Where was this produced?
The Sacrifice of Isaac was produced in Cairo, Egypt, a center for Mamluk art and many displaced craftsmen. It also played a central role for many Orthodox Muslims at the time. It was also known as a trading city that was open to the Mediterranean. It was a cosmopolitan city that traded many spices and luxuries. This included Christian cultures in the north and on the red sea, India, and southeast Asia. Cairo also traded with Italian city states and southern Russia. In the near east, more than a thousand Mamluk buildings still survive. Mamluk art has a theme of hierarchy and status. This included references to official rank in inscriptions, boasting, and asserting ownership. Besides the western Islamic world, Egypt was the only place where Arab art flourished. There are numerous art museums in Cairo that display ancient Egyptian artifacts as well as Islamic art. The Museum of Islamic Art displays a number of woodwork pieces made by different Islamic groups who ruled in Egypt over the centuries. The Sacrifice of Isaac was a part of the many portable pieces of art that could have been traded to different religious groups across the Mediterranean who all found meaning in the scene that it represented.