Andrea Mantegna, 'The Agony in the Garden', about 1455-6

The Agony in the Garden

Andrea Mantegna

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Christ prays before a group of cherubs who hold up the instruments of his torture and death. His disciple Judas, who has betrayed him, leads a large band of soldiers down from Jerusalem to arrest him. Meanwhile his other disciples sleep.

This painting reflects many of the artistic issues that would preoccupy Mantegna throughout his career. He was fascinated by the art of classical antiquity: the disciples here look like statues of Roman emperors in togas. One lies with his legs facing straight out at the viewer, a difficult pose to paint; Mantegna enjoyed experimenting with it for its ability to draw us into the picture.

He skilfully uses the landscape setting to tell the story in a single image, the march of the soldiers from the city gates creating drama and suggesting the passage of time. He uses his favoured fast-drying egg tempera paint (pigments bound with egg) to describe minute details like the individual bricks of the city walls.

In-depth

Christ is shown in prayer. Aware that his disciple Judas had betrayed him, he left Jerusalem and took refuge in Gethsemane, just outside the city, to pray. Christ’s prayer displays his humanity: ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me' (Matthew 26: 39). Ultimately, however, he faces the instruments of his torture and death, presented to him by the cherubs assembled on a cloud. The rocks Christ kneels before look like an altar within a church, complete with Cross.

Three other disciples – Peter, James and John – were meant to be keeping watch but have fallen asleep. In the meantime Christ’s fate literally marches on: a long band of soldiers, led by Judas, emerges from the city gates to arrest him. Mantegna uses the landscape setting to capture the momentum and tension of the event. As the tiny, sketchy figures of the soldiers progress down the curving slopes of the hillside their menacing presence comes into focus and we see their armour and faces clearly.

In the meantime, two rabbits confront each other just beneath the cherubs’ cloud; others play-fight near the stream. Two egrets stand in the stream, symbolic of the purification of baptism, the beginning of the Christian life. Plants and grasses sprout from the rich brown soil, showing Mantegna’s close observation of nature. A determined sapling fig has burst through the rock above the disciples, and tiny parallel strokes of white paint represent its smooth, dense bark. Its prominence here may represent Judas’s betrayal: when Judas heard of Jesus’s fate, he hanged himself; early legends told that he chose the fig tree as his gallows.

Mantegna indulges his interest in the sculpture and architecture of antiquity as well as his love of painting stone and rock forms. He contrasts the warm, red, gently eroded rocks in the foreground with the improbably conical, craggy mountains in the distance. He painted figures like statues: Christ’s ringlets look like finely chiselled stone. The cherubs’ leg muscles are defined in such detail that they seem too weighty to be carried by a cloud; rather than angelic apparitions they reflect the work of Mantegna’s contemporary, the Florentine sculptor Donatello. The statue of a knight upon a horse covered in gold leaf atop a high column in the city recalls Roman equestrian statues but also Renaissance revivals of the form, such as Donatello’s notable bronze in Padua of a general known as Gattamelata, which Mantegna must have known. The sleeping disciples look like toppled marble statues of Roman emperors, the folds of their robes unnaturally pristine and crisp, and folded over their shoulders like togas.

This painting dates from early in Mantegna’s career when he was still in Padua, near Venice, where he trained. The image might be based upon a drawing by his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini, now in the British Museum. Mantegna also used the image as the basis for a predella panel made at around the same time as this picture for an altarpiece for the church of San Zeno, Verona. The image unites the family: Jacopo’s son, Giovanni Bellini, made a painting of The Agony in the Garden (also in the National Gallery’s collection), based upon Mantegna’s image.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Agony in the Garden
Artist: Andrea Mantegna
Artist dates: about 1431 - 1506
Date made: about 1455-6
Medium and support: egg tempera on wood
Dimensions: 62.9 × 80 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1894
Inventory number: NG1417
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl and 2nd Baron of Northbrook

William Coningham
Frame: 15th-century Venetian Frame

Provenance

Clearly identifiable as an Aldobrandini picture, in the Collection by 1626, perhaps already by 1611. In the Collection of Cardinal Fesch in France, then (from 1815) at Rome; 1841 Catalogue (No. 1372); Sale, 1845 (lot 687), bought by Artaria. Owned by Farrer. W. Coningham Collection, 1845/6; Sales, London, 9 June, 1849 (lot 58), bought in, and 12 April, 1851 (lot 57), bought by Chaplin. In the Thomas Baring Collection by 1853; exhibited at Manchester, 1857 (Provisional Catalogue, No. 290; Definitive Catalogue, No. 98), and at the R.A., 1870 (No. 58). Mr. Baring bequeathed his pictures to his nephew, Lord Northbrook; Catalogue, 1889 (No. 192); purchased from the Earl of Northbrook, 1894. Cleaned Pictures Exhibition at the National Gallery, 1947/8 (No. 25).

