The Betrayal of Christ (late 1650s): Art, History and Details

The Betrayal of Christ (late 1650s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jacob Jordaens (Flemish, 1593–1678).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

After the deaths of fellow Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens in 1640 and Anthony van Dyck in 1641, Jordaens became the leading painter in his native Antwerp. In the seventeenth century, Antwerp underwent a Catholic Restoration, leading to numerous commissions for religious paintings. Jordaens's large work depicts the moment, set in the Garden of Gethsemane, in which Judas betrays Christ with a kiss, leading to the arrest of Jesus by Roman soldiers. The tense moment of betrayal is compounded by the violent reaction of apostle Peter in the foreground, who attacks Malchus, the servant of the High Priest who led the arrest. The lighting heightens the drama of the Passion of Christ, as the lanterns of the soldiers powerfully illuminate the night scene. Night scenes, also called nocturnes, are trademarks of the Northern painting tradition since the fifteenth century and demonstrate its continuing impact into the 1600s.

Object facts

• Title: The Betrayal of Christ
• Date: late 1650s
• Creator attribution: Jacob Jordaens (Flemish, 1593–1678)
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 249 x 271.5 x 8 cm (98 1/16 x 106 7/8 x 3 1/8 in.); Unframed: 225.5 x 246.3 cm (88 3/4 x 96 15/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Flemish
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1970.32

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1970." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 58, no. 2 (1971): 22-71.
• Lurie, Ann Tzeutschler. “Jacob Jordaens: The Betrayal of Christ.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 3 (March 1972): 66–77.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.