The ambiguity of touch: Saint Mary Magdalene and the 'Noli Me Tangere' in early modern Italy.

摘要

Christ's appearance to Saint Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection (John 20:11–18) has posed problems for theologians since at least the fourth century. How could widely-held beliefs about women's untrustworthiness, and intellectual and legal incapacity be reconciled with the Saint's status as the first and solitary witness to Christ's Resurrection? The Gospel passage also raises questions about the relative efficacy of the senses in the acquisition of knowledge and faith. Christ first appears to the Magdalene dressed as a gardener—but she cannot see through his disguise. When she hears him call her name, however, she identifies him as Rabboni. Christ responds, “noli me tangere,” although it is not clear whether his desire not to be touched is meant literally or as a metaphor.; How did images of the Noli Me Tangere deal with the unresolved ambiguities of the text? This interdisciplinary study attempts to answer this question by focusing on the Noli Me Tangere in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy, when the motif emerges as the subject of independent large-scale works of art for private and institutional patrons. Profound and rapid changes in theology, society, and the visual arts during this time shaped the representational strategies employed in the Noli Me Tangere, and altered the contexts—narrative, functional, patronal—in which the subject was found.; The vicissitudes of the Noli Me Tangere in Early Modern Italy reveal that it became a field of discourse for an unexpectedly broad range of concerns, including how the soteriological promise of Christ's Incarnation and Resurrection was interpreted, how the issue of the probative value of the senses—especially sight, hearing, and touch—was understood, and how sensory experience came to be gendered. Because the subject is one of female privilege and empowerment, depictions of the Noli Me Tangere also reveal attitudes toward gender—highlighting a surprisingly broad counter-current of philogyny—while also raising questions about the patterns of female patronage. Finally, because it addresses the issue of sense engagement, the Noli Me Tangere was used by certain artists to thematize vision, and to celebrate the power of the image to instill belief.