This tender detail portrays the pivotal event of the ‘Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane’. The full painting is shown at the bottom of this reflection.

The Garden of Gethsemane is situated at the foot of the Mount of Olives in east Jerusalem and is recorded in all four gospels: Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22 and John 18. Jesus is kneeling in prayer to his Father in heaven, with three of his disciples Peter, James and John sleeping nearby. Judas is seen in the distance just beyond the river, leading a group of Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus while he is isolated and unprotected in the Garden.

At one level this painting is a straightforward interpretation of the story of Jesus praying on the night he was betrayed. He has celebrated the Last Supper with his 12 disciples and sought out a place of quiet solitude and reflection. Jesus has asked his three dearest companions to join him and keep watch while he prays apart.

Jesus clearly expects what is to come, his arrest and imminent death, and needs speak to his Father. As he prays in anguish, a cherub appears with a chalice and paten. The chalice refers to the words of his prayer: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:39. In Luke’s account, Jesus’ prayers are so intense that he sweats blood like droplets falling to the ground. His ministry began with angels comforting him in the desert and now in the final temptation the cherub or little ‘angel of comfort’ holds the two symbols of the Eucharist – the sacramental sign that he will redeem the sins of humanity by accepting the cross. He will drain the last dregs of the Cup of Suffering in setting us free.

Jesus kneels barefoot on hard ground and his elbows lean on the rock’s upper surface jutting out to create an enormous natural prie-dieu from the rock’s formation. Bellini uses the landscape to enhance his story and here it is redolent of the countryside surrounding Venice where he was born and and lived and worked for 65 years. The hills crowned with their towns and church steeple rise up on the horizon just below the cherub. They would have been familiar reference points to the original viewers of this painting. Any Venetian meditating on this masterpiece would have recognised their own world and its distinctive landscape. In this way Bellini makes the Biblical narrative become present and immediate to its viewers rather than a glimpse of an ancient Palestinian scene. 

Bellini provides a number of clues to enable the viewer to enter more fully into the scriptural underpinning of the image. Notice the fence made of twigs and branches in the bottom right corner of the painting. The fence encircles the garden but the gate is open. In the creation story in Genesis the Garden of Eden in central to human life and its sustenance. There Adam and Eve disobey God and are banished so the garden becomes closed off. The Garden was the place where God has walked easily in the presence of man and woman but now God’s presence was veiled in the Temple with access only to the high Priest on the Feast of Atonement.

Although God instructed King Solomon to build the Temple in 1 Kings chapters 6 – 9, it was never going to be the permanent sanctuary of religious encounter. It was destroyed and rebuilt twice. In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well, that there will come a time when she and all believers will worship in their hearts, “in spirit and in truth” rather than in a temple or on a holy mountain top. 

This understanding was often shown in renaissance art by placing the Virgin Mary in a walled garden in Annunciation paintings. The hortus conclusus – the enclosed garden, connected the Garden of Eden with the new enclosed garden of Mary’s womb in which she as the new Eve will nurture Jesus as the new Adam before he is born.  This theme in Christian art, popular with artists in the Mediaeval period, reached its zenith during the Renaissance where increased botanical and horticultural knowledge combined to make deeper connections with the Church’s theological and spiritual interpretations.  

Now with Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Temple is no longer needed. God’s people become his Temple on earth and access to God is now direct. This is foreshadowed in the simple detail of the open gate leading into the garden. As Jesus is preparing for his death, the gate to God has been opened. 

But we are immediately struck by the barren nature of the garden we have now entered. There are no beautiful plants, species of flowers or creatures living there. It is bleak and alien. In the Bible, the wilderness symbolised a time of testing and struggle. Whether it was the forty years in the wilderness that the Hebrew people endured before they were delivered or the prophet Elijah despairing at the failure of his mission or Jesus being tempted by the devil early on in his ministry – wilderness and desert are times of conversion and transformation. 

This is further revealed by Jesus praying barefoot. Praying or standing barefoot in Scripture symbolises humility, mourning, penance and reverence before God’s holiness. We see this with Moses at the Burning Bush. Removing shoes represents the stripping away of worldly distractions and self-sufficiency to approach God directly on his holy ground.

On our far left we arrive at a dead tree. In the Scriptures trees are usually symbols of a life lived according to God’s plan – the Tree of Good and Evil and the Tree of Knowledge define the criteria for living in Eden. While the fig tree that Jesus condemns in Matthew 21 and Mark 11 is a sign of Israel’s corruption and fruitlessness. In this painting Bellini offers us a dead tree. It anticipates the death of Jesus on a cross, made from a tree and symbolises the death of sin from which new life will come.

