Anthony Tolly was an English sculptor active in the late sixteenth century, during the mature Elizabethan period. He is of particular significance as the maker of one of the earliest surviving signed church monuments by a native English sculptor.

Tolly is securely associated with the monument to Edmund Freke at Worcester Cathedral, dated 1591, which bears his signature. At a time when English funerary sculpture was overwhelmingly anonymous and workshop-based, this explicit assertion of authorship is highly unusual and marks an important moment in the professional self-identification of English monument makers.

Stylistically, Tolly’s work belongs to the established Elizabethan monument tradition, characterised by architectural framing, heraldic display, and controlled figural carving rather than overt Renaissance classicism. His sculpture reflects continuity with late medieval practices adapted to late sixteenth-century taste, rather than stylistic innovation.

Little is known of Tolly’s life beyond this signed work, and no wider securely attributable corpus can be established. Nevertheless, the Freke monument provides a rare fixed point for the study of English monumental sculpture at the end of the sixteenth century, allowing comparison with anonymous and workshop-attributed monuments of the same period.

Anthony Tolly should therefore be understood not as a major innovator, but as a documented English sculptor whose signed work offers exceptional insight into authorship and practice in Elizabethan funerary art.