Abraham and Isaac: the opening of history through the what-if

Three of the greatest baroque artists, Caravaggio (1571–1610), Rubens (1577– 1640), and Rembrandt (1606–1669), each made several drawings, etchings, and paintings of the story of Abraham and Isaac, especially of the moment at which Abraham is stopped from killing his son. In contrast, they paid much less attention to the biblical figure of Job, whom we met in chapter 2. As explained there, the biblical figure of Job was one of the most important socio-cultural heroes in the Middle Ages, and at times even the greatest hero. Yet after flares of attention in the sixteenth century his dominance and importance diminished in the course of the seventeenth century. Compared to his pervasive presence in the Middle Ages and sixteenth century, Job grew nearly invisible towards the eighteenth century and would only resurface in the context of symbolism, in the powerful work of William Blake in the early nineteenth century, for instance. He would then become an icon, ironically, of the vexed artist or, in Kierkegaard's 1843 Repetition, a ‘teacher of humankind’. Job would resurface yet again in Western twentieth-century literature and philosophy in the context of, unsurprisingly, reconsidering philosophy's relation to theology. For now, however, the question is: why did the story of Abraham and Isaac become more dominant than Job's in the Dutch republican baroque? Especially the moment when Isaac's sacrifice is stopped became a favorite topic of artistic consideration throughout Europe and in the Republic. The hypothesis put forward in this chapter is that Abraham and Isaac were dramatic figures, embodying the potential inherent in a decisive moment: a moment of bifurcation.

The theme of Abraham's dilemma, sacrificing or not sacrificing Isaac, was intensely studied by Rembrandt in etchings, sketches, and paintings. The following etching from around 1637 entitled Father Abraham playing with his son is particularly relevant because it shows the story's ambiguities and implications as charged in terms of a what-if, that is to say: in terms of that which we wish would have been the case (see figure 20). The title of the etching, Father Abraham playing with his son, is remarkable for the explicit addition of ‘Father’. To an audience that was thoroughly familiar with the story this addition would have been almost absurd. Unless, of course, the very fatherly-ness of Abraham is at stake in this etching.