In Nicolas Poussin’s ‘Noli Me Tangere’ (1653) Christ stands with his heel on a spade. He appears, in his rough allotment smock and sandals, to be digging up carrots. In Abraham Janssens oil painting (c.1620), Christ strides among parsnips and pumpkins, cauliflowers and marrows. Mary Magdalene kneels in an artichoke bed. In Fra Angelico’s fresco version — or, rather, vision — for San Marco in Florence (c.1438–50), Christ shoulders a hoe as he hovers above a millefiore carpet of wildflowers. His pristine robes give him away. No gardener would wear white to turn the compost.
The Noli Me Tangere scene is the loveliest in the cycle of Christian paintings that tell the story of Easter. It is the still, small scene of calm after the horrors of the Passion — the sufferings of Christ in the last days of his life, from the Last Supper to the Crucifixion — and before the exuberance — clouds! cherubim! heavenly choirs! – of the Ascension. Whether in manuscript, woodcut or fresco, images of the Noli Me Tangere mark the moment at dawn on Easter Sunday when Mary Magdalene goes to the sepulchre to anoint the body of Christ with spices. He is not there. A man, who she takes to be a gardener, asks: ‘Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?’ When the gardener says ‘Mary’, she knows it is Christ and reaches for Him saying: ‘Master!’
‘Noli me tangere,’ says Christ. ‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.’ He may still look like a man, but His risen body is now divine. ‘Cling to me not,’ say some translators of St John’s gospel, the only one to tell of this meeting in the garden by the tomb. In Titian’s famous ‘Noli Me Tangere’ in the National Gallery (c.1514), Christ gracefully draws his linens between His body and Mary Magdalene’s outstretched arm.
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