Arrest of Christ

Baldung's Arrest of Christ from 1519 depicts the dramatic nighttime scene of Christ's betrayal and arrest in Gethsemane—the moment when Judas's kiss identified Christ to the temple guard—with the combination of violent action and concentrated spiritual dignity that characterized his Passion narrative painting. The nighttime setting gave Baldung an opportunity for his characteristic dramatic lighting effects—torchlight against deep shadow, the face of the betrayed Christ illuminated within the surrounding darkness—and the compressed figure composition of the Arrest gave him a vehicle for the kind of physical struggle and extreme expression that his expressive approach handled with exceptional power. The 1519 date places this in his mature Strasbourg period, when his devotional narrative painting was at its most confident and technically assured.

The nocturnal arrest scene is rendered with dramatic chiaroscuro, the torchlight and darkness creating the tense atmosphere of the betrayal.