Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
March/April 2009

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A painting of the Resurrection

Noli Me Tangere by Fra Angelico

Father Dominic Allain

My favourite painting of the resurrection is Noli Me Tangere, by Fra Angelico. It isn’t really a painting, it’s a fresco, one of a series of some fifty which adorn the walls of the cells of the Dominican Friary of San Marco in Florence. It depicts the scene from St John’s Gospel where Mary Magdalene is weeping because she can’t find the body of Jesus. Seeing someone she supposes to be the gardener she asks him where the body is. Some commentators will tell you she was so blinded with tears she couldn’t recognise Jesus, but always with St John there is more to it than that – it is his way of telling us she isn’t expecting Jesus to be risen. Fra Angelico chooses to be very literal about it and so has Jesus holding a hoe, as though he is deliberately trying to disguise himself as the gardener, but perhaps with the exquisite details of trees and flowers of the garden he is also alluding to Eden, and the idea of Jesus as the Second Adam who “to the rescue came”.

Behind Mary is the cavernous darkness of the tomb entrance and before her Jesus who radiates light. This is the moment at which she has recognised Jesus, for he has spoken her name. I love the gentleness of the faces, the tenderness of the glances, and the rich colour and light of the haloes. (I have seen holy people like Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II and their faces really do seem to shine). I love the way Fra Angelico creates a space between people. It seems to suggest something of the holiness that is to truly encounter another . We have the sense of Mary’s movement towards Jesus – every­thing about her seems to move towards him, not just her outstretched arms, but also her head and even the folds of her clothes all suggest her spontaneous reaching out for him. In the Gospel his reaction is, “Noli Me Tangere,” that is, don’t touch me, don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.

There is a wonderful ambiguity about Jesus’ posture, expressive of this complicated encounter. Though his body seems in some ways to be turning away from her – look at his torso and his right foot – it could equally be turning towards her, as shown by his left foot, by the turn of his head, the flow of his robe; there is even a part of it billowing towards her. His right hand makes a gesture which seems at one and the same time a caution not to touch him and a movement as if he is about to take her hand. Even the hoe he holds in his left hand which seems to indicate a direction away from her, has the effect of pointing back to her as it slants over his shoulder. All this gives expression to the mystery that he is risen, but glorified. He is not as he was before – he must ascend to the Father and yet in doing so he remains to the end of time.

At the absolute centre of the picture then is that space between them which both are reaching out to. It is an image of how the risen Jesus can only be grasped, clung to by faith; the resurrection is a new way of existing that is not just a resuscitated kind of human life. Mary need not cling to what was before.

I think it most poignant too, because we have to mourn our losses. To mourn them, and not to cling on to them; to reach out for the new life he wants to share with us through his Spirit.

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