Le Christ en jardinier

This is a young man's picture, and an unusual one for him. Manet made it in the second half of the 1850s, while he was still copying old masters in the Louvre and travelling to see them in Italy and the Low Countries, years before he became the great provocation of modern Paris. The subject is old too: the risen Christ, mistaken by Mary Magdalene for the gardener when he appears to her in the garden after the Resurrection. Manet drops Mary Magdalene entirely and shows Christ by himself, a halo round his head and a gardener's hoe in his hand. Finished religious paintings by Manet are rare.