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. He painted figures like statues: Christ’s ringlets look like finely chiselled stone. He contrasts the warm, red, gently eroded rocks in the foreground with the improbably conical, craggy mountains in the distance. Mantegna indulges his interest in the sculpture and architecture of antiquity as well as his love of painting stone and rock forms. 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. A determined sapling fig has burst through the rock above the disciples, and tiny parallel strokes of white paint represent its smooth, dense bark. Plants and grasses sprout from the rich brown soil, showing Mantegna’s close observation of nature. Two egrets stand in the stream, symbolic of the purification of baptism, the beginning of the Christian life. In the meantime, two rabbits confront each other just beneath the cherubs’ cloud others play-fight near the stream. 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. Mantegna uses the landscape setting to capture the momentum and tension of the event. 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. Three other disciples – Peter, James and John – were meant to be keeping watch but have fallen asleep. The rocks Christ kneels before look like an altar within a church, complete with Cross. Ultimately, however, he faces the instruments of his torture and death, presented to him by the cherubs assembled on a cloud. Christ’s prayer displays his humanity: ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me' (Matthew 26: 39). Aware that his disciple Judas had betrayed him, he left Jerusalem and took refuge in Gethsemane, just outside the city, to pray.
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