Lo Spagna, Christ at Gethsemane

These two small paintings which show different episodes from the Passion probably once formed the wings of a portable altarpiece. In Christ at Gethsemane, Christ kneels in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before he is arrested (Matthew 26: 39–42). The other panel, on long-term loan to the National Gallery, shows Christ carrying the cross on the way to the Crucifixion, described in all four Gospels and widely depicted throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance (from The Way to Calvary by Ugolino di Nerio to Bassano’s Way to Calvary).

The sweet, light style of these pictures links them to Pietro Perugino, who in the early sixteenth century was the most admired and commercial artist in central Italy. They were painted by Lo Spagna, an artist of Spanish origin who, after Raphael, was the most talented of Perugino’s associates. Lo Spagna – who spent most of his career in Southern Umbria - developed a sweet, charming yet idiosyncratic manner which distinguishes his paintings from the plethora of works produced in Perugino’s style. The kneeling figure of Christ in the Agony is very close to that in Lo Spagna’s The Agony in the Garden, itself derived from Perugino’s Agony in the Garden (Uffizi, Florence). Christ carrying the Cross has a general resemblance to the figure of Christ in Raphael’s The Procession to Calvary, painted for the Church of S. Antonio, Perugia, in about 1504–5, though it is clearly not a copy of it.

Christ Carrying the Cross and Christ at Gethsemane were made as part of the same ensemble. They were probably the wings of a small portable altarpiece, with a scene of the crucifixion (now lost) at the centre. Both pictures are described in the nineteenth century as having come from the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence. One source states that they were executed for the private chapel of Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici (1475–1521), afterwards Pope Leo X, in Florence.