Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene, 'Noli me tangere'

Noli me tangere

The twentieth chapter of John gives the first appearance after the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene, weeping at the empty tomb, takes the figure she sees for the gardener; he says her name, she recognises him, and he tells her not to hold on to him. The Latin of that line supplies the title used in this record. The iconography follows the mistake in the text: Christ is often shown with a gardener's tools, in a garden, at first light.

Where it falls in the cycle

Immediately after the Resurrection and before every other appearance — to the disciples at Emmaus, to the eleven in the upper room, to Thomas. It is the first scene of the risen life and the only one in which a single person is the whole audience.

The catalogue entry

The record names Rembrandt as the artist and 1651 as the date of creation, with the painting at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, Germany. No dimensions are entered. The style is classed both as Baroque and as tenebrism, and the artist as Dutch; the subject fields include a male figure subject alongside the religious classification. The measured palette reads as brown.