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Martin Davies, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools’, London 1986; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2008

Mantegna, 1431-1506

Musée du Louvre

26 September 2008 - 5 January 2009
2018

Mantegna and Bellini

The National Gallery (London)

1 October 2018 - 27 January 2019
2018

Mantegna and Bellini: Masters of the Renaissance

Gemäldegalerie (Berlin)

1 March 2019 - 30 June 2019

Bibliography

1841

Catalogue des tableaux composant la galerie de feu son eminence le Cardinal Fesch, Rome 1841
1845

F. Villot, 'Vente de la galerie Fesch à Rome', Le Cabinet de l'amateur, IV, 1845, pp. 138-44
1845

George, Galerie de feu S.E. le Cardinal Fesch, ancien archevêque de Lyon, primat des Gaules, etc., etc., ou catalogue raisonné des tableaux de cette galerie, accompagné de notices historiques et analytiques, Rome, 17 March 1845 - 18 March 1845
1849

Christie & Manson, Catalogue of the Very Choice and Important Collection of Italian Pictures, together with Four Capital English Works: The Property of William Coningham Esq., London, 9 June 1849
1853

National Gallery, Report from the Select Committee on the National Gallery, together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index, London 1853
1853

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1854

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1857

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1860

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1870

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1871

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century, 2 vols, London 1871
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1889

W.H.J. Weale and J.P. Richter, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures Belonging to the Earl of Northbrook, London 1889
1894

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery with Biographical Notices of the Painters: Foreign Schools, London 1894
1895

G. Frizzoni, 'La Galleria Nazionale di Londra e i suoi recenti acquisti in fatto d'arte italiana', Archivio storico dell'arte, 1895, pp. 87-105
1895

London, National Gallery Archive, NG17/5: Annual Report of the Director of the National Gallery to the Treasury for the Year 1894, 1895
1898

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1901

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1901

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1901

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1910

F. Knapp, Andrea Mantegna: Des Meisters Gemälde und Kupferstiche, Stuttgart 1910
1912

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century, ed. T. Borenius, 2nd edn, 3 vols, London 1912
1912

W.N. Howe, Animal Life in Italian Painting, London 1912
1923

C.J. Holmes, Old Masters and Modern Art: The National Gallery, Italian Schools, London 1923
1930

T. Cox, The National Gallery: A Room to Room Guide, London 1930
1932

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1934

R.N.D. Wilson, The National and Tate Galleries, London 1934
1937

G. Fiocco, Mantegna, Milan 1937
1947

P. Hendy, An Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures of 1947: (1936-1947), London 1947
1950

A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, London 1950
1951

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, London 1951
1955

E. Tietze-Conrat, Mantegna: Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, London 1955
1957

M. Meiss, Andrea Mantegna as Illuminator, New York 1957
1957

E. Newton, 'Round the National Gallery: 22. The Agony in the Garden by Andrea Mantegna', Art News and Review, 1957, pp. 1-2
1960

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1961

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1961

S. Bottari, 'Le Mostre di Mantegna e Crivelli', Arte veneta, XV, 1961, pp. 312-5
1961

G. Paccagnini, Andrea Mantegna (exh. cat. Museo di Palazzo Ducale (Mantua), September - October 1961), Venice 1961
1963

P. Della Pergola, 'Gli inventari Aldobrandini: L'inventario del 1682, II', Arte antica e moderna, 21, 1963, pp. 61-87
1964

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1964

C. Onofrio, 'Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, compilato da G.B. Agucchi nel 1603', Palatino, VIII, 1964, pp. 15-20, 158-62, 202-11
1966

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1971

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1974

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1976

M. Vickers and J.H. Whitfield, 'Mantegna and Constantinople', The Burlington Magazine, CXVIII/883, 1976, pp. 680-7
1978

R. Longhi, Ricerche sulla pittura veneta: 1946-1969, Florence 1978
1978

D. Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World, Princeton 1978
1980

R. Cooper, 'The Growth of Interest in Early Italian Painting in Britain: George Darley and the Athenaeum 1834-46', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XLIII, 1980, pp. 200-20
1984

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1986

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, revised edn, London 1986
1986

R. Lightbown, Mantegna: With a Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Oxford 1986
1989

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1990

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1990

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1991

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1991

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1991

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1991

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1992

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1993

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1993

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1994

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1994

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1994

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1995

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1996

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1996

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1997

E. Langmuir, Landscape, London 1997
1998

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2000

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2001

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2003

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2003

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2006

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2006

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2008

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About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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