Christ on the Mount of Olives (Wurzach altarpiece)

Hans Multscher's Christ on the Mount of Olives (Wurzach Altarpiece), dated 1437 and now in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, depicts the Agony in the Garden — Christ's prayer in Gethsemane while his disciples sleep, before Judas arrives with the soldiers to arrest him. The subject invited painters to explore both solitary anguish and divine surrender, and Multscher renders Christ's prayer with the physical immediacy characteristic of his approach. This panel, like others from the Wurzach Altarpiece, shows a German painter moving decisively beyond the International Gothic toward a new conception of emotional and physical reality in religious narrative.

Multscher renders Christ in a pose of intense supplication, his figure isolated against the night landscape while the disciples sleep in the middle ground. The contrast between the alert, anguished Christ and the sleeping apostles is managed through pose and expression. The nocturnal setting is evoked through darker, cooler tones with warm accents.