The Agony in the Garden and The Holy Women at the Tomb

When this small triptych stood closed, these were the two scenes a worshipper saw side by side. On the left, Christ prays in the garden on the night before his death while three disciples sleep. On the right, the women come to the tomb on Easter morning and find it empty. The death itself was inside. The centre panel, a Lamentation over the dead Christ, is now in the National Gallery in Prague. Lorenzo Monaco dated the work 1408, and the Latin date is still on the frame. By the late 18th century the wings had already been joined into one picture, and the inventories of an Italian collector, the Marquis Tacoli-Canacci, listed it first as by Gentile da Fabriano and then as Fra Angelico. It then probably belonged to Alexandre Du Sommerard, the founder of the Cluny museum in Paris, and came to the Louvre from Cluny in 1896.