Agony in the Garden, from Passion of Christ
1575/1600
Medium
Engraving in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 16.5 × 11.8 cm (6 1/2 × 4 11/16 in.); Sheet: 17 × 12.4 cm (6 3/4 × 4 15/16 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
93093
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The candlelit interior setting of the previous plate gives way to a nocturnal exterior scene bounded by a fence in the background as Christ holds his vigil in the garden of Gethsemane while awaiting his fate. Judas Iscariot, the apostle who will betray Christ to the Romans (he appears receiving his blood money beneath the nearby Last Supper), tiptoes through the gate at the bottom of the garden, his finger to his lips.
About the Artist
Jan Sadeler, I · 1550–1600
Jan Sadeler I (1550–1600) was born in Brussels and became the most prominent member of the largest and most successful dynasty of Flemish printmakers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Sadeler family — which included Jan's brothers Aegidius and Raphael — produced an extraordinary volume of engravings that circulated across Catholic Europe, disseminating images of religious subjects, p...