Probably by Jacopo di Cione, Noli me tangere

This small picture, probably by Jacopo di Cione, shows the moment that Christ, resurrected after death, appeared to Mary Magdalene. Mary – identifiable by her red robes and her long, flowing hair – had gone to Christ’s tomb to anoint his body with spices. She found it empty.

Weeping, she was comforted by a man she thought was a gardener, but when he spoke her name she instantly recognised that it was Christ. She reached out to touch him but he prevented her, saying ‘Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father’ (noli me tangere means, in Latin, ‘do not touch me’). The artist has interpreted the passage literally, showing Christ holding a gardening tool, a hoe.

The picture came from the uppermost part of a large polyptych dedicated to ‘All Saints’ ( Ognissanti), and is called a pinnacle panel. It was made for the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence. Other parts of the altarpiece are housed all over the world. They have been associated with our picture by comparison of the painting style, details like the decoration of the gold leaf and by the subject matter.

Our panel, which once had an arched top – if you look closely at the border you can see where the arch begins – probably flanked a central arch-shaped pinnacle panel showing the Crucifixion (now in the Lehman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). In that picture, Mary Magdalene, almost identical in appearance, clings to the Cross. The main tier of the altarpiece is more difficult to reconstruct but the central panel was most probably an image of the Virgin and Child with angels (now in the Museum of Fine Art, Budapest). It isn‘t clear what the panels surrounding the central image would have been. The ensemble probably also included six angels, painted on separate panels (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

We do know that it belonged with 12 pilaster panels, six of which (the so-called Littleton saints) are on long-term loan to our collection (three others are in a private collection). The panels include members of the Camaldolese ’Blessed' including Beata Paola and Beato Silvestro (the two were buried together at the monastery in the mid-fourteenth century). The altarpiece was probably commissioned by the monks in honour of a man called Franceschino di Ser Berto degli Albizzi, who had left money to the monastery in his will. He features in a painting – shown at prayer – that has been identified as the central panel of the predella.

Franceschino was not buried in the monastery but he had asked for prayers to be said for his soul during the month of November. The feast of All Saints was celebrated on 1 November, which may be why the altarpiece was dedicated to the Ognissanti. The prominence of Mary Magdalene may have had something to do with the altarpiece it replaced, which was dedicated to Mary Magdalene and Saint Lawrence.