Details

Object type

stained glass panel

Title

Agony in the Garden

Place Associated

Germany, Boppard on Rhine, Carmelite Church (place associated); Germany, Rhine Region (place of manufacture); Jesse Tree Window (place of use)

Date

circa 1444

Materials

coloured glass, lead

Dimensions

overall: 565 mm x 705 mm x 10 mm

Description

Stained glass panel depicting the 'Agony in the Garden'. This panel once formed part of much larger window commissioned for the Carmelite Church of Boppard-am-Rhein, Germany (see 45.485).

The Carmelite Church and former monastery at Boppard was under construction in 1320 and extended with a new north nave which was consecrated in 1444. This window was one of seven monumental windows made for this extension dated to circa 1440-1446.

An original layout for the window was suggested by Jane Hayward, Associate Curator at The Metropolitan Museum, in her 1969 article, ‘Stained-Glass Windows from the Carmelite Church at Boppard-am-Rhein’. In her reconstruction, Hayward places these panels within a ‘Tree of Jesse’ window. Some panels from this arrangement are now lost, although others can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Salve Regina University, Rhode Island.

'Tree of Jesse' windows commonly represent the ancestry of Christ in the form of a family tree, with branches emanating from the biblical figure of Jesse, reaching upwards and supporting an array of prophets and kings, culminating in the figures of the Virgin Mary and Christ (see 45.393-45.394). In Germany during the 13th-15th centuries, this genealogy was sometimes replaced with important scenes from the Life of Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary. In the Boppard arrangement, the central panels are dedicated to scenes from the Life of the Virgin, while the outer panels represent Christ’s Passion and triumphant Resurrection.

The narrative of Christ’s Passion opens with this scene. Accompanied by the sleeping figures of his disciples, Peter, John and James, Jesus kneels in prayer within a wattled enclosure on the Mount of Olives. Aware of his own impending arrest and overcome with despair, Christ pleads with God to spare his life, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it… your will be done’ (Matthew 26:42). Above him, on the crest of a rocky outcrop, an angel holds a cross over a golden chalice, symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice and a reference to the Eucharist. In the top left corner, Judas approaches with his bugling bag of 30 pieces of silver strung over his shoulder. He points towards Christ with his right hand, leading an armoured group of soldiers towards him.

Prior to the window's removal in 1818, Boppard had endured two decades of French occupation (1794-1814), during which time the church was secularised and responsibility for its upkeep handed over to the town of Boppard. Greatly impoverished by the events of recent years, the town could afford neither the maintenance nor repair the windows. A contemporary, Wilhelm Schlad, recalls their woeful condition in later writings “the wind blew terribly through the church through the gaps and missing sections… but all that was left was beautiful”. Subsequently the windows were removed and replaced with plain glazing by the aristocrat, Count Hermann Von Pückler, for an insubstantial sum. Pückler died in 1871 with his ambitious plans to install the windows in his family chapel at Muskau unrealised. Pückler’s heir sent many of the panels, still crated, to Berlin for restoration, later selling them to the Parisian dealer Friedrich Spitzer, from where they were widely dispersed by auction after his death in 1893.

Burrell acquired this window, alongside other Boppard glass (45.487), from William Randolph Hearst in 1938-1939. Panels from a further window (45.489), were acquired in 1939 from Robert Goelet. Too large for inclusion in Burrell’s domestic glazing scheme at Hutton Castle, he may have only viewed these panels on very rare occasions.

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted by Sir William and Lady Burrell to the City of Glasgow, 1944

Collection

Burrell Collection: Stained Glass

ID Number

45.485.1.b

Location

Burrell Collection