Agony in the Garden

Christ kneels on a rocky slope while an angel comes down holding a chalice, the cup he has just prayed might pass from him. Below, Peter, James and John have fallen asleep instead of keeping watch. The predella underneath carries the story on with the two moments that follow, the arrest and Christ being stripped of his clothes before the crucifixion.

This is an early Lorenzo Monaco, from around 1395 to 1400, when his figures were still solid and weighty in the manner of Giotto's followers, a few years before the long, flowing Gothic line he is known for. That is one reason its authorship was argued over for so long. The 19th-century critics Crowe and Cavalcaselle thought it came from his workshop, and a later scholar gave him only the main panel. The monographic exhibition held here at the Accademia in 2006 settled on Lorenzo himself.

It came from Santa Maria degli Angeli, the monastery where he had taken his vows, and reached the Accademia during the Napoleonic suppressions early in the 19th century. A later gilded frame, which had cut into the predella, was taken off in a restoration of 1957.