Christ and Mary Magdalene (Noli me tangere)

In 1590 Giuliano della Rovere, a churchman from the family that ruled the duchy of Urbino, ordered this altarpiece from Barocci, the duchy's leading painter. It became the first of three versions of the subject, an altarpiece more than two and a half metres tall. A much smaller one hangs in the Uffizi in Florence, and a later one belongs to an English collection at Bywell Hall.

The scene comes from John's Gospel. Mary Magdalene has been weeping at the empty tomb, takes the man in front of her for the gardener, and recognises him only when he speaks her name. The museum points out how Barocci holds the two of them close and apart at the same moment, since Christ's next words are Do not touch me, and how he lets the soft, shifting colour carry that tension. Behind them, on the skyline, rises the silhouette of the Ducal Palace of Urbino.