The Work
Gustave Doré's engraving The Agony in the Garden appeared in his La Sainte Bible (1866), the most influential illustrated Bible of the 19th century. Doré shows Jesus kneeling in solitary prayer among the olive trees of Gethsemane while the disciples sleep in the background and an angel appears bearing the cup. The moonlit landscape creates an atmosphere of lonely anguish. The plate was central to Victorian Passion Week devotionals and catechism materials throughout the English-speaking world.
Biblical Source
Matthew 26:39 - "Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will'" - provides the central content. Luke 22:43 - "An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him" - supplies the angel bearing the cup, which Matthew and Mark do not mention, making the Lukan detail Doré's compositional center.
The theological significance of Gethsemane is the willing acceptance of the Father's will by the Son who genuinely does not want to die - the prayer is not theatrical but real. The disciples sleeping while Jesus prays dramatizes the contrast between human incapacity ("the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," Matthew 26:41) and the divine-human will that chooses the cross.
Artist
Gustave Doré (1832-1883) was the most influential Bible illustrator in Western history, producing 241 engravings for La Sainte Bible (1866) that shaped the visual imagination of the biblical world for generations of Protestant and Catholic readers. See "dore-bible-illustrations" for a full account of Doré's life and method.
Iconography
Doré's composition emphasizes solitude: the disciples are placed at a middle distance, their sleeping forms barely distinguishable in the darkness, while Jesus is illuminated by the celestial light of the angel above. The olive trees - dark, gnarled, ancient - frame the scene and emphasize its setting in a garden of great age. The angel bears a cup - the cup of suffering Jesus has asked to have removed - in an iconographic detail that visualizes the acceptance of what is being offered. The moonlit sky and the darkness of the garden create a visual theology of Gethsemane as the night of solitary decision that makes the Passion possible.