Claudio and Isabella

Holman Hunt painted this in 1850, in the first flush of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a circle of young English painters who wanted truth to nature down to every leaf and stone. The scene comes from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Claudio is condemned to death, and his sister Isabella can save him only by giving herself to the judge, Angelo, so Claudio, chained at the window, pleads with her to do it. To get the prison right, Hunt worked in a real cell at Lambeth Palace, and you can see it in the damp stone and the moss creeping up the wall. Claudio fidgets with the ribbon at his knee, a small nervous gesture Hunt used to show a man arguing himself toward cowardice.