Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Olivier, 'Abraham and Isaac', 1817

According to the Old Testament, God instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham’s only son by his wife Sarah, as a test of his faith and obedience (Genesis 22: 1–19). Abraham and his son make their way to the place of sacrifice. Abraham strides up the mountainside with steely resolve, his eyes on the path ahead. Isaac carries a bundle of wood for the altar fire on his back, while his father holds a lighted torch and a knife. When Isaac asks his father where is the lamb to be sacrificed, Abraham replies that the Lord will provide.

In the next episode of the story, Abraham places Isaac on the altar and is about to kill him when an angel appears and tells him not to harm the child. God sends a ram in a thicket to be sacrificed as a burnt offering instead of Isaac and the boy is saved. This episode in the Old Testament is frequently interpreted as a precursor for God’s sacrifice of his own son, Jesus, recounted in the New Testament.

The style of the painting is deliberately old fashioned, with precise outlines and odd disparities in scale, while the figures of Abraham and Isaac recall the simplified forms of a medieval woodcut. The landscape background is drawn with meticulous care and is loosely based on Olivier’s studies of the countryside around Salzburg, which he first visited in 1815. The distant mountain peak may perhaps be the Watzmann, to the south of the city. However Olivier’s approach to depicting the landscape, with slim feathery trees and pink tinged clouds in the blue sky, also recalls the backgrounds of Italian Renaissance paintings, such as those by Giovanni Bellini.

In 1817 Olivier became a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke, an artistic brotherhood (later known as the Nazarenes) founded in Vienna in 1809 by Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr. Olivier shared the Nazarenes' enthusiasm for northern medieval and early Renaissance art and their interest in the revival of religious painting.