William Holman Hunt

"The Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt [...] traveled across much of Palestine in a passionate search for places and people who would allow him an adequate reconstruction of crucial scenes from the Gospels [...]. Precisely because he feels he is the last witness of a world in the process of slow but inexorable change, his reconstruction of evangelical scenes and episodes, conducted through careful historical research, is extremely meticulous in detail and overloaded with a heavy and erudite. (Attilio Brilli)"

"Painting which for Rossetti was a suggestion of poetry, which for Millais was a prodigy of technique, which for Madox Brown was art in its most complete meaning, for Holman Hunt was something more: it was religion. (Enrico Thovez)"

"When in Oxford, in Liverpool, in Manchester, in Birmingham I found myself in front of Holman Hunt, I had to tell myself that the unsurpassable had been overcome; that no one, neither ancient nor modern, not Van Eyck, not Holbein, not Brown, not Millais, had descended so deeply into the fibers of reality, had loved it with more unfailing enthusiasm, had rendered it with more extraordinary effort. (Enrico Thovez)"