So who was J.R. Herbert who was responsible for the big fresco of Moses brining down the Tables of the Law to the Israelites in the so-called Moses Room at the Palace of Westminster ? The answer is that he was a classic product of the Royal Academy Schools in the late 1820s (he entered the Schools in 1826) who turned his hand to book illustration and then to larger narrative painting before Queen Victoria came to the throne and before the Pre-Raphaelites made it fashionable. Indeed, one of the aims of the Pre-Raphaelites was, as W.M. Rossetti described it, to ‘out-Herbert Herbert’. He was also a close friend of A.W.N. Pugin and a fellow convert to Catholicism. They both had a passionate belief in the historical importance and moral significance of the wall decoration in the Palace of Westminster. Herbert became an RA in 1846, continued to submit work to the Summer Exhibition after he had gone blind, and was forgotten by the time he was dead.