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. They were presumably painted by members of his artistic circle, and it is likely but not certain they are both by the same artist. 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.

The two panels are very different colours as the panel of Christ carrying the Cross has a yellowed nineteenth-century varnish. On each side, hidden by the frames, are decorative panels showing the instruments of the Passion, used to torment Christ on the Cross (the crown of thorns, nails, scourges, hammer and pincers, and the spear and sponge). They are coarsely painted, however, and may have been added at a later date.

It is possible that the panels might once have been in the Medici Riccardi Palace, Florence, once the Medici Palace, and might conceivably have been in the private chapel of Giovanni de' Medici.