Noli me tangere, from the Revue Blanche

Dissatisfied with his education, Roussel left the studio of academic painter Adolphe Bouguereau and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and later joined a group of artists who called themselves Nabis (Hebrew for “prophets”). Typical of the group, Roussel drew this subject from the Bible. Noli me tangere – Latin for “Don’t touch me” – refers to the passage where Christ appears to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection. Roussel’s is an enigmatic depiction of a subject common in medieval and renaissance art interpreted as a rejection of the sensual in favor of a contemplative life. Using tusche, an oily ink applied with a brush, to cover the lithographic stone and then scraping it away, Roussel employs a subtractive method to create ghost-like forms floating off the top of the sheet.