Carved and polychromed. The group is finished in the round, excepting the back of Abraham’s left upper leg and the reverse and right sides of the altar. The group is composed of two parts (the altar with the sacrificial ram and Abraham with Isaac), both later mounted onto the non-original rocky ground. Traces of workbench hooks can be discerned on the underside of the original parts. The altar and the sacrificial ram lying before it were carved from a single piece of wood. The second part has been carved from a working block composed of five wood pieces joined with glue: 1. the base with Abraham and the rear section of Isaac’s back; 2. Abraham’s face; 3. the knot and tail of Abraham’s mantle; 4. Isaac’s front section; 5. a section of Isaac’s head. The missing angel was probably carved separately. A hole from a mortise and tenon joint can be seen at the carving edge of the angel’s partly remaining hand (wrapped around Abraham’s right wrist), though it is unclear whether this joint is original. A square mortise can also be discerned between Abraham’s right foot and the small pile of firewood.

Some damage due to woodworm infestation. The angel is missing, with only the fingers of his hand, wrapped around the wrist of Abraham’s raised arm, still intact. Also missing is Abraham’s knife or sword. The rock-like ground on which the separate parts of the retable group have been mounted, though old, is non-original. The group was overpainted at least twice. Remnants of these layers, which have since been largely removed, can still be discerned on the original polychromy layer in areas. The gilding on Abraham’s tunic and mantle and on the clasp of Isaac’s chemise is original.

…; ? the Paris art market;¹¹J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 143.…; from the dealer S.W. Wolsey, London to the dealer M.J. Schretlen, Amsterdam;²²Ibid. from whom, fl. 4,000, to the museum, 1953; on loan to the Museum Krona (formerly known as the Museum voor Religieuze Kunst), Uden, 2005-12

Object number: BK-1953-18

This group concerns the Old Testament story of Abraham, who God commands to sacrifice his only son Isaac as the ultimate test of faith (Genesis 22). Depicted here is the story’s dramatic apogee: just as Abraham raises his (now lost) knife or sword to kill the blindfolded boy, an angel descends to prevent him from committing this act. The floating figure of the angel has been lost; still present, however, are his fingers wrapped around the wrist of Abraham’s raised right arm. At the foot of the burning altar lies the ram that Abraham sacrifices in his son’s stead, its legs bound together with a rope.

Given the limited depth of the carving on the largely finished reverse, the present group is still essentially a relief and primarily to be seen from the front. When placed against a rear wall, in a niche or in a retable caisse, the background would have served for mounting the suspended figure of the angel, approaching from above. The uneven base in which the group’s two separately carved components have been inserted, though old, is non-original.³³Leeuwenberg dates this renewed base reservedly to the seventeenth century, see J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 144. The group and its base are carved from oak,⁴⁴Oral communication Iskander Breebaart, RMA, 11 July 2016. not walnut as previously thought.

A determination of the group’s original function cannot be made with certainty, as no other depictions of this specific scene are known to exist at this scale. Events from the Old Testament rarely figure as a central theme in multiple-caisse retables produced in the Middle Ages. Small-scale versions, however, do occasionally appear in the recessed outer frames that adorn retables. On Passion retables, the Sacrifice of Isaac is a theme that frequently appears in the framing around the Carrying of the Cross. In the case of the present group, this possibility is ruled out by the sizeable dimensions, even if excluding the now lost angel. Acknowledging the theme depicted – to be interpreted as a prefiguration of Christ’s coming sacrifice with his death on the cross – the present group may quite plausibly have belonged to an altar. One example for comparison can be seen in Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s (c. 1455/65-c. 1485/95) painting entitled The Holy Kinship (SK-A-500), which shows a freestanding group of the Sacrifice of Isaac standing on the altar.⁵⁵Likely a fictitious situation, as such groups generally belonged behind the altar. Perhaps the group was part of a small Passion retable, with the main scene of the Crucifixion in the centre, flanked by the present group on the left and Moses with the Copper Snake on the right, in accordance with an established iconographic programme also found in the Biblia Pauperum. Another possibility is that the group was incorporated in a choir screen, just as the two sculptural groups in the aforementioned painting, specifically, the Fall of Man and the Expulsion from Paradise.

