The Sacrifice of Isaac 1920

Lovis Corinth made this print, The Sacrifice of Isaac, using etching, a medium that lends itself to a kind of nervous energy. Look at that cross-hatching! It feels like the whole scene is vibrating with tension. The surface has this incredible, almost frantic quality, with lines scratching and clawing their way across the plate. It's like he's wrestling with the subject matter itself. The angel's hand, swooping in to stop Abraham, is rendered with a flurry of lines that makes it feel both ethereal and urgent. You can almost feel the coarse grain of the metal, the bite of the acid. It reminds me of some of Goya's darker prints, where the line work becomes a vehicle for expressing psychological turmoil. But Corinth brings his own raw, visceral energy to the story. It's a reminder that art doesn't have to be pretty; it can be a site of struggle and reckoning.