Noli me tangere

Pino Blasone

Noli me tangere

Jesus, as the Bodily Christ

1 – The Christ as Good Shepherd,

Vatican Museums, from Domitilla’s

Catacomb, Rome; late 3

or early 4

An Iconography at Work

How did early Christians imagine the figure of Jesus, the Christ? This is not a simple

curiosity. It is a possible way to go back into artistic and religious feelings, as far as the

roots of our shared civilization. Through the iconography, maybe we will discover that what

unifies is deeper than what has diversified us. In any process of individuation, a moment of

synthesis seems to be as important as the trouble of differentiation, at least. Removed in the

past, we might find something still useful for a new synthesis. This would be only a step on

that way of course, but not a trifling or impertinent one. In fact we may suppose, often the

images of Jesus were bodily reflections of their souls by our historical predecessors, the best

they were able to conceive since grew aware to be made “in image and likeness of God”.

If we occur to be in Rome, we could make an idea of our topic in few days, with a

reasonable approximation. The first destination should be the catacombs, underground

cemeteries on the roads departing from the ancient city. Not seldom Christian catacombs

were adorned with graffiti, pictures and sculptures. Early representations of Jesus were

willingly symbolic, allegoric or cryptic: a fish, a lamb, the Greek letters Alpha and Omega

or the Chi-Rho monogram… The most famous allegory was the Good Shepherd, inspired by

a well known evangelical parable but also by the heathen figural tradition of the Kriophoros,

a Greek appellative meaning “Ram Bearer” and prevalently referred to the god Hermes.

2 – Young Jesus Teaching, detail, Roman

National Museum (Palazzo Massimo alle

Terme), Rome; 4

Another frequent allegory inspired by a pagan legend was that of Jesus represented as

Orpheus, the mythic and mysteric musician who tried to resurrect his beloved woman

thanks to his own music. Sometimes, the Good Shepherd and Orpheus could be unified in

one character, playing or having played his musical instrument amid sheep or other animals.

Naturally, those domestic or tame animals too assumed a metaphoric value, as human souls.

The shepherd, the fisher, the gardener, are all figures which can draw a Christological sense

from the Gospels. Rather or more than to a wish to dissimulate their religious identity in

times of persecutions, the symbolic or allegoric representation of the Christ by early

Christians was probably owing to a softened heritage of the Jewish aniconic tradition.

Later, Jesus will be represented directly too, as the main character in the illustration

of episodes narrated by the Gospels. This is the case of various scenes, as the baptism of the

Christ in the river Jordan by John the Baptist, or Jesus miraculously healing the woman with

a flow of blood (3

century, Peter and Marcellinus’ Catacomb). Particularly in these scenes,

the physicity of the Christ is directly or indirectly involved. The miracle of the rising of

Lazarus and the meeting with a Samaritan woman can be found frescoed in the Catacomb

on Via Latina (4

century). In the Catacomb of Domitilla, the Master is portrayed with his

apostles in a wall painting dating from about 350 (but a fresco of him healing a paralytic,

inside the Christian Chapel at Dura-Europos in Syria, dates back to a century earlier).

3 – Beardless Jesus, Archiepiscopal

Museum, Ravenna; late 5

In these pictures, and on nearly coeval carved stone sarchophagi or ivory artworks,

the Saviour was generally figured as a beardless youth, Roman or Greek dressed. That is a

man like many others, with regard to the epoch and places and customs of the artists, and in

accordance with an opinion expressed by St. Augustine in his treatise On the Trinity, that

Jesus’ countenance is unremarkable. He was depicted as short haired too, also for St. Paul in

the First Epistle to the Corinthians had written: “Does not even nature itself teach you that,

if a man has long hair, it is a shame unto him?” (11:14). Above all, it is to be noticed that in

such pictures the Christ is always represented in relation with others. At the same time, he is

the “Good Neighbour”, as well as a divine “Absolute Other” (cf. reliably Paul himself, in an

Epistle to the Colossians, 2:9; “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form”).

A Contrasting Transition

By time Jesus began to be represented also isolated, or older, unshaved and long

haired – despite Saint Paul’s criteria –, in a more hieratic or ascetic and distanced manner.

