Christ and his Disciples in Gethsemane

Rembrandt depicted Christ's agony in Gethsemane in 1634, a period when he was applying his most dramatic chiaroscuro to religious subjects and attracting major commissions. The scene — Christ praying while his disciples sleep nearby — invited the kind of charged emotional contrast Rembrandt excelled at: solitary anguish against uncomprehending slumber. The painting was made roughly contemporaneously with his great passion series for Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange, and shares that series' psychological intensity. Gethsemane fascinated Protestant as well as Catholic patrons because it dramatised Christ's human vulnerability before the crucifixion.

An angel brings light from above, descending into a compositionally dark scene that otherwise relies on ambient nocturnal illumination. The sleeping disciples are rendered with loose, summary brushwork; Christ's upturned face receives the full force of the directed light. The tonal contrast is among the most extreme in Rembrandt's oeuvre.