A Agonia no Jardim

When the National Gallery in London bought this as an El Greco in 1919, some critics said it had spent public money on the work of a madman. The acid greens, the cold light, the bodies stretched and boneless, none of it looked like proper old-master painting to eyes trained on softer things. The subject is the night in the garden of Gethsemane, Christ praying while an angel holds out the cup of suffering he knows is coming, and off in the dark on the right Judas is already leading soldiers up to arrest him. El Greco piles the drapery into shapes closer to flame or cloud than cloth, and lights the scene by a moon and by that unearthly glow around the angel. The version in London is generally regarded as a studio replica of a composition El Greco worked out himself, the fuller original of which is in Ohio.