The figures’ facial types and theatrical, turning poses – with the anatomy accurately rendered – are stylistically close to the Italianising and mannerist work of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502-1550) and his workshop. Leeuwenberg observed this link as early as 1954, noting the similarity to two stained-glass windows in the Rijksmuseum (BK-NM-14386 and BK-14605) attributed to (the circle of) Coecke, and also several woodcuts inspired by the Antwerp artist’s trip to Turkey in 1533 (cf. RP-P-OB-2304A).⁶⁶J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Een zeldzame houtsculptuur’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 2 (1954), pp. 35-39, esp. figs. 1 and 3. Marlier, in his monograph on Coecke published twelve years later, even went so far as to describe the group as a work quite possibly carved by the master himself.⁷⁷G. Marlier, La Renaissance flamande: Pierre Coeck d’Alost, Brussels 1966, p. 394. Despite the artist’s activity in numerous areas – painter, publisher, and a designer of tapestries, engravings, stained glass and goldsmith’s pieces⁸⁸E. Cleland et. al., Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) 2014, p. 82. – no single contemporaneous document exists that confirms he in fact ever worked as a sculptor. Nevertheless, Coecke is sometimes cited as the designer of figurative reliefs (one incidentally depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac) on two chimney pieces from Huis Moelenere.⁹⁹In the 18th century transferred to the Antwerp Town Hall, see for example A. Corbet, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Antwerp 1950, pp. 64-68, fig. 45 and 48. He possibly also designed the statue of Druon Antigoon – a mythical giant said to have lived in Antwerp – which formed part of the joyous entry of King Philip II in 1549.¹⁰¹⁰W. Kuyper, The Triumphant Entry of Renaissance Architecture into the Netherlands: the Joyeuse Entrée of Philip of Spain into Antwerp in 1549: Renaissance and Mannerist Architecture in the Low Countries from 1530 to 1630, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1994, vol. 1, p. 67. The papier-mâché Head of Druon Antigoon from c. 1533 in Antwerp, Museum aan de Stroom (inv. no. VM.2004.1021.002) could also have belonged to this giant, in which case it was reused for the joyous entry. While not designed by the artist himself, the present retable group is certainly a manifestation of the Italian renaissance style, popularized in Brabant by Coecke’s influential workshop from the late 1530s on. Another retable group that betrays his mark on wood-carved sculpture is a splendid oak Descent from the Cross in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).¹¹¹¹London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. A.47-1940, see P. Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 2002, no. 27 as ‘Antwerp, about 1540’. An oak Lamentation preserved at the Oscott College Museum was probably carved in the same period, possibly by a woodcarver who had travelled to Italy himself.¹²¹²K.W. Woods, Imported Images: Netherlandish Late Gothic Sculpture in England c. 1400-c. 1550, Donington 2007, no. 21 as ‘Antwerp?, c. 1540’. These three groups – and especially this last piece – are among the most skilfully rendered woodcarvings made in the latter years of Brabantine retable industry. These works are typically situated – albeit sometimes provisionally – more specifically in Antwerp, the most important centre of production in Brabant at this time.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 162, with earlier literature; P. Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 2002, p. 98; K.W. Woods, ‘Centres of Excellence’, in C. van de Velde et al., Constructing Wooden Images: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Organization of Labour and Working Practices of Late Gothic Carved Altarpieces in the Low Countries, Brussels 25-26 October 2002, Brussels 2005, pp. 51-74, esp. p. 64; K.W. Woods, Imported Images: Netherlandish Late Gothic Sculpture in England c. 1400-c. 1550, Donington 2007, p. 245

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous and circle of Pieter (I) Coecke van Aelst, The Sacrifice of Isaac, BrabantBrussels, c. 1540 - c. 1550', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20015019