Moses (Michelangelo)
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Moses (Michelangelo)
Moses
Artist
Michelangelo
Year
c. 1513 – 1515
Type
Marble
[1]
Dimensions 235 cm (92.5 in)
Location
San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
The Moses (c. 1513–1515) is a sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in
the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Commissioned in 1505 by Pope Julius II for his tomb, it depicts the
Biblical figure Moses with horns on his head, based on a description in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible
used at that time.
Description
The marble sculpture depicts Moses with horns on his head. This was the normal medieval Western depiction of
Moses, based on the description of Moses' face as "cornuta" ("horned") in the Latin Vulgate translation of Exodus.[2]
The Douay-Rheims Bible translates the Vulgate as, "And when Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the
two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord."[3] The
Greek in the Septuagint translates as, "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified."[4]
The Hebrew Masoretic text also uses words equivalent to "radiant",[5] suggesting an effect like a halo. Horns were
symbolic of authority in ancient Near Eastern culture, and the medieval depiction had the advantage of giving Moses
a convenient attribute by which he could easily be recognized in crowded pictures.
According to Giorgio Vasari in his Life of Michelangelo, the Jews of Rome came like "flocks of starlings" to admire
the statue every Shabat.
Moses (Michelangelo)
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Tomb of Julius II
The tomb was originally commissioned in 1505 yet was not completed until 1545 in a much reduced scale.
Originally intended for St. Peter's Basilica, "Moses" and the tomb were instead placed in the minor church of San
Pietro in Vincoli on the Esquiline in Rome after the pope's death. This church was patronised by the della Rovere
family from which Julius came, and he had been titular cardinal there.
The tomb of Julius II was a colossal structure that would have given Michelangelo the room he needed for his
superhuman, tragic beings. This project became one of the great disappointments of Michelangelo's life when the
pope, for unexplained reasons, interrupted the commission, possibly because funds had to be diverted for Bramante's
rebuilding of St. Peter's.[6] The original project called for a freestanding, three-level structure with some 40 statues.
After the pope's death in 1513, the scale of the project was reduced step-by-step until, in April 1532,[7] a final
contract with the heirs of Pope Julius II specified a simple wall tomb with fewer than one-third of the originally
planned figures.[8]
The spirit of the tomb may be summed up in the figure of
"Moses", which was completed during one of the sporadic
resumptions of the work in 1513.
Michelangelo felt that this was his most life-like creation. Legend
has it that upon its completion he struck the right knee
commanding, "now speak!" as he felt that life was the only thing
left inside the marble. There is a scar on the knee thought to be the
mark of Michelangelo's hammer.
Other sculptures
The statues of the "Dying Slave" and the "Rebellious Slave" were
finished but not included in the monument in its last and reduced
design. They are now in the Louvre. Another figure intended for
Pope Julius' tomb is the "Genius of Victory", now in the Palazzo
Vecchio of Florence.
The tomb of Julius II, with Michelangelo's statues of
Rachel and Leah on the left and the right of his Moses.
Moses (Michelangelo)
"Dying Slave"
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"Rebellious Slave"
"The Genius of Victory"
(1533–1534)
Other sculptures for the tomb were the "Young Slave", the "Atlas Slave", the "Bearded Slave" and the "Awakening
Slave". The sculptures of Rachel and Leah, allegories of the contemplative and the active life, were executed by
Raffaello da Montelupo, a pupil of Michelangelo. The other sculptures are by less experienced pupils.
Interpretations
In his essay entitled The Moses of Michelangelo, the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, along with several
well-respected experts, associates this work with the first set of Tables described in Exodus 32[9] : (19) “And it came
to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot,
and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.”
A more recent view, put forward by Malcolm MacMillan and Peter Swales in their essay entitled Observations from
the Refuse-Heap: Freud, Michelangelo’s Moses, and Psychoanalysis,[10] relates the sculpture to a second set of
Tables and the event mentioned in Exodus 33[11] :
(