Agony in the Garden

Giovanni Bellini's Agony in the Garden, painted around 1459 and now in the National Gallery, London, depicts Christ praying on the Mount of Olives while his disciples sleep. The painting was created in close dialogue with Mantegna's version of the same subject (also in the National Gallery), and comparing the two reveals the fundamental difference between the brothers-in-law: Mantegna's geological hardness versus Bellini's atmospheric warmth. The gentle dawn light suffusing Bellini's landscape was revolutionary.

Bellini's innovative treatment of dawn light flooding the sky with pink and gold anticipates his later atmospheric mastery, creating a poetic landscape mood that contrasts markedly with Mantegna's hard, crystalline treatment of the same scene.