According to Irenaeus in his treatise Against Heresies, formerly some sectarian Gnostics,

followers of Carpocrates, venerated icons like those: “They crown these images, and set

them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world: that is to say, with those of

Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring

these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles” (I, 25:6). In the 4

-5

century, the

Christian historians Eusebius and Sozomen asserted a bust of Jesus survived the destruction

of an old bronze statue at Caesarea in Palestine, ordered by the Roman emperor Julian the

Apostate. The head of this improbable portrait should have been bearded, if not long haired.

4 – Blessing Jesus, Museum of

Early Middle Ages, Rome; late 4

However, that was a premise to the transition from Early Christian to Byzantine art.

Already in the catacombs, we can observe this transformation. First bearded images of the

Christ appear in the late 4

or at the beginning of the 5

century, for instance in the

Catacomb of Commodilla. In 1960 a bust of Jesus with beard, nimbus and great eyes, was

discovered at Ostia, within the marble wall decoration of a mansion dated to the late 4

century. Nowadays, this impressive image can be admired in the Museum of Early Middle

Ages at Rome. The blessing gesture excluded, it might look the portrayal of a philosopher.

Indeed, an iconography of the Master as the “true philosopher” was not lacking then.

Yet the finest is the small statue of a seated teaching Christ, in the Roman National

Museum (ca. 350-375). He is represented beardless but long haired, so ephebic as to look

one of the last expressions of a Hellenistic art. One of the best early Christian sculptures in

the round, along with Jesus as a Good Shepherd today in the Vatican Museums, probably it

refers to an adolescent Jesus among the doctors in Jerusalem’s temple (cf. Luke 2:41-51).

We can better realize a contrast, if we reach Ravenna in northern Italy, one of the towns

where a Byzantine art was born and the mosaic craft flourished. Among other Jesus’ images,

in the Archiepiscopal Museum and Chapel (late 5

century) a mosaic portrayal shows him

beardless, still according to the pristine iconography: an ever young man, now especially

versus the Arian heresy, which wanted him too human and changing by age.

5 – Blessing Jesus, S. Apollinare

Nuovo, Ravenna; early 6

Nonetheless, in the Basilicas of San Vitale, S. Apollinare in Classe and S. Apollinare

Nuovo (first half of the 6

century), when the Arian danger – and related barbaric

occupation – were finally over along a while, bearded, long haired portraits of the Saviour

remained in fashion. Notoriously, it will become the figurative standard till Modern Age,

meanwhile influenced by the Byzantine veneration of the “Mandylion”, a holy relic

consisting of a cloth on which a miraculous image of Christ’s face would have been

imprinted (an early variant of this story was reported in the Church History by Eusebius of

Caesarea). Especially in the Renaissance period, future artists will work hard in restoring to

that figure a new live sweetness, though saving most of its majesty and alleged historicity.

It is quite obvious, Jesus’ figuration was always contested between a too spiritual and

a more physical interpretation. Yet here we like to detect in the evangelical narration itself

those passages, where a bodily presence of him is particularly stressed. Paradoxically, these

episodes seem to emerge with more force after his resurrection. In such a sense that of St.

Thomas’ incredulity (John’s Gospel, 20:24-29) is the most evident, apparently at least even

too explicit, as to give rise to any problematic exegesis. But often, sacred art works as a kind

of quiet and parallel exegesis, not necessarily coinciding with the spoken or written one.

Another meaningful episode is the meeting of the Christ with the Magdalene. We will see

how these events look complementary, reflecting two different attitudes of the human soul.

6 – A dark skinned Christ, Sts.

Cosmas and Damian, Rome; early 6

A Modern Doubting Thomas

On the “Doubting Thomas”, we have so many paintings and sculptures, along the

history of art. Firstly, a mosaic in the Basilica of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna. Yet, no

doubt, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi, the

Caravaggio, is the most famous (circa 1601-1602; Sanssouci, Potsdam, Germany). A reason

is that in this masterpiece, it is well illustrated – in a dramatic and realistic way – not only

the problem of the religious faith, but the corporeity itself of the Son of God, what

distinguishes Christianity from other religions. Through the words to Thomas, implicitly

Jesus invited to reflect about the significance of that mystery: “Put your finger here, and see

my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing”.

In the biblical account, human beings had been created “in image and likeness of

God”. During his earthly experience, we dare say, the Saviour went an inverse way. He

made himself in image and likeness of men, of every man or also woman on earth. In such a

sense too, the New Testament sounds consequent with the Old one. Along this way of

“approximation”, this effort of reduction of any alienness or otherness to “neighbourhood”,

hardly and wrongly a corporal component could be disjointed from the spiritual one. Jesus

himself took care of souls and healed bodies, not really to astonish people by his miracles.

