A striving to attain the greatest possible local truth had led Holman Hunt to the East when he began these biblical pictures. He spent several years in Palestine studying the topographical character of the land, its buildings and its people, and endeavoured with the help of these actual men and women and these landscape scenes to reconstruct the events of biblical history with antiquarian fidelity. To paint "The Shadow of Death" he searched in the East until he discovered a Jew who corresponded to his idea of Christ, and painted him, a strong, powerful man, the genuine son of a carpenter, with that astounding truth to nature with which Hubert van Eyck painted his Adam. Even the hairs of the breast and legs are as faithfully rendered as if one saw the model in a glass. Near this naked carpenter--for He is clothed only with a leather apron--there kneels a modern Eastern woman, bowed over a chest, in which various Oriental vessels are lying. The ground is covered with shavings of wood. Up to this point, therefore, it is a naturalistic picture from the modern East. But here Holman Hunt's pietistic sentiment is seen: it is the eve of a festival; the sun casts its last dying rays into the room; the journeyman carpenter wearily stretches out His arms, and the shadow of His body describes upon the wall the prophetic form of the Cross. Another picture represented the discovery of our Lord in the Temple, a third the flock which has been astray following the Good Shepherd into His Father's fold. On his picture of the flight into Egypt, or, as he has himself called it, "The Triumph of the Innocents," he published a pamphlet of twelve pages, in which he goes into all the historical events connected with the picture with the loyalty of an historian; he discusses everything--in what month the flight took place, and by what route, how old Christ was, to what race the ass belonged, and what clothes were worn by Saint Joseph and Mary. One might be forgiven for thinking such a production the absurd effusion of a whimsical pedant were it not that Hunt is so grimly in earnest in everything he does. In spite of all his peculiarities it must be admitted that he gave a deep and earnest religious character to English art, which before his time had been so paltry; and this explains the powerful impression which he made upon his contemporaries.