The Resurrection; A Group of Apostles: scenes from The Passion of Christ

The painted panels in the Wolsey Closet at Hampton Court are surviving fragments from more than one set of early 16th-century paintings telling the story of The Passion of Christ. The account of Christ's last days before his crucifixion was well known to all Christians and visual representations of this story could be seen in churches and important buildings across Europe. Artists followed accepted ways of portraying the events, often repeating the same elements of the story in order to meet the demands of religious and secular patrons who wanted to display visual proof of their own piety and faith.

Christ's victory over death was the final celebratory moment of The Passion, depicted here on panels inserted into the north wall of the Wolsey Closet. Artistic representations of this scene were so well-known and conventional by the 1500s that it is difficult to identify an artist. The panels have been in this room since at least the early 1700s, but could have been assembled from more than one other location and cut down to fit their new home. Conservation of the panels in the 1960s revealed earlier artworks of similar themes, dating from the late 15th or early 16th-centuries, underneath the visible paintings; the group of apostles in the middle of this arrangement, is such a 'revealed' artwork underneath the later scheme.

The artists, of both the earlier and later paintings, may have come from continental Europe, attracted to the courts of Henry VII or Henry VIII when the Tudor monarchs were seeking to establish and celebrate their supremacy through the expression of artistic and cultural magnificence. One such artist was the Italian painter and architect Antonio Toto. He is recorded in royal service from 1519 until 1554 and must have been involved in schemes such as these: records survive that show that he was paid for decorative work and religious scenes.