In this, we might affirm on a philosophical level, Christianity is an anti-idealistic doctrine.

The “Bodily Christ” is set between Nature and History, and related temptations to consider

one of these entities as an absolute. He is the link between these dimensions of the existing.

7 – Caravaggio, The Incredulity

of St. Thomas, Sanssouci, Potsdam

From the catacombs to an incipient modernity, the main problem in representing the

Christ was that. It was neither a detail of beard shave or hair cut, nor the colour of his skin,

nor else a conventional historicity. That Jesus’ aspect was basically unknown to Christian

artists, it might even be considered providential. In a Supper at Emmaus by the Caravaggio

(1601-1602; National Gallery, London), we see a long haired but beardless Christ. In the 6

century Roman Basilica of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, we can find the mosaic of a dark

skinned Jesus. It is true, it was quite an exception. Nevertheless this dark skinned, long

haired and bearded one, was inserted in such a scene as the “Second Coming with Saints”.

Not always the representation is so striking, as in the paintings by the Caravaggio. In

the oil The Doubting Thomas by the Dutch Rembrandt van Rijn (1634, Pushkin Museum,

Moscow), the subject is the same that in The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. The atmosphere

appears more traditional. At the centre of the scene, the Saviour nimbed with light, mostly

covered by a white cloak against a dark background, shows Thomas his wounds. The other

apostles and an unknown woman, on which we will return below, are surrounding them. Not

all denote the same curiosity or attention (cf. Matthew, 28:17). Someone is praying, as if

confused for the extraordinary event. Another – John the Evangelist?! – is even sleeping.

Evidently, the alert perplexity of Thomas is neither the only nor the worst human defect.

8 – Rembrandt H. van Rijn, The Doubting

Thomas, Pushkin Museum, Moscow

In reality, that is the modernity in the critic eyes of the artist, with all its

contradictions. The 17

century was fascinated by such a theme. Then, similar artworks

were by the Guercino in Italy, by the Dutch Dirk van Baburen and Gerrit van Honthorst or

by the Flemish Peter P. Rubens. In these examples, particularly in the latest (1613-1615,

Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp), a bright detail is the bareness of

Christ’s body. It becomes the virtual centre in the composition. The most strange detail can

be noted in a painting by the Dutch Hendrick ter Brugghen (c. 1621-1623; Rijksmuseum,

Amsterdam): a pince-nez on the noise of an apostle, examining Jesus’ wounds; almost an

“anatomy lesson”. Not the best allusion in order to hint at a growing modernity, it looks like

an indirect memento for a new born science, to respect the dignity of any human suffering.

The Hearing, the Sight, the Touch

In a Christian perspective, the messianic advent is not only an epochal end, as it may

be an apocalyptic “Second Coming”. Above all, it is a new beginning. Like a gardener, the

Redeemer came to till the field of this world. His born, died and risen corpus prefigures the

body of a redeemed History, auspiciously a growing and progressive one. Individual as well

as collective, the existence turns into a dynamic mirror, striving – despite its opacity and

frequent eclipsing – to reflect and realize the true essence of the being. Probably, this is the

deep sense of the image of Jesus as a gardener, such as he appears in the episode of the

meeting with the Magdalene near his empty tomb, after his resurrection (John 20:14-18):

9 – Guercino, The Incredulity of St.

Thomas, National Gallery, London

“She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize it was Jesus.

‘Woman,’ he said, ‘why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’ Thinking he was the

gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I

will get him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned toward him and cried out in Hebrew,

‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said, ‘Do not touch me, for I have not yet

returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them that I am returning to my

Father and your Father, to my God and your God’. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples

with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them what he had said to her”.

We can easily perceive and share Magdalene’s emotions. All of a sudden, that which

had been an improvised burial ground was transfigured into a kind of new Garden of Eden.

