This picture has been in the royal collections of England since the reign of Henry VIII, and in the inventory of his pictures at Whitehall, taken at his death in 1547, it was entered as “Item, a table with the picture of our Lord appearing to Mary Magdalen” (No. 33), while it occurs again in that of James II (No. 520), “Our Saviour appearing to Mary Magdalen in the garden.” That in those early days the picture was regarded as a work of Holbein’s is proved by an entry in Evelyn’s _Diary_, under the date September 2, 1680, describing several days spent by him in the examination of the contents of the library and private rooms at Whitehall during the absence of Charles II at Windsor. He says: “In the rest of the private lodgings contiguous to this (_i.e._ the library), are divers of the best pictures of the great masters, Raphael, Titian, &c., and, in my esteeme, above all, the _Noli me tangere of our blessed Saviour to Mary Magdalen after his Resurrection_, of Hans Holbein, then which I never saw so much reverence and kind of heavenly astonishment express’d in a picture.” Nothing is known of its earlier history, or how it came to England, but it is not unnatural to suppose that it was brought over by Holbein himself, as an easily portable example of his powers as a painter of sacred subjects. It is doubly valuable as being the only work by him of this particular class now remaining in this country. On the other hand, it is quite possible that it was painted in England in 1527 for one of his new patrons. Mr. Ernest Law points out that there is a rendering of this same subject by Lambert Sustris, a German painter, and pupil of Christopher Schwartz of Munich, who flourished about the end of the sixteenth century. This last-named work, both in the figure of Christ, and in several other points, bears a close resemblance to the Hampton Court picture, to which, indeed, it may have owed its inspiration.[219]