Notes

Rembrandt’s etching ‘Agony in the Garden’ shows Christ in his most anguished, human moment as he confronts his upcoming Passion at the same time where he earlier prophesied the Temple’s destruction (Matt. 24). Christ’s agony in the garden is recounted in most of the Gospels (Matt. 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46), which narrate the lonely vigil on the Mount of Olives when Jesus, forsaken by his closest disciples, praying for his Father to remove this ‘bitter cup’ of torment that awaits him. Rembrandt depicts the Angel embracing Christ in the darkness of a moonlit night. Jesus’s physical frailty and deep sorrow are conveyed by his slumping body and downcast eyes, but mostl eloquently by the single line that arches downward across his forehead. Christ here has begun to pray ‘more earnestly’, buttressed by the angel. Rembrandt’s etching departs from visual convention because the angel embraces Christ rather than bringing him a cup (chalice), as in for instance Dürer’s woodcut from the ‘Large Passion’ series of 1511.

A similar group of Chris tand the Angel can be seen in a drawing with the same subject in pen and ink in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Benesch 899), which also has been called a preliminary drawing for the same print.