Listening to his voice, hearing her name pronounced by him, it was enough for her. The

sight and the touch are secondary faculties, if referred to the Incarnated Word. Yet a wish to

touch is an instinctive reaction. In the Greek myth of Alcestis, the protagonist Admetus did

not act otherwise before his revived wife (cf. Euripides, Alcestis, l. 1131). As to Mary of

Magdala, all grief, perplexity and surprise, were converted into joy. But the apostles could

not believe her (Mark 16:9-11). Likewise will do two disciples, while walking on the road to

Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). No wonder, beside the antique one of the Good Shepherd, in fine

arts the evangelical episode will give rise to the flourishing of an iconography of the “Holy

Gardener”, even though rarely in the form of an autonomous or isolated allegory.

10 – Gerrit van Honthorst, The Incredulity

of St. Thomas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Mostly such a representation includes the Christ and the Magdalene, sometimes two

angels more, with the title Noli me tangere (“Touch me not”). Indeed, this was the Latin

translation from the Greek Mē mou haptou, which can rather mean “Do not hold me”. In

Luke’s Gospel (24:36-39), when Jesus invites the apostles to touch him, to verify that he is

not a spirit, actually the verb used is different. Yet the Latin sentence was more impressive,

for it evokes Jesus’ corporeity. Some have wondered why he showed off and allowed to

touch his body Thomas or other apostles, whereas did not the Magdalene. Perhaps, for she

was a woman, and that could result unseemly at that epoch and places? Or, more simply,

because she did not need to touch in order to believe, unlike Thomas later. To him, the

Master will further specify: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”.

But, seen what? Reliably, his risen body, in all its tangibility and dazzling brightness.

If Thomas wished to touch in order to believe, in a previous time another one had

touched because she had believed. Anyway, in both cases an importance of the tangible

reality results confirmed. Let us read again Luke’s Gospel, 8:43-48: “A woman who had a

haemorrhage for twelve years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind him, and

touched the fringe of his cloak; and immediately her haemorrhage stopped. And Jesus said,

‘Who is the one who touched me?’ And while they were all denying it, Peter said, ‘Master,

the multitudes are crowding and pressing upon you.’ But Jesus said, ‘Someone did touch

me, for I was aware that power had gone out of me.’ And when the woman saw that she had

not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before him, declaring in the presence

of all people the reason why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately

healed. And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace’”.

11 – P. P. Rubens, The Incredulity of St. Thomas,

Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

In the evangelical account, the Christ himself remarks his not only visible, but also

concrete corporeity. It is affecting when, in Luke’s Gospel (24:40-43), at last he eats a fish

before the apostles, to better persuade them that he is not a mere vision. Probably in

memory of that too, Christians in the catacombs were depicted while eating bread and fish

or drinking wine, in an early form of Eucharistic celebration or Agapes: fraternal love feasts

where men, women, children were admitted together. As to a peculiar brightness of Jesus’

body, this pictorial detail, especially adopted by some modern painters, might have been

analogically inspired by a passage of Matthew, where it is referred to an angel appeared to

the holy women, announcing the resurrection of the Christ by his empty grave (28:1-7).

Even if Mary of Magdala had not achieved such a degree of perfection, as to believe

without having seen, she had gone close to it, in an exemplary way for later believers of the

invisible. Her faith was owed not to evidence alone, but to a love beyond the death (cf.

Luke, 7:47: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much”). Almost

expecting certain later objections, anyhow an artist as Rembrandt introduced a woman into

his Doubting Thomas, amid the apostles around Jesus. Most likely, that female presence is

the Magdalene herself. This is just a clue, not seldom artistic imagination was freer to

anticipate a topical interpretation. It could fill spaces left blank by the Scriptures, such as to

be integrated with circumstances and requests of the times we happen to live in. What

official exegesis is not always ready to do. Or, usually, it is far more cautious in doing that.

12 – Hendrick J. Terbrugghen, The Incredulity

of St. Thomas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Messiah as a Gardner

In Luke’s Gospel, the evangelical narration begins with an angel announcing the

Madonna her conception of the Christ. Mostly in the Byzantine iconography, often God’s

herald is represented with a pilgrim staff in his hands. Along the New Testament, we meet

other figures representing Jesus himself in a translated form, as the Good Shepherd or even

the Good Samaritan. In a quite psychological way, they can be also interpreted as allegories

of the Self, during his travel through the Other on heart. As an ultimate figure after the

resurrection, especially the Holy Gardener may be referred to the Absolute Other. That is an

Incarnated Word, which can be seen or “touched” in a prominent transfigured form.

