Taking of Christ

Giovan Pietro Bellori, the 17th-century Roman writer on art, called this copper panel the most beautiful work Cesari ever painted. The composition was repeated by his workshop and copied by others, and versions survive in Kassel, in Germany, and at the Accademia di San Luca, the painters' academy in Rome. Cesari made it around 1598. It is a night scene lit from two sources. A full moon shines in the upper right, while torchlight flares among the soldiers. Christ stands at the centre as the guards take hold of him. In the foreground Saint Peter, sword raised, is cutting off the ear of Malchus, the high priest's servant. At the far left a naked young man runs away, leaving his linen cloth behind, an episode told only in the Gospel of Mark. The painting is currently kept in the museum's storerooms.