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Lot Essay
After his death, the resurrected Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden. She recognised him and reached out to touch him, but he answered: "Noli me tangere (Touch me not); for I am not yet ascended to my Father" (John 20:17). In this painting, Moreau skillfully engages with this biblical scene celebrated in Western painting since the Middle Ages, an image made famous by Titian and Corregio.
In late Nineteenth Century art and literature, interest in the figure of Mary Magdalene clearly re-emerges. She becomes in a sense, a muse, and is transformed into one of the many manifestations of the femme fatale that was to become so dear to the Symbolists. In 1882, the English painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, whom Moreau greatly admired, painted his own version of the scene.
In one of his letters to Louis Mante, who had commissioned the Noli me tangere, Moreau wrote a long and passionate description of the work: "Noli me tangere. What a scene! What a speech! What language! A mute conversation between God and this repentant woman. What a mysterious silence surrounds these two beings cut off from the world [...] Noli me tangere. Touch me not for you cannot touch infinity, eternity, immutability." (Archives Musée Gustave Moreau. Cited in P. Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Complete Edition of the Finished Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings, Oxford, 1977, p. 360, no. 360). The fact that Moreau painted this work on a large wood panel further enhances its iconic quality and spiritual dimensions.
It is interesting to compare Moreau's Noli me tangere to his famous Apparition of 1876, now in the Louvre, in which Salome beholds the severed head of John the Baptist floating before her in a mysterious light. In both works there is a similar confrontation between a saintly evanescent figure and that of the fallen woman. Interestingly, Louis Mante who purchased Noli me tangere in 1889 had bought The Apparition two years earlier.
Noli me tangere is a fascinating work. Employing biblical iconography, the painterly style and technique of the Old Masters, it translates in the most original manner, one of the great themes of Western art into a supremely fin-de-siècle icon.
In late Nineteenth Century art and literature, interest in the figure of Mary Magdalene clearly re-emerges. She becomes in a sense, a muse, and is transformed into one of the many manifestations of the femme fatale that was to become so dear to the Symbolists. In 1882, the English painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, whom Moreau greatly admired, painted his own version of the scene.
In one of his letters to Louis Mante, who had commissioned the Noli me tangere, Moreau wrote a long and passionate description of the work: "Noli me tangere. What a scene! What a speech! What language! A mute conversation between God and this repentant woman. What a mysterious silence surrounds these two beings cut off from the world [...] Noli me tangere. Touch me not for you cannot touch infinity, eternity, immutability." (Archives Musée Gustave Moreau. Cited in P. Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Complete Edition of the Finished Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings, Oxford, 1977, p. 360, no. 360). The fact that Moreau painted this work on a large wood panel further enhances its iconic quality and spiritual dimensions.
It is interesting to compare Moreau's Noli me tangere to his famous Apparition of 1876, now in the Louvre, in which Salome beholds the severed head of John the Baptist floating before her in a mysterious light. In both works there is a similar confrontation between a saintly evanescent figure and that of the fallen woman. Interestingly, Louis Mante who purchased Noli me tangere in 1889 had bought The Apparition two years earlier.
Noli me tangere is a fascinating work. Employing biblical iconography, the painterly style and technique of the Old Masters, it translates in the most original manner, one of the great themes of Western art into a supremely fin-de-siècle icon.