Garland of flowers with the 'Noli me tangere'

The small scene in the middle takes place in a garden. Mary Magdalene kneels on the grass on Easter morning and reaches toward the risen Christ, whom she had at first taken for the gardener, and he tells her not to touch him. In Latin those words, Noli me tangere, give the scene its name.

Daniel Seghers set that meeting inside a stone cartouche and wrapped it in flowers. Ivy holds up the lower festoon, and out of it grow hyacinths, tulips, jasmine, orange blossom, carnations and roses, with three butterflies of different kinds settled among them. The Valencia museum dates the canvas to around 1615 to 1620, early in Seghers's career.

In the late 18th century it belonged to Manuel Monfort, a Valencian engraver who died in 1805. He also owned two similar Seghers garlands, one framing an Adoration of the Shepherds and one an Assumption of the Virgin.