Bellini records the characteristic geological formations of Alverna, a mountain whose rocks were rent, according to early Franciscan tradition, at the consummation of Christ's Passion (Matt. 27:51). The flora and fauna, however, pertain not so much to Tuscany as to the poetic images in Isaiah, the Psalms, and Job. The painting, like the early Franciscan tradition, is replete with biblical typology. The onager (wild ass) from the book of Job, the nicticorax (here a bittern) and pelicanus solitudinis (here a grey heron) from Psalm 101, typify solitude in the wilderness in Patristic writings. Like Isaac the Syrian, Francis contemplates "the flame of things." Or as Maximus the Confessor writes, "the unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in the bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzling brilliance of His beauty inside every thing." Francis is, in fact, likened to Moses here. Having come from pasturing his flock (the Franciscan Order) to the mountain, he removes his sandals and gazes at the laurel tree (which was believed to resist burning), as the tree bends under the radiance in the sky at the upper left of the picture. The rabbit (another representative of the hermit in the wilderness) peering out from a hole in the rock, alludes to Moses standing on a rock (Christ) and hidden in a hole in the rock on Horeb, witnessing the Glory of God who passes by (as recounted in Exodus). The whole painting is a visual theophany.