The Agony in the Garden

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delacroix’s first official religious commission was a painting for the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in Paris. This study establishes the basic composition: Christ props himself up against a rock, bows his head, and raises his hand to acknowledge acceptance of his fate, announced by the mourning angels in the upper right. Delacroix’s use of wash, with its emphasis on tone, establishes the symbolic importance of light in the picture; it radiates from the angels and Christ himself amid the darkness of the garden.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art