Garofalo, The Agony in the Garden

On the night before his crucifixion, Christ went to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem – a place that he visited frequently. He asked his disciples Peter, John and James to keep watch while he prayed, but they fell asleep. In his prayers Christ asked God, if possible, to spare him the destiny that awaited him. This time of Christ’s doubt is known as the Agony in the Garden. Eventually Christ accepted that God’s will must be done, and an angel came from heaven to strengthen and comfort him.

Garofalo depicts Christ at prayer while Judas, who has betrayed him, brings the Roman soldiers to arrest him. They arrive with flaming torches at the gate; the buildings of Jerusalem are visible in the distance. An angel appears in a burst of light in the night sky carrying a Crucifix spouting blood into a chalice – this represents the spilling of Christ’s blood, which will turn into the wine of the Eucharist. The angel also illustrates Christ’s prayer: ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done’ (Luke 22: 42).

The three apostles sleep on the bank of a brook called the Cedron, the waters of which have been dammed with short sticks. This is a detail used in other paintings by Garofalo, such as The Virgin and Child enthroned with Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine of Siena, where the sticks are just visible at the bottom of the panel. The older apostle is presumably Peter, the younger one must be John. The third apostle, James, is difficult to see, as only the back of his head is depicted leaning against John’s green cloak, to the far right of the painting. As dawn breaks and Judas opens the gate for the soldiers, Christ prays for the third and final time: ‘The hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners’ (Matthew 26: 45). Christ touches his heart and gathers his cloak ready to get up and confront his destiny.

There is another painting of this subject by Garofalo dated 1524 now in the Museum and Art Gallery Birmingham. The National Gallery’s Agony in the Garden was painted at around the same time or possibly slightly later. Garofalo also painted the same subject in 1525–6 as an altarpiece for the Benedictine Church of S. Silvestro in Ferrara (now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara); it is likely that the National Gallery’s painting was a rehearsal for that commission, to test out some ideas in the vertical format. The painting was transferred from wooden panel to canvas before it entered the National Gallery’s collection.

Garofalo’s painting technique here is very close to that of Dosso Dossi, his chief artistic rival in Ferrara. The touches of light punctuating the grass and foliage, and the painting of dawn and torchlight are all reminiscent of Dosso’s approach. In details such as the soldiers with flaming torches on the right, the highlights were applied with a flickering touch, which is very close to Dosso’s technique. Later in Garofalo’s career his style diverged from that of Dosso.