Christ Comes as a Gardener to Three Marys

Two gospel accounts joined in one title

The title names the garden appearance after the Resurrection, in which Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener until he says her name. That scene comes from the twentieth chapter of John, where she is alone. The three Marys named in the title come from the synoptic accounts, where several women go to the tomb at dawn with spices. The picture's subject is the fusion of the two — the gardener from one text, the company from the other.

Where it falls in the cycle

First of the appearances, at daybreak on the third day. Everything after it — the road to Emmaus, the upper room, Thomas, the lakeside — follows this scene, and the Ascension closes the sequence. It is the hinge at which the tomb subjects end and the risen life begins.

The record

The catalogue names Jacob Jordaens, dates the work to 1615, and gives the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin as the location — one of seven entries here held there. No dimensions are entered, so nothing about scale is claimed. The style is Baroque and the artist Flemish; the subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown and yellow.