To Sow the Heart: Touch, Spiritual Anatomy, and Image Theory in Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere *
Long neglected and misunderstood, Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere (ca. 1531–32) features a puzzling figuration of its biblical subject, wherein Christ, rather than withdrawing from Mary Magdalene, touches her left breast with his finger. Following Augustine’s interpretation that Christ at this moment sows the seed of faith in the Magdalene’s heart, this article explains this unprecedented motif as a dissemblant sign for the implantation of faith in the soul, while arguing, on account of the gesture’s resonance with issues of spiritual and sensual touching, that the painting makes an original theoretical statement about the making and viewing of devotional images more generally.