Provenance
(Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence), by May 1938;[1] purchased 1938 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] Two of the expertises relative to NGA 1939.1.318 in the files of the Kress Foundation (copies in NGA curatorial files), by Wilhelm Suida and Giuseppe Fiocco, are dated May 1938.
[2] See Fern Rusk Shapley, _Catalogue of the Italian Paintings_, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:65. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2055.
Accession Number
1939.1.318
Medium
tempera on panel
Dimensions
painted surface: 42 × 46.7 cm (16 9/16 × 18 3/8 in.) | overall size: 43.3 × 48 cm (17 1/16 × 18 7/8 in.) | framed (with four other paintings): 59.69 × 283.21 × 5.4 cm (23 1/2 × 111 1/2 × 2 1/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Tags
Painting Renaissance (1400–1599) Tempera Panel Painting Italian
Background & Context
Background Story
Benvenuto di Giovanni was a Sienese painter working in the tradition of Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio, and this panel of Christ's Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane demonstrates the distinctive qualities of the Sienese school: refined color, elegant line, and a tendency toward the decorative that distinguished Sienese painting from the more sculptural Florentine tradition. The composition follows the standard iconography — Christ praying while the apostles sleep, an angel offering the chalice, Judas approaching with soldiers — but the handling is unmistakably Sienese in its delicacy and its emphasis on pattern over volume.
Cultural Impact
The Agony in the Garden was a standard component of Renaissance predella sequences and devotional altarpieces. Benvenuto's version exemplifies the Sienese approach: where a Florentine painter would emphasize the dramatic physicality of Christ's suffering, Benvenuto emphasizes the spiritual dimension through color and surface beauty. The garden is a tapestry of stylized plants; the angel is an exquisite miniaturist figure; the sleeping apostles are decorative rather than pathetic.
Why It Matters
Benvenuto's Agony in the Garden shows the Sienese alternative to Florentine drama: suffering expressed through beauty rather than brutality, and devotion offered through elegance rather than terror.
