The art of agony: six raw versions of the Agony in the Garden

Six painters, six Gethsemanes: the art of agony, unvarnished

The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is one of the most depicted scenes in religious art, but not all versions pull their punches. A look at six masterpieces ranging from stark realism to early tenebrism, including the repentance of a Botticelli who burned his own canvases.

From Bellini to Mantegna: two brothers-in-law, one same night

Giovanni Bellini painted his version in 1459 for the National Gallery in London: a translucent little angel, apostles asleep in the foreground and, in the background, Judas with the soldiers. His brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, a year earlier (1456), had already offered a harsher vision: Jesus dressed in black, angels carrying a cross and pillar, and a black bird in the crown of a tree. Where Bellini sweetens, Mantegna sharpens the knife.

Botticelli and the fire of Savonarola

Sandro Botticelli's 1498 version, kept in the Royal Chapel of Granada, belongs to his period of religious fervor after coming under the influence of Girolamo Savonarola. The artist went so far as to burn his own mythological works, and that repentance shows in a Christ who is more philosopher than martyr. The exact opposite of Fra Angelico, whose 1437 fresco in San Marco (Florence) looks like a yogurt commercial: orderly, clean, without any rawness.

Correggio and pastel Mannerism

Correggio (1525) opted for a soft, decorative style, with a cherub that looks like Cupid. The work is in Apsley House, London, once part of the Duke of Wellington's war booty. The harshest critics call it "manure for tea rooms."

Titian: the dog that got to Caravaggio first

The most striking piece is Titian's (1558-1562), in the Museo del Prado. A nocturnal, tenebrist scene where light tears the sky open, soldiers carry spears and lanterns, and a dog sniffs the ground. That canine detail, absent from the other versions, humanizes the scene and brings it closer to the real tension of the arrest. Titian anticipated Caravaggio's chiaroscuro by a century.

With these six canvases, Christ's agony becomes a gallery of styles ranging from saccharine devotion to gritty realism. Each painter left his own mark: the question is which one hits hardest.