Noli me tangere (Sustris)

Noli me tangere or Christ Appearing As A Gardener To Mary Magdalene is a 1548-1560 painting by the Flemish painter Lambert Sustris. It is now in the Palais des beaux-arts de Lille.

It shows the eponymous scene from the Gospel of John, set in a Renaissance-style garden with geometric parterres, a fountain, a covered passageway and a cloister. Wearing a sumptuous gold and silver damask robe, Mary Magdalene kneels before Christ, holding her left hand to her breast and her right on an alabaster vase. He leans on a hoe and points to the sky, whilst a white bindweed around the trunk of the tree behind him symbolises the fall of sin. A woman's shadow stretches along the passageway, possibly symbolising Mary's spreading the news of the Resurrection to the Twelve Apostles.