Agony in the Garden

Saraceni most likely executed this painting in Rome. In the first decade of the seventeenth century artists from all corners of Italy and Europe descended on the Eternal City to create a flourishing artistic scene. Northern artists brought with them the use of copper as a support, a development which provided Italian painters with a novel vehicle to produce different textures and finishes to their painted surfaces. From Bologna the Carracci family and their satellites imported the horizontal bipartite structure of their designs which was to have a profound influence on the non-Caravaggesque, Classical strand of Roman painting and which can be felt in the present work.