To the right of the tree, we find a stone bridge built over a small brook. Bellini has used the reference to the Kidron valley from the Old and New Testaments to great effect here. The Kidron Valley, is located between Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives and is a significant biblical site. It is associated with royal flight, idolatry, destruction and divine judgment. In 2 Samuel 15:23 David flees from his corrupt son Absalom; the three kings: Asa, Hezekiah and Josiah burn idols in Kidron in 1 Kings 15:13 using it as a dumping ground; and in Joel 3:2, 12 it is identified with the future “Valley of Jehoshaphat” where the prophet Joel says God will judge the nations for their disobedience. In John 18:1 when Jesus crosses the Kidron valley to go into the Garden of Gethsemane, its Old Testament echoes already foreshadow the ‘way of the cross’ since it symbolises the journey from the city into suffering. The Brook itself is known for its connection to idolatry. 

Idolatry was a besetting sin of God’s people throughout their history. Whether through the worship of multiple deities or in the distortion of their relationship with God, idolatry became an obstacle to their faith. When God cleansed the people of their idolatrous behaviour, they were ordered to grind the idols and pour their ashes into the Kidron Brook. Bellini is emphasising this detail in his landscape, alerting us that Jesus’ Passion must begin with crossing the Kidron Brook and valley, the place where God had repeatedly dealt with Israel’s sin. This would enable a renewed encounter with the living God.

With so much at stake, we might assume that the disciples, slowly beginning to realise the implications of what is happening to their Lord and Master, would want to stay awake. Yet each of them, lying in a different position is sound asleep. The disciple in pink, flat out on the ground has his mouth open and is probably snoring, the disciple in blue has heavy eyelids and his left hand is loosely dangling, while the disciple sitting up – also with his mouth open, leans his head backwards onto the rock behind him. His breathing might be softer but his hand in his lap and right foot bent outwards provide the stability he needs to stay in the land of dreams. Bellini shows us perspective and adept anatomical foreshortening here as well as the application of sophisticated colours used in the different robes. Yet more importantly, he reveals to us that these three disciples are not keeping watch as Jesus so politely requested. Instead, they have abandoned him completely during his hour of need.

In the middle of the painting is the physical journey that will determine Jesus’ arrest. Here we find Judas gradually leading the Roman Soldiers along the road – and we can imagine this group in slow motion as they will soon pass the Kidron Brook until they find and charge Jesus. We the viewers can watch this group as they draw near but they are not visible to the disciples or by Jesus who even if he can hear them, is preoccupied in prayer. The events of his Passion are well and truly underway, and Bellini invites us to accompany Jesus where his followers’ have failed.

The ‘Agony in the Garden’ is generally painted as a night scene by artists since all the gospels tell us that Jesus had just left the Last Supper which would have been an evening meal, and in John 18:3 the soldiers needed lanterns to find him in the Garden. Setting this event at night heightens the drama of the moment where the forces of evil are at play. Darkness is often associated with sin and the shadow side of life, but it also expresses the despair Jesus felt as he began to accept his fate. So it is unusual that Bellini decides to show this cataclysmic event early in the morning.

In this painting we can see everything of the foreground, nothing is hidden from our gaze. We can feel the sun warming the earth as it begins to rise in pink and apricot hues. The blue sky breaks through the heavy grey clouds. Bellini’s painting of a sunrise in this period in Italian painting is unique and we can admire his ability to capture the subtle shifts and changes in this daily phenomenon. This glorious light is moving across the scene and long before it will highlight the walking party it shimmers on the back of Jesus’ garments, aided by Bellini adding gold to the paint. Jesus wears blue and pink-red to symbolise his divinity and humanity, his spirituality and sacrifice as he becomes the focus of the light. While we still watch Judas and his cohort of soldiers draw closer to their target, hope is in the air – it will soon be dawn. And with dawn will later come the resurrection.

Fleur Dorrell

The Agony in the Garden. c.1458-60.
Giovanni Bellini c.1435-1516.
Egg tempera on wood (probably poplar).
Dimensions – 81cm x 127cm.
National Gallery, London.
Bought, 1863.

Giovanni Bellini is recognised as one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. His brother-in-law – Andrea Mantegna painted a very similar version of the same event. They can be viewed hanging side by side in the National Gallery, London.

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