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The Easter Story

The Passion of Christ

The story of the events leading up to and following the Crucifixion is known as Christ's 'Passion'.

To celebrate Easter discover the story of the Passion, told through paintings in the National Gallery Collection. Follow the links below to view the paintings online or visit to the Gallery to see them:

The Easter Story
The Agony in the Garden
Andrea Mantegna
Christ prays before a group of cherubs who hold up the instruments of his torture and death. His disciple Judas, who has betrayed him, leads a large band of soldiers down from Jerusalem to arrest him. Meanwhile his other disciples sleep.This painting reflects many of the artistic issues that woul...
Room 55
The Betrayal of Christ
Ugolino di Nerio
This panel is one of four in our collection that come from the lowest part of an altarpiece (the predella) made for the church of Santa Croce in Florence. It shows the moment, described in the Gospels, when Jesus Christ was arrested by Roman soldiers. The soldiers are on the right in elaborate ar...
Room 52
Ecce Homo
Rembrandt
‘Ecce Homo’, the Latin title of this painting, is taken from the Bible, and means ‘Behold the man!’ These were the words of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, when he was sitting as the judge during the trial of Christ. Pilate, here shown wearing a turban and rising to his feet, is pres...
Not on display
Christ contemplated by the Christian Soul
Diego Velázquez
Tied to a column, Christ has collapsed to the floor. His limp body, tilted head and pained expression show his exhaustion and suffering. Velázquez shows the moment after the Flagellation, when Christ was flogged by Roman soldiers – we can see the sticks and whip they used lying in the foreground....
Room 30
The Mond Crucifixion
Raphael
This altarpiece is one of Raphael’s earliest works. It was commissioned by the wool merchant and banker Domenico Gavari for his burial chapel dedicated to Saint Jerome in the church of S. Domenico in Città di Castello, Umbria.Christ’s body is suspended from the Cross. Two angels balance on delica...
Room 61
The Deposition
Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece
The removal of Christ’s body from the Cross takes place in what appears to be a shallow gilded niche. The setting, with its stiff geometric decoration around the arch, may be intended to resemble contemporary tabernacle altarpieces, which included three-dimensional carvings set beneath a canopy a...
Room 62
The Dead Christ Mourned ('The Three Maries')
Annibale Carracci
This is perhaps the most poignant image in the National Gallery’s collection of the pietà – the lamentation over the dead Christ following his crucifixion. It was a subject to which Annibale Carracci returned frequently, especially during the last decade of his life.Here, the limp and lifeless bo...
Not on display
Christ carried to the Tomb
Sisto Badalocchio
Christ’s body has been taken down from the Cross and is being carried on a shroud to his place of burial. His head rests limply on his shoulder; his pale, foreshortened body is the focus of a whole retinue of grieving figures, each expressing their sorrow in a different way.This small picture is...
Not on display
The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb)
Michelangelo
This is one of perhaps only three surviving panel paintings by the great Florentine artist Michelangelo. It shows Christ’s body being carried to his tomb. It was probably made for a funerary chapel in the church of S. Agostino, Rome – commissioned in 1500 and left unfinished when Michelangelo ret...
Room 8
The Resurrection: Upper Tier Panel
Jacopo di Cione and workshop
The Roman soldiers who have been posted to guard Christ’s tomb from grave robbers have fallen asleep. Christ has risen from his grave and is shown above his tomb holding a white flag with a red cross, a symbol of the Resurrection. The lid of the tomb is still closed, emphasising the miracle of th...
Room 60
Noli me Tangere
Titian
Risen from the dead, Christ appears to his grieving follower, Mary Magdalene, in the Garden of Gethsemane. At first she mistakes him for a gardener but then reaches out her hand in wonder. Christ says, ‘Do not touch me’ (in Latin, noli me tangere); it is time for his followers to let go of his ea...
Not on display
The Supper at Emmaus
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
On the third day after the Crucifixion two of Jesus’s disciples were walking to Emmaus when they met the resurrected Christ. They failed to recognise him, but that evening at supper he ‘... took bread, and blessed it, and brake and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and...
Room 31

See also