Christus am Ölberg

In 1504 Raphael was barely 21 and still working in Umbria, years before Rome and the frescoes that made his name. This small panel, about the size of a sheet of paper, sat along the base of his first major altarpiece, painted for a convent of nuns in Perugia. It shows the garden of Gethsemane. Christ kneels in prayer the night before his arrest while three of his disciples sleep, and a small angel leans in with the cup he asks to be spared. In the 1600s the altarpiece was taken apart and sold off scene by scene. Its predella panels are now split between New York, London and Boston, this one among them.