barrier between the chosen few and the servants, who are left at the bottom of the mountain.

The revelation of the Ten Commandments shows a similar role for mountains as a place of both communication and exclusion. God calls Moses to Mount Sinai, commanding that he leave many of God’s worshippers at the foot of the mountain, saying, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord. . . . Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”3 After forty days, Moses and other chosen individuals return with the tablets. Mount Sinai is thus a bridge between the heavenly and the terrestrial, but also a barrier. In both stories, mountains serve to physically elevate specific individuals heavenward to commune with God.

The role of mountains as a space for communication in the Bible informs artistic depictions of the Sacrifice of Isaac. The competition panels for the Florence Baptistery doors (1401–1402) are among the most famous examples of the Sacrifice of Isaac in Renaissance art. While many competed for the prestigious job, the panels of Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455) were the forerunners, with Ghiberti ultimately winning. Brunelleschi and Ghiberti were subjected to the same constraints for the competition, such as the quatrefoil frame; but they approached the reliefs very differently, and mountains have differing levels of importance in each panel. Brunelleschi’s panel (1401, bronze) is brutal and direct, focusing on the raw emotion of the event. The knife is in Abraham’s hand, pressed up against Isaac’s throat, who screams in terror, forcing the angel to physically intervene. The frame is divided into two by a horizontal line, between the characters participating in the action and the servants below who are unaware of the events occurring. The contradiction between the calm, oblivious characters below and the characters above serves to heighten the energy of the piece. The figures’ bodies in the upper half exude energy. For example, Isaac’s body is contorted in agony as his father abrasively grabs his neck. Two figures on the bottom of the panel hang over the side onto the frame; the panel is so bursting with energy that it cannot be contained within the quatrefoil frame. But while the emotions the figures display are precise, the landscape is not. Mount Moriah is abstracted into a rocky setting that functions merely as a backdrop for the work. The figures in the lower register do not interact with the landscape. The mountains in Brunelleschi’s panel are downplayed in favor of the emotional intensity created by the interactions between the main figures.

While Brunelleschi focuses on the characters in the work, Ghiberti uses the landscape to suggest the violence of the sacrifice. The figures in Ghiberti’s panel (1401, 1403–1424, bronze) are calm and graceful. Abraham holds the knife above Isaac’s head, only requiring the angel to verbally command him to stop, unlike the physical confrontation necessary in Brunelleschi’s work. The figures are less emotive; for example, Isaac is depicted as a classical nude and he seems almost proud to display his body, unlike his contortion in Brunelleschi’s panel. But while the figures suggest less raw emotion, Ghiberti’s work is not unemotional. Ghiberti creates a realistic setting of the craggy rocks of Mount Moriah, unlike the static backdrop in Brunelleschi’s work. The lines and the texture of the rocky expanse in the middle of the work convey movement, animating the work. The jagged rocks are juxtaposed with the graceful emotions of the figures and their smooth drapery, heightening the intensity of the drama. The rocks slice the work in half, physically isolating the figures who interact with God from the servants and donkey on the left. The mountains become a literal barrier in the work, as well as a reminder that not all individuals are chosen to interact with God. The jagged rocks of Mount Moriah create intensity through line and texture, but they also create a paradoxically violent and sacred place of conversation with God.

