The Agony
Richard Ames-Lewis
In this painting, the artist Giovanni Bellini has depicted the Biblical narrative of Mark 14.32-43. He has been faithful to the details of the story but has placed the event in a setting which is his own invention and invested the scene with an emotional and symbolic power.
Bellini was working in Venice in the middle of the 15th century at a time of great change. Old political structures and religious certainties were giving place to a new secularism. This painting was not intended for a church altarpiece, but as a devotional aid for a wealthy merchant, and this released Bellini from conventional iconography to an entirely new interpretation. At the same time the newly discovered medium of oil paint, more flexible than old egg-tempura, gave him new freedom of expression and use of colour.
In the painting we see, as St Mark’s account outlines, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. He has “thrown himself on the ground,” and is looking up into the sky at the figure of an angel carrying a cup. He is praying, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” His disciples, Peter, James and John are sleeping, “for their eyes were very heavy.” In the centre background, we can see “my betrayer is at hand”: there is Judas, leading a procession of soldiers “armed with swords and clubs”.
Bellini places Gethsemane in a wide, sculpted, landscape. Jerusalem appears as three Italian hill towns, each with its church. Jesus prays on a hillock which appears to rise up to support him, almost like a prayer desk. The three disciples lie on their own bank in various postures of sleep, with St Peter, on the right, an exercise in foreshortening. The warm dawn light coming from the left illuminates the scene and picks out the figure of Jesus. Pink clouds hang in a beautiful dawn sky, and the angel carrying the cup seems to be part of the cloudscape.
But there is a foreboding quality. A large part of the hill on the left has been sheared away, like a quarry, despoiling the scene. A lone, dead tree in the foreground prefigures the cross of sacrifice, and a wicket fence to the right, surrounding the garden, made of interwoven stakes, is a haunting reminder of the crown of thorns. Judas and his cruel procession are making their way towards the garden. They will cross a bridge over a stream, and their crossing is an irrevocable act of betrayal and violence.
Jesus is in agony as he prays in the garden, and the surrounding landscape seems to be in agony with him, all the elements subject to the same coming sacrifice.
