Artwork · 1605 · Religious painting

Agony in the Garden (El Greco)

1605 · Oil on Canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
★ 6.3 editorial score

Christ kneels in prayer in Gethsemane, bathed in cold moonlight, as an angel descends with the chalice of his coming Passion and the sleeping apostles lie sealed inside a strange, womb-like bubble of rock, while far off a file of soldiers winds toward him to arrest him (Luke 22:39-46, where an angel comes to strengthen him). El Greco dissolves the night into eerie, unreal color and lets time collapse - prayer, sleep, and betrayal at once. Now in the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, it is among his most visionary nocturnes, the natural world bent wholly to spiritual feeling.