Actually, in the pictures we are here concerned with, the Messiah is characterized as

a gardener, with a spade or pale or hoe in his hands, exceptionally with a broad brimmed hat

on his head. It may be even surprising how that which in John’s Gospel appears an

accessory detail, moreover with reference to a mistake by the Magdalene, becomes a new

figure of the Saviour. Incidentally, it is what occurs especially on the threshold of modernity,

as if this is congenial with such a kind of figuration. Thus – we can better say –, that is a

representation of the resurrected Christ as seen by the eyes of the Magdalene, in a transitory

moment of confusion, which does assume an archetypal and mystic value though.

13 – Fra Angelico, Noli me tangere,

St. Mark’s Museum, Florence

In fact such a confusion had not to be so great, considering that Jesus himself had

compared God to a gardener or a vine dresser (John 15:1; cf. Luke 13:6-9). In the same

John’s Gospel, he remarks his close likeness with God Father: “Whoever sees me, sees the

one who sent me” (12:45); “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (14:9). Let us

remember the Gethsemane too, a sorrowful garden, if compared with the joyful one we are

dealing with. Early pictures on our theme, with the Christ as a gardener, began to spread in

the late medieval Europe, after an analogous use in the sacred dramas. For example, a fresco

in the Church of S. Pietro in Vineis at Anagni (1255-1263); an altarpiece in the Abbey

Church at Klosternueburg (c. 1330); a panel containing Five Depictions of Christ (late 14

century; Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne); a miniature of Les très riches heures du Duc

de Berry, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers (1413-1416, Musée Condé, Chantilly).

An epochal change was at hand. The cultural ground required to be dug again. In a

relevant fresco by Fra Angelico (1425-1430; Convent of S. Marco, Florence), a long haired

Magdalene is kneeling to Jesus, already got aware of his identity. Rather than a body to

touch, what she was searching for was a visage to recognize, in the anonymity of this world.

But now she dares not look at his face, as if still fearing to be undeceived. And he remains

figured as a gardener, carrying his hoe on a shoulder. Still fully clothed, he is quite different

from the Christus triumphans of the medieval tradition, holding a cross-staff or a flag in his

hands. Maybe this is not yet the quest for a visage or a body, compatible with the divinity.

Nevertheless he is an actual person, somewhat transfigured by the event of the resurrection.

For all Augustine’s old and authoritative opinion, his appearance is no longer unremarkable.

14 – Paolo Veronese, Noli me tangere,

Stadtmuseum, Grenoble

Later artists were more audacious in showing a bareness of Jesus’ body. What had

been a corpse on the cross returned the live centre of attention, according to the subject and

to the title of the composition, but also to the classicistic demands of a Renaissance and

Manneristic style. Among them, Paolo Veronese. In 1573 at Venice, he was questioned by

the Tribunal of the Inquisition and charged of religious irreverence because of another work

by him. In the quasi coeval painting Noli me tangere (Stadtmuseum, Grenoble), we can find

nothing of that. Nay, the scene portrayed anticipates the Caravaggian “miracle”, by which

an artistic realism joins with a deep intimacy. Veronese himself answered the inquisitors that

his art was not a thoughtful, but rather a joyous one, praising God in light and colour.

Indeed, if we read the report of the trial, will realize that his art was not so

thoughtless, as he prudently professed. Simply, it was a different way to think reality and to

interpret it. In fact, Veronese had added: “We painters use the same license as poets and

madmen. […] I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are natural to my

intelligence, and according as my intelligence understands them” (trans. Francis M.

Crawford, in Salve Venetia, New York, 1905; vol. 2, pp. 29-34.). It is one of the first open

statements on an autonomous dignity of the artistic creation. At once, it sounds somewhat an

anticipation of a Romantic conception of the artist, whose apparent irrationality – according

to Nature – not seldom is the pre-figuration of a new rationality still to come.

15 – Jan Brueghel the Younger, Noli me tangere,

Musée Historique Lorrain, Nancy

Noli me tangere, or me plangere?

In Veronese’s masterpiece, the gardener Saviour is characterized not only by a hoe,

but also by a rake next him. The most extensive characterization is in a Noli me tangere

artwork by Jan Brueghel the Younger (c. 1630; Musée Historique Lorrain, Nancy). Here the

“Gardener” and the Magdalene are surrounded by the rich fruits of his work, in a kind of

metaphoric still life view. An odd detail can be found in other analogous pictures of the 16

or 17

century, for instance by Rembrandt, Jacob Jordaens, Lavinia Fontana: a gardener hat,

such as to cover him from sunlight and rain to which he was no longer used, at least for the

while they could not reach him into the tomb or elsewhere. Almost we have here a smiling

Jesus, joking with our imagination and even defusing the gloomy mystery of death.

