As a kid, I wanted to be a comic book artist, as you can see in this drawing I made many years later.
Nahari Obewassa- Jones1 writes about this drawing: “Abraham looks up, astonished and shocked when he feels his wrist is gripped, and his arm stopped just when he wants to plunge the knife into his son. We watch the fate-full scene from above. The boy’s posture (look at his feet!) expresses: “Help!” The spontaneity of the pencil lines is typical of the artist’s red/blue period.”
Drawing is a great way to not be bored in a museum. This painting, by Rembrandt, inspired my drawing:
In turn, Rembrandt was inspired by this story from Genesis:
God wants to test Abraham’s devotion. He tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Abraham doesn’t want to, but he feels he must obey his God. He goes up into the mountains with Isaac, who carries firewood. Once they arrive at the spot God has shown to Abraham, they build an altar, and Isaac asks:” Father, where is the ram to sacrifice?” Then Abraham ties Isaac onto the wood. The moment he wants to kill his only son, an angel appears and stops him. In the end, Abraham gets the best of both worlds: he keeps his God and he keeps his son.
This painting by Caravaggio depicts the same story.
His use of strong light and dark contrasts had a huge influence, on Rembrandt and many other painters. Parts of the picture are put in the spotlight, and other parts are dark. The general term in painting for this is chiaroscuro (literally light-dark in Italian).
The differences between the paintings are interesting. Caravaggio (the second painting) is more realistic than Rembrandt. Caravaggio’s Abraham looks like a farmer or laborer, for whom killing animals is normal (look at his weathered hands). The way he holds his knife and his son’s head is immediate and realistic, and you can almost hear the boy's screams. It is easy to imagine how in a moment, Abraham will slice his son’s throat and the blood will come squirting from the wound. Luckily for Isaac and for us, the angel stops Abraham at the last moment.
Rembrandt paints Isaac as an idealized victim. We don’t see Isaac’s face which makes the scene less gruesome. Isaac’s vulnerability is stressed by the exposure of his neck. Rembrandt uses light and dark with great dramatic effect, even more so than Caravaggio. Only faces and hands, and Isaac’s body are in the spotlight, drawing all our attention.
Rembrandt’s composition is more dynamic than Caravaggio’s. He uses a zigzag composition, as shown above.
Comparison enlightens
To learn about painting (about anything really), compare. Since there are themes (for example, Biblical stories) that many painters have depicted, this is not hard.
There are many other interesting ways to compare art. For example, how different painters use the color red, or how they use the texture of their paint, etc.
Next time you go to a museum, instead of falling asleep, draw a piece of art, or choose a focus. Comparison makes art more fun!
Nahari Obewassa- Jones is a 23rd-century art critic. In a previous blog post, Exploding Tree, she reviews a drawing by the same artist. Click here: Exploding Tree