Manuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal Psalter

Manuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal Psalter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This manuscript leaf was once part of a Book of Psalms, a compendium of the 150 celebrated biblical poems of praise. This Psalter was made for an English monarch, probably Queen Eleanor of Provence (ca. 1223–1291), the wife of King Henry III. The queen likely bequeathed it to her niece, Eleanor of Brittany, who later became abbess of Fontevrault, in western France, where the manuscript was once preserved. Illustrated pages preceding the text show key events in the life of Christ immediately before his Crucifixion. Here, at the top, he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, in Jerusalem, while the apostles sleep nearby. Below, his apostle Judas Iscariot betrays him to the authorities as his apostle Peter, in anger, cuts off the ear of Malchus, one of Jesus’s attackers. A thirteenth-century stone relief from Amiens Cathedral (17.120.5), exhibited on the wall nearby, depicts a similar detail: Peter stands over Malchus, sword in hand, while Christ reattaches the severed ear.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Manuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal PsalterManuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal PsalterManuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal PsalterManuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal PsalterManuscript Leaf with the Agony in the Garden and Betrayal of Christ, from a Royal Psalter

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.