Let us confront the above apology by Veronese before the Tribunal of the Inquisition,

with a Sermon of the Resurrection, preached in 1621 by Lancelot Andrewes (Works, vol. 3,

pp. 23-38): “He asked her kindly why she wept, as much to say as ‘Weep not’: noli me

tangere, noli me plangere. There is some comfort in that. […] But there is good use of noli

me plangere, and noli me tangere, both. One we have touched already; of the other, now”.

By different ways, the “joyous art” of the Italian painter and such a “comfort” as understood

by the English clergyman seem to converge into a perspective more sensitive to human

feelings than worried by theological abstractions. Nec ultra velis me plangere, “Weep me no

longer”, is a sentence of a medieval liturgical play for Easter. As to Andrewes’ hint, of a

Magdalene glad to see the Christ risen as well as for she touched him in the past, likely he

identifies her with the woman sinner who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears (Luke 7:36-50).

16 – Lavinia Fontana, Noli me tangere,

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

In his works Augustine, quoted by Andrewes himself, after Ambrose had explained

that “to touch” means to believe, in a new spiritual sense (there we find also the phrase

“Weep not”, in the Latin variant Noli plorare; Lectures on John’s Gospel 121:1). Even St.

Bernard had criticized Magdalene’s “still carnal wisdom” (On the Song of Songs 28:8). Yet,

paradoxically, a minor argument of the Holy Inquisition against Veronese was his previous

refusal to picture Magdalene’s character in a “Last Supper”. In this consistent with the letter

of the Scriptures, so the daring artist inverted his role, from inquired becoming inquirer.

Not less interesting, a reference by the painter to the precedent of the Sistine Chapel

frescoes in Rome, where Michelangelo had depicted nude Jesus with saints and others. The

reply of the inquisitor was: “In representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to

suppose that clothes are worn, there was no reason for painting any”. That is, a bare bodily

representation was not wrong in itself, depending on its context. Anyhow, to prevent such

inconveniences too, in 1564 the figures of the Papal Chapel had been partially dressed.

The perplexities of a Counter-Reformed Church, that an art with religious contents

might assume profane forms, could not – in part, did not want – stop or often even control

its development. With special regard to our theme, they were not completely groundless.

Particularly, if we watch an oil by the Florentine courtly artist Agnolo Bronzino (1561;

Musée du Louvre, Paris), surely we can admire it. Yet we may conclude that his half naked

Christ resembles more a pagan deity than a Christian figure, despite the disquieting detail of

three crosses of the crucifixion, still discernible on the Calvary, just in the left top corner.

17 – Agnolo Bronzino, Noli me tangere,

Musée du Louvre, Paris

A tendency to represent Jesus with ephebic looks was not lacking in the late antiquity,

likely influenced by Gnostic doctrines as much as by the lesson of Hellenistic art. Mostly, it

was an idealized kind of representation. This painting by the Bronzino, instead, seems to be

an explicit sensual scene. In this, it is not too dissimilar from masterpieces on the same

subject by others, such as Titian, the Correggio or the Garofalo, who had preceded him in

the same century. Strangely, this sensuality contrasts with another Noli me tangere ascribed

to the same author, and currently exhibited in the Buonarroti House at Florence.

The history of the latter artwork, sober coloured and chaste looking, is a little

complex and uncertain too. In 1531, its now lost cartoon was drawn by Michelangelo

Buonarroti. Probably, the choice of the subject was suggested by the poetess Vittoria

Colonna, a dear friend of the master. Art criticism has attributed the completed picture to

Jacopo Pontormo, before; later, to his best follower, the Bronzino. Once more, we may

comment that modernity was born in the sign of a dialectic contradiction. In this sense, the

image of an incarnated divinity – its image in the flesh of History – could not be an

exception. Nay, for its own nature, it was a privileged mirror of such a changing reality.

18 – Agnolo Bronzino (or Pontormo ?; after Michelangelo),

Noli me tangere, Casa Buonarroti, Florence

Copyright

pinoblasone@yahoo.com

2009