Christ on the Mount of Olives

Above this garden the sky is gold, patterned with large flowers like an expensive brocade, and it ends sharply behind green hills, a walled town and a stream crossed by a plank bridge. Below that line everything is observed from life. Two apostles sleep with their heads propped on their hands, the young John beside them with his eyes shut, and Christ kneels in a pale robe that spreads across the grass, facing a tall cliff of ochre rock with the chalice on its summit. Through the trees behind them, soldiers are already on their way. Along the hem of the hooded apostle's robe run the letters RUELA, the start of the painter's first name. When the panels were first shown in the Belvedere in 1824, the gold-backed Passion scenes like this one were turned to face the visitors.