Giotto, Christ and Mary Magdalene in the Garden
1303-1305
Fresco
Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
In John 20:11-17 Mary Magdalene is weeping over the death of Jesus when two angels descend, sit on either end of the empty sepulcher, and ask her why she is crying. She turns and sees Jesus, whom she at first mistakes for a gardener. He tells her not to touch him because "I am not yet ascended to my Father."
Pictures of Mary Magdalene's encounter with the risen Christ are known as Noli me tangere ("Do not touch me") images. Unlike others of this type, the primary theme here is not the relation between Christ and Mary Magdalene but the Resurrection event. The empty tomb is prominent in the background, and in the foreground the eye follows an upward curve from the soldiers who lie on the left "as if dead" (Matthew 28:4) past the kneeling Magdalene and up to Christ, the only standing figure, with a banner that is a standard element in images of his breaking forth from the tomb
(example). To put even greater emphasis on the Resurrection, the artist adds to the customary banner the words the words victor mortis, "victor over death."
John 19:41 sets the burial of Jesus in a garden near the place where he was crucified. The image expresses the garden setting by putting shrubs at Jesus' feet. In the background the upward slant of the hill would be consistent with the path that Jesus went to his cross on Calvary, and it counterposes the left-to-right upward movement in the foreground. Its rocky look may be an accommodation with the other gospels' statement that Jesus was buried in a "tomb hewn from the rock" (Matthew 27:60, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53).
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Read more about images of the appearance to Mary Magdalene.
Photographed at the chapel by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.