Ghiberti returned to the Sacrifice of Isaac in another set of doors for the Florence Baptistery (1425–1452, gilded bronze). These doors, later termed by Michelangelo “The Gates of Paradise,” only had ten panels, each of which was enlarged and not required to be in quatrefoil. The increased area to work with allowed Ghiberti to delve further into the landscape of Mount Moriah in his second depiction of the Sacrifice. The landscape of this sacrifice is more realistic than the previous works, with mountains in the background, a sense of elevation of Abraham and Isaac, and non-idealized flora growing in the landscape. The high relief and the angular, jutting lines of the rocks create energy in an otherwise stable piece. The narrative is spread out in three different areas of the work; Abraham meets the three angels at the bottom left, the servants and donkey wait at the foot of the mountain, and the event of the sacrifice occurs on top of the mountain. While the narrative is spatially fragmented, landscape makes the work a coherent whole, with mountains playing an important role in the interaction between Abraham and Isaac and the servants below. Ghiberti writes of “how the servants and the ass remain at the foot of the mountain, and how he has undressed Isaac and wants to sacrifice him and [how] the angel seizes the hand with the knife and shows him the ram.”4 Ghiberti notes that the servants and donkey stay at the bottom of the mountain, making mountains an isolating force between holy and secular figures. Unlike the abstracted rocks in the previous reliefs, Ghiberti depicts Mount Moriah with a sense of elevation. By being on top of the mountain, Abraham and Isaac are higher than the other figures in the work, a physical manifestation of their closeness to God. The mountains become more than just a setting in Ghiberti’s panel, playing a role as a physical representation of the separation between holy and non-holy figures.

Turning from reliefs to paintings, Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) and Caravaggio (1571–1610) both skillfully represented the Sacrifice of Isaac on canvas. Both works feature or allude to the mountainous setting of the sacrifice, but mountains in Andrea del Sarto’s work play a bigger role than in Caravaggio’s. In a lengthy description of Andrea del Sarto’s painting (1527, oil on wood), Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) praises the setting as “a landscape so well represented that the real scene of the event could not have been more beautiful or in any way different.”5 The small Renaissance town below gives a sense of perspective to the work, but the mountains are most important to the work. Similarly to Ghiberti’s reliefs, the mountainous landscape serves to isolate Abraham, Isaac and the angel from the earthly. The three characters occupy a heavenly plane on the top of a cliff with a jagged drop-off, again suggesting the idea of mountains as a boundary between the holy and non-holy.

Unlike Andrea del Sarto’s painting, Caravaggio’s work (1594–6?, oil on canvas) focuses less on the landscape and more on the brutal emotions of the figures, creating intensity reminiscent of Brunelleschi’s work. Caravaggio forgoes depicting extraneous parts of the story; for example, he entirely removes the donkey and servants. The figures occupy the foreground and are magnified; the angel and ram’s bodies are even cut off by the frames. Because the painting focuses so intimately on the figures, it emphasizes the emotions of the characters, such as Isaac’s frozen, terrified face. Caravaggio also uses chiaroscuro to heighten this emotional intensity, with vivid contrasts between the light, or holiness of the characters, and the dark of the rocks and the town below. The chiaroscuro serves to visually isolate the figures, unlike the mountains in Andrea del Sarto’s work. There is a sense of elevation above the small town, and there is one rock formation to the right of Abraham’s body, but these details are extraneous to the interplay between the characters. Even though Caravaggio creates a very realistic mountainous landscape, he focuses on the dramatic intensity of the work through emotions.

Mountains implicitly become sacred spaces in each of the works detailing Isaac’s sacrifice by becoming the site of a holy interaction between humans and God. However, the degree to which mountains are important symbolically in each work varies; they serve as a simple backdrop in some, but as an important symbolic device in others. The works were clearly affected by artistic theories of the Renaissance as well as biblical interpretations of the sacrifice. Newfound dedication to realism in depicting the natural world played a role in Ghiberti’s and Andrea del Sarto’s landscapes; but so too did theories about emotions in art, especially in Brunelleschi and Caravaggio’s works. Nonetheless, the majesty, intensity and mystery of the mountains are a fitting setting for such a powerful story of God’s will.

Notes

1. Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura (originally Della pittura, 1435; On Painting. Penguin Classics, 1972).

2. Genesis 22.2 New International Version.

3. Exodus 19.21–42 NIV.

4. Christie Knapp Fengler, “Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Second Commentary: The Translation and Interpretation of a Fundamental Renaissance Treatise on Art” (PhD diss., Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin, 1974), 66.

5. Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the painters, sculptors and architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York, Random House, 1996), 849.