In the introduction to his published sermons (Seeing in the Dark (2005), Darton Longman & Todd, vii), Nicholas Lash tells the reader that his choice of the Blessed Fra Angelico's Agony in the Garden as the book's frontispiece owed, in part, to his publisher's amusement that a book of homilies should be prefaced by a picture showing a congregation fast asleep.
The slumbering apostles are, indeed, at the very centre of this painting. St.Peter, in his gorgeous saffron robes, is the most fully given over to sleep, reminding us that St. Peter was never one to do things by halves. St. John, on the other hand, sits with his elbow on his knee, and his hand against his cheek, in a posture just falling away from gentle meditation, whilst St. James sits with his hand clasped to his forehead in an attitude not far removed from grief.
In the Mystere de Jesus, Pascal movingly observes that it was only in Gethsemane that Jesus can ever be said to have sought the support and companionship of men: 'Jesus seeks some comfort at least from his three dearest friends, and they sleep: he asks them to bear with him a while, and they abandon him with complete indifference, and with so little pity that it did not keep them awake even for a single moment...' But this is not altogether fair. In St.Luke's account of the Agony, the disciples are said to 'have slept for sorrow', (Luke. 22.45), and when Jesus woke them with the words 'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak' (Matt. 26.41) the remark may be read as more expressive of compassion than condemnation.
Vasari records that Fra Angelico commenced each painting with a prayer, and that he would shed tears while painting scenes of the Saviour's passion. Certainly, the calm and dignity of this fresco seem to stem from a very different reading of scripture from that of the passionate Frenchman.
The three disciples are central to the composition in terms of mass and illumination: St.Peter in particular, seems to glow with light, and the sweep of the contours below the sleeping forms, and the lambent backdrop of the cliff behind them, cocoons them in a womb of light.
It is only after we have dwelt upon these sleeping forms that our eyes seek and find the Saviour, at the top left hand corner of the fresco. This is the darkest part of the painting, and Our Lord seems both distant and remote: His isolation is emphasisied by the trellis, perhaps a sheepcote, that divides Him from the Apostles. Behind the housetops the sky is already turning grey and soon the ministering angel will be gone, and Jesus will return to His sleeping disciples with the words 'Come, let us arise and go, for he that hath betrayed me is at hand.'
So strongly focussed is the painting on the sleeping apostles, that the interior to the right, which takes up so large a part of the fresco, at first seems to have no connection with it. What we ask, are these two women doing here? Their attitude of watchful meditation contrasts strongly with the lassitude of the three disciples. One might think, perhaps, of the wise virgins, who were careful to trim their lamps, so as to be ready when the bridegroom came (Mtt.25.1-12), and one might remember the teaching with which the Saviour concluded the parable 'Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh' (Mtt.25.13) - a text eminently appropriate to the Monastery for which the Blessed Fra Angelico painted the fresco.
In fact, the women are identified by the inscriptions in their encircling haloes as the studious Mary, pictured with a book, and the industrious Martha, her hands joined in prayer. The two played played no scriptural part in the events of the night before the Passion, and we are told by St.John that their home, in Bethany, was two miles from Jerusalem (Jn.11.18). But Fra Angelico knew, and we will soon remember, that they were the sisters of Lazarus, the man in whom Our Lord had given a foredawning of the salvation which He word work through his own death and resurrection.
Fra Angelico is buried in Rome in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, and on his tomb appear verses which make attractive reading in an age in which creative genius, riches, and works of art are all but idolised:
Non mihi sit laudi, quod eram velut alter Apelles/Sed quod lucra tuis omnia, Christe, dabam:/ Altera nam terris opera extant, altera caelo/Urbs me Joannem flos tulit Etruriae.
That is:
'Let it not be to my praise that I was like a second Apelles/But that I used to give all my earnings, O Lord, to thy servants/For the works in which the World and in which Heaven delight are not the same/The City which bore me, Giovanni, was the Flower of Etruria.'
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