Landscape with Abraham and Isaac

Italian School

Summary

The setting for this landscape painting is apparently a romanticised view of the Ponte Salario, a road bridge in Rome dating back to the Roman period. It appears to recount the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Book of Genesis (22. 3-4). To test Abraham's faith, God commanded him to take his son Isaac to a mountain and sacrifice him. Here, father and son are setting off on their journey, followed by two attendants and a donkey loaded with logs. The painting was originally fixed in the wainscot over a fireplace in a building in Valenciennes. On being taken down, it was found that it had degenerated from the heat and that the ends had been folded in to fit the wooden panelling in which it had been secured. An old inscription, 'S.Rosa f. 1668', in the bottom left hand corner, was apparently partly lost when the painting was removed and the rest said to be impossible to preserve when the picture was restored in 1846. Although this work has never been accepted as a Salvator Rosa, it is clearly influenced by his landscape style.