Though he absorbed much from the style of painters throughout Italy, Pierfrancesco Mola developed and retained a distinctive drawing style based less on line than on colorism achieved with various shades of wash. In the Crocker Christ in the Garden of Gesthemane, natural and holy light coincide, with the source located behind the Cross, symbol of the coming Passion and Resurrection.

Mola, son of the architect Giovanni Battista Mola, was born in the town of Coldrerio in the Ticino and moved to Rome with his family at the age of four. It seems that his first artistic training was under his father. An album of Giovanni Battista's drawings includes a few sketches his son added, one dated 1631.(1) His real formative years, however, were between 1633 and 1647 when, though few documents trace his movements, he is known to have travelled to Northern Italy, Venice, Bologna, and Lucca. A letter by the Bolognese artist Francesco Albani records Mola's two-year presence in his studio sometime during this period. The artist learned much from his contemporary Guercino and earlier Venetian artists as well.

Upon his return to Rome in 1647, Mola, described as a "slow starter" by Ann Sutherland Harris,(2) began his career in a style that synthesized his North Italian experience with Roman styles. His work for the Costaguti family included frescoes of Bacchus and Ariadne, completed around 1650 for their Roman palace, which still betray the challenges of this synthesis. Religious commissions, frescoes of the lives of Peter and Paul in the Ravenna chapel in the church of the Gesù and of Joseph for the Papal palace on the Quirinal, followed later in the decade. At the same time he completed portraits, saints and literary subjects for other patrons who grew to include Queen Christina and the Colonna family, though his dispute with the Pamphilj family led to the destruction of his work rather than payment for services rendered. The most compelling of his single canvases is probably the Vision of Saint Bruno painted for Pope Alexander VII's nephew Agostino Chigi.(3) Mola was made principe of the Accademia di San Luca in 1662, having been a member since 1655. It seems likely that his drawings were already prized during his lifetime, especially since he received a visit from the collector Padre Sebastiano Resta shortly before his death in 1666.(4)

The Crocker Christ in the Garden of Gesthemane entered the collection as the work of Mola,(5) and was confirmed as such by Ann Sutherland Harris in 1988.(6) The subject, Christ praying alone before his coming Passion, is unknown in Mola's surviving paintings. Mola's composition relies on two ideas he explored in paintings of other subjects, however. A figure similar to the angel appears as Saint Michael in an altarpiece in the church of San Marco in Rome as Jeffrey Ruda pointed out in 1992,(7) though its oil bozzetto now in Düsseldorf and especially a study for the Archangel's head now in Budapest seem even more closely tied to the Crocker drawing.(8) The pose of Christ, on the other hand, relates to a painting of Saint Jerome kneeling in worship of the Crucifix.(9) Drawings in Princeton and Haarlem show the saint in the same direction as Christ in the Crocker drawing, though the reversed figure in the finished painting is closer to the Crocker Christ who is more thoroughly draped. Such later reuse was perhaps inspired by the common element in each subject, the Cross: just as Jerome contemplates Christ's suffering, Christ has earlier contemplated his coming Passion.

Both of the sources for the Crocker drawing date from the 1650s, the altarpiece in San Marco to 1658 or later. However, a document places the S. Marco commission in 1655, so that its oil bozzetto must have followed shortly afterwards. The present writer believes that the Crocker drawing, with its angel so closely related, should be dated near this time.

William Breazeale, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010