L'Agonie au jardin

Perugino painted this in the 1480s for the church of a convent just outside the walls of Florence, at San Giusto. The location matters to how the picture survived: in 1529, during the long siege of Florence, buildings outside the walls were pulled down or destroyed, and that church went with them. The painting was rescued and moved into the city, and eventually to the Uffizi. It shows the night in the Garden of Gethsemane. Christ kneels at the centre under a pale, even sky, taking the chalice from an angel, while the three apostles he had asked to keep watch have fallen asleep below. From the two edges Judas leads the soldiers in. Perugino spaces the figures out calmly, in the balanced manner his pupil Raphael would later absorb.