Noli me tangere

This small panel was never meant to stand alone. It was the predella, the base, of a large Botticelli altarpiece painted around 1491 for a Florentine convent that took in former prostitutes who had left that life behind. Their patron was Mary Magdalene, which is why she appears here in the garden on Easter morning, reaching toward the risen Christ, who lifts a hand and tells her not to touch him. Botticelli set the meeting inside a painted stone frame, as if we were looking through a window into a courtyard. In the 1800s the altarpiece was broken up and the long plank of its base sawn into four separate scenes. The main panel is now in London, while these small ones were scattered, this one ending up in Philadelphia.