Faith, Gender and the Senses in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art: Interpreting the ‘Noli me tangere’ and Doubting Thomas by Erin E. Benay and Lisa M. Rafanelli (review)

The authors of this impressive volume have succeeded in providing a wide-ranging and insightful analysis of Noli me tangere and Doubting Thomas iconography in early modern Italian images, for the most part in painting and sculpture, with occasional references to illuminated manuscripts. While the iconographic study of Saints Mary Magdalene and Thomas is, of course, already well developed, Erin E. Benay and Lisa M. Rafanelli take a novel approach in focusing on the above-mentioned two episodes. These highlight the role touch, and the absence of touch, plays in the verification of Christ’s bodily resurrection in the Bible, which informed later discussions of the nature of religious faith. In addition to theological issues, the authors explore the connections between the iconography of these episodes and broader contemporary discourses, including the status of touch in theoretical discussions of the senses, the status of women in society, and the use of religious imagery as political propaganda in public.

The topic is addressed for the most part chronologically. The first chapter provides a brief historical survey of images of Saints Mary Magdalene and Thomas – the Noli me tangere and Doubting Thomas episodes, in particular – from late antiquity through the Byzantine period, and up to the late medieval period. Visual analysis of key images is connected with influential Church writings on the saints. Chapter 2 discusses the use of Noli me tangere images in mendicant order settings during the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, while Chapter 3 focuses on the appearance of the Doubting Thomas in Franciscan settings, in particular, in the early Renaissance. Chapter 4 addresses the use of images of the Doubting Thomas in public contexts in Renaissance Tuscany, with particular reference to works by Paolo Uccello, Mariano del Buono, and Verrocchio, building on the scholarship of Andrew Butterfield and John Paoletti. Chapter 5 examines a series of small paintings of St Mary Magdalene and the Noli me tangere in Central and Northern Italy, apparently made for personal use, with close studies of works by Titian, Correggio, and Michelangelo (a lost cartoon of his recorded in copies). Chapter 6 looks at the period of the Counter-Reformation, addressing a series of images of the Noli me tangere, supplemented by other images of St Mary Magdalene, since the Noli me tangere became less common as a subject in this period. The authors account for this decline by arguing that the ambiguity of the Noli me tangere was antithetical to the Counter-Reformation desire for artistic and doctrinal clarity, among other causes. Key works depicting the Doubting Thomas by Caravaggio, as well as others by Guercino and Mattia Preti, are also examined.

The majority of the artworks discussed are well known in the literature, with the notable exception of four glazed terracotta relief sculptures from Tuscan convents. As a result, the authors are at pains to point out where their analysis makes a novel contribution, which for this reviewer was less in providing compelling new insights into single images, and more in shaping a rich and coherent description of the varied and changing manifestations of these iconographies, something the authors achieve in spite of the challenging nature of their material. With only fragmentary knowledge of the patronage, original locations, and circumstances of commissions for many of the works discussed, it is often difficult for the authors to draw firm conclusions about specific intended and received meanings of individual images. Perhaps as a result, there is a tendency to tidy up the material, as it were. To give one example, a lost mural painting on the façade of the former Church of San Tommaso in Florence, which depicted the Incredulity of Saint Thomas, was described as a work of Uccello...