The Capture of Christ

The Capture of Christ by the Master of 1486-1487 belongs to a Passion cycle likely painted as narrative panels for a Polish church or private patron. The arrest in Gethsemane — Judas's kiss, the soldiers with torches and weapons, Peter cutting off Malchus's ear — offered painters opportunities to depict crowd, conflict, and betrayal simultaneously. This anonymous master worked in a style indebted to Netherlandish models, which had penetrated the Polish artistic sphere through Baltic trade networks and manuscript illumination imported from the west. The cycle is an important document of the reception of Flemish painting in late fifteenth-century Poland.

The crowded night scene centers on Christ's confrontation with Judas. Torchlight and lanterns create dramatic contrasts. Soldiers in contemporary military dress press against apostles in robes, the mixture of costume types emphasizing historical distance while the emotion remains immediate and psychologically legible.