Sacrifice of Isaac

1625 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

religious

As the "Sacrifice of Abraham, by the Pisan Orazio", this painting is mentioned in a 1631 inventory of paintings found in the gallery of the Palazzo Mattei. The decoration of the palace at the commission of Annibale Mattei in 1624-26 was the last great Roman project to be given to painters who were all, to varying degree, connected to the Caravaggesque experience. The painting, attributable with certainty to Riminaldi and most likely datable to around 1625, is a precious document, considering the rarity of surviving works by this artist.

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About the Artist

Orazio Riminaldi

1593 – 1630

Italian painter. He studied first with the modest Pisan painter Ranieri Borghetti (1609-1636) and then with Aurelio Lomi (1556-1622); no works from this first period survive. He then moved to Rome, where his admiration for Orazio Gentileschi, Domenichino and Bartolomeo Manfredi suggests that he probably arrived there between 1610 and 1620. He was certainly there by the beginning of 1620, for in March of that year he was commissioned by Curzio Ceuli, Master of Works of Pisa Cathedral, to paint Samson Killing the Philistines for the apse of the Cathedral (in situ). He painted also the Assumption of the Virgin (completed posthumously by his brother Girolamo) for the cathedral of Pisa. He died of the plague in 1630.

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