Noli Me Tangere

Title: Noli Me Tangere
Artist: Correggio
Medium: Oil on panel transferred to canvas
Size: 130 x 103 cm
Date: c. 1525
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid.

John 20:15-17 He asked her, “Woman, 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 Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Jesus calls her by the name he used for her before, and she responds with ‘Rabboni’, the title she used before. She would naturally assume that their relationship could pick up where it left off and continue on as before. Jesus' response, however, lets her know there has been a radical change in him and consequently in his relationship with his followers. This change is indicated when Jesus tells her not to touch him. The use of the present tense (haptou) suggests in this context that he is not forbidding her to touch him but telling her to stop that which she is already doing.

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (August 1489 – March 1534), usually known as Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance. Untempted by Rome, Florence or Venice, Correggio, working in the North Italian city of Parma, maintained his originality throughout the High Renaissance and became one of the most important influences on seventeenth-century Baroque painting. Little is known about Correggio's life or training. He appears to have emerged out of no major apprenticeship, and to have had little immediate influence in terms of apprenticed successors, but his works are now considered to have been revolutionary and influential on subsequent artists.