Object data
pen and brown ink, with opaque white; framing line in brown ink; contours indented for transfer
height 154 mm × width 146 mm
Rembrandt van Rijn
Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener (Noli me tangere)
Amsterdam, c. 1645
Inscriptions
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Condition
Light foxing throughout
Provenance
...; collection Claude-Augustin Mariette (1652-1701/11), Paris (L. 1786); ...; sale, Étienne-Edmond Martin, Baron de Beurnonville (1825-1906, Paris), Paris (Hôtel Drouot), 16 (17) February 1885 sqq., no. 205 (‘Jésus apparaissant à la Madeleine sous la figure d’un jardinier. Beau dessin à la plume’), frs. 135;1 ...; ? collection Ernest Chausson (1855-1899), Paris;2 ...; collection Isaäc de Bruijn (1872-1953) and his wife, Johanna Geertruida de Bruijn-van der Leeuw (1877-1960), Spiez and Muri, near Bern, by 1934, 1937;3 by whom donated to the museum (L. 2228), 1949, but kept in usufruct; transferred to the museum, 1960
Object number: RP-T-1961-80
Credit line: De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 - Amsterdam 1669)
After attending Latin school in his native Leiden, Rembrandt, the son of a miller, enrolled at Leiden University in 1620, but soon abandoned his studies to become an artist. He first trained (1621-23) under the Leiden painter Jacob Isaacsz van Swanenburg (c. 1571-1638), followed by six months with the Amsterdam history painter Pieter Lastman (c. 1583-1633). Returning to Leiden around 1624, he shared a studio with Jan Lievens, where he aimed to establish himself as a history painter, winning the admiration of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens. In 1628 Gerard Dou (1613-75) became his first pupil. In the autumn of 1631 Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, where his career rapidly took off. Three years later he joined the Guild of St Luke and married Saskia Uylenburgh (1612-42), niece of the art dealer Hendrik Uylenburgh (c. 1587-1661), in whose house he had been living and working. She died shortly after giving birth to their son Titus, by which time Rembrandt was already in financial straits owing to excessive spending on paintings, prints, antiquities and studio props for his history pieces. After Saskia’s death, Rembrandt lived first with Titus's wet nurse, Geertje Dircx (who eventually sued Rembrandt for breach of promise and was later imprisoned for her increasingly unstable behaviour), and then with his later housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels (by whom he had a daughter, Cornelia). Mounting debts made him unable to meet the payments of his house on the Jodenbreestraat and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1656 and to sell his house and art collection. In the last decade of his life, he, Hendrickje and Titus resided in more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht, but Rembrandt continued to be dogged by continuing financial difficulties. His beloved Titus died in 1668. Rembrandt survived him by only a year and was buried in the Westerkerk.
Entry
Christ is seen coming out of the tomb in the rock and extending his hand towards Mary Magdalene. She is seated on the ground, wringing her hands, having recognized the supposed gardener as Christ. The scene is traditionally entitled Noli me tangere, the Latin version of what Christ said to her (John 20:11-17): ‘Touch me not (noli me tangere); for I am not yet ascended to my Father.’ Christ’s gesture and the confusion in Mary’s face are linked by the motif of the cross in the background, alluding simultaneously to the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Ascension. The iconography of the Noli me tangere has a long tradition, and Rembrandt certainly knew the prints of it by Lucas van Leyden (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-1655)4 and Albrecht Dürer (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-1351).5 An impression of Dürer’s woodcut from the Small Passion series may have been acquired by Rembrandt himself on 10 February 1638.6 He borrowed the figure of Christ strolling forward from Dürer’s Christ Appearing to His Mother in the same series (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-1364).7 Lucas’s and Dürer’s prints portray the same part of the story as Rembrandt’s drawing, the moment when Christ gestures and prohibits Mary from touching him.
In 1638 Rembrandt made a signed and dated painting of this subject, now in the British Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace in London (inv. no. RCIN 404816),8 but he depicted a different part of the story. Mary is seated by the grave with two angels and turns herself around when Christ asks why she is crying – exactly as stated in the Bible. When Christ said, ‘Mary!’, she recognized him and responded, ‘Master!’ (John 20:16). By departing from the biblical text in the Amsterdam drawing, which shows Christ emerging from the tomb, Rembrandt made it clear that Christ had already risen from the grave. A second drawing of Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener in the Rijksmuseum used to be considered a work by Rembrandt (inv. no. RP-T-1930-29), but has now been reattributed to his pupil Ferdinand Bol.9 In a horizontal format, Bol represented the same moment as Rembrandt did in his Buckingham Palace painting, but he placed Christ rather than the Magdalene next to the tomb, as in Rembrandt’s drawing in Amsterdam, albeit in a rather nonchalant pose. Bol also borrowed some of the buildings from the background of Rembrandt’s painting. However, he did not come close to conveying the same degree of intense expression or narrative depth as his master.
From the point of view of composition and style, the present drawing cannot be considered a preliminary study for the Buckingham Palace painting, which features a more literal interpretation of the biblical text. The drawing, by contrast, accords more closely with iconographical traditions. Bol made use of both Rembrandt’s drawing and his painting for his rendering of the subject. Based on style, we can date Rembrandt’s drawing to the mid-1640s, several years after he had acquired the prints of the subject by Dürer.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, Matthijs Pool made an etching of the drawing (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-65.632),10 as he did of Rembrandt’s Christ Healing a Leper (inv. no. RP-T-1930-24, for which see inv. no. RP-P-OB-65.631), for his series of biblical and other scenes published under the title Verscheide gedachten. In both cases, Pool indented the most important contours of Rembrandt’s original with a stylus, so he must have had access to a group of autograph drawings, including both of these sheets, which had probably remained together after the sale of Rembrandt’s collection in 1658.
Peter Schatborn, 2017
Literature
W.R. Valentiner, Rembrandt: Die Meisters Handzeichnungen, 2 vols., Stuttgart and elsewhere 1925-34, II (1934), no. 508 (c. 1638); O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), no. 538 (c. 1643); P. Schatborn, Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, IV: Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. The Hague 1985, no. 22, with earlier literature; M. Kreutzer, Rembrandt und die Bibel: Radierungen, Zeichnungen, Kommentare, Stuttgart 2003, pp. 168-69; M. Schapelhouman, Rembrandt and the Art of Drawing, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 89-90, fig. 87; H. Bevers, W.W. Robinson and P. Schatborn, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2009-10, no. 12.1; M. Royalton-Kisch, ‘Review of H. Bevers et al., Drawings by Rembrandtand his Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat. Los Angeles 2009-10’, The Burlington Magazine 153 (2011), no. 1295, p. 100 from pp. 97-102, fig. 27 (as Carel Fabritius?); L. de Witt et al., Rembrandt et la figure du Christ, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) and elsewhere 2011-12, pp. 8-9, fig. 1.2; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, pp. 28-29, under no. 1, fig. 1a
Citation
P. Schatborn, 2017, 'Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener (Noli me tangere), Amsterdam, c. 1645', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28540
(accessed 29 December 2024 04:03:14).