Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac

David Teniers the Younger · 1654–56

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

20.9 × 30.7 cm (8 1/4 × 12 1/8 in.); Framed: 33.9 × 43.2 × 4.5 cm (13 3/8 × 17 × 1 3/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac captures one of scripture's most charged moments — the raised blade, the angel's intervention, and the raw bond between father and son — rendered with the intimate scale and quiet intensity that defines Teniers at his finest. David Teniers the Younger is best remembered for his vibrant Flemish genre scenes, but his religious works reveal an equally accomplished hand, one sensitive to narrative tension and skilled in the warm, earthy palette of seventeenth-century Flemish painting. Working on panel rather than canvas, Teniers achieved a smoothness of surface and precision of detail that gives the figures an almost sculptural presence, drawing the viewer into the drama without sacrificing compositional depth. Teniers served as court painter and keeper of paintings for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in Brussels — a role that placed him in daily contact with masterworks of the Italian and Flemish traditions, influences that surface in the controlled theatricality of compositions like this one. Our hand-painted oil reproduction follows the original's tonal range, panel ground, and careful brushwork as closely as the medium allows, preserving the intimacy and gravity that have kept this work compelling for nearly four centuries.