The Agony in the Garden

Benvenuto di Giovanni

National Gallery of Art

A young bearded man, Jesus, kneels and looks up at a winged angel as two groups of sleeping men huddle behind him in this almost square painting. The men all have pale skin, blond or white hair, and gold, disk-like halos. Jesus’s halo has a red cross on it as well, and it hovers over his long copper-colored hair. He wears a terracotta-red cloak over a celestial-blue robe, and he presses his hands together in prayer as he looks sharply up at the winged angel floating in the upper right corner of the composition. Smaller in scale, the angel has white wings and flowing robes, and holds a gold chalice in one outstretched hand. The angel’s head is surrounded by a flat, golden glow like a cap. The men behind Jesus, to our left, sleep in two groups in the gloomy, rocky landscape. The men wear robes in rose pink, black, scarlet red, steel blue, or brown. Closest to us are three men who lie close behind Jesus’s bare feet, while a larger group is tucked beyond a mound in the near distance. The terrain is painted with muted green, gray, and tan with a fence in the lower left corner and a rock formation rising in the middle of the landscape. Distant hills studded with trees and a few structures span the high horizon, which comes three-quarters of the way up the composition. A thick band of charcoal-gray clouds descends on the slate-blue sky above.