The Agony in the Garden

On the night before his arrest, the Gospels say, Christ prayed in the garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass from him, while three of his disciples slept. Garofalo, as the Ferrarese painter Benvenuto Tisi was known, painted the scene in about 1524 to 1526 and made that cup visible. High in the night sky an angel appears in a burst of light carrying a crucifix, and the crucifix spouts blood into a chalice. Below Christ, the sleeping apostles lie wrapped in their cloaks beside a brook. Out of the darkness behind him Judas is already bringing the soldiers, their plumed helmets catching the light, and far off the towers of Jerusalem stand under a pale evening sky. The picture was painted on wood and later moved onto canvas. The Gallery's director, Charles Eastlake, bought it in 1860.