Christus am Ölberg

Around 1459 Mantegna finished a towering altarpiece for the church of San Zeno in Verona, and this small panel sat at its base, in the strip of scenes called the predella. It shows Christ praying at night on the Mount of Olives while the apostles sleep below and an angel hovers with the cup of his coming ordeal. Mantegna treats the setting almost like a survey of the ancient world. The city behind is Jerusalem, its central domed temple modelled on a real building he knew of in the Holy Land, and the winding road passes broken boundary walls rendered with an archaeologist's care. The panel hangs in Tours today rather than Verona because French troops removed the predella during the Napoleonic campaigns in Italy, and these lower scenes never went back.