On the eve of his crucifixion, after the Last Supper, Christ visited the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives with the apostles Peter, John, and James. Withdrawing in prayer, Christ asked his companions to watch over him, but while he prayed, the apostles were overcome by sleep. The Master of Frankfurt’s fully realized drawing depicts Christ among the sleeping disciples, with the later saints Jerome and Francis of Assisi, both animated in their devotion, added as flanking figures. The highly finished and elaborately worked sheet carefully combines gradations of wash and white heightening against a gray preparation, lending the scene a subtle nocturnal atmosphere and its figures a volumetric presence.
Master of Frankfurt
Netherlandish, ca. 1460–ca. 1525
Christ on the Mount of Olives with Saints Jerome and Francis, ca. 1495–1510
Brush and gray-brown and black ink, and gray wash, heightened with white, on gray prepared paper
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, INV. NO. C 792
© Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Photo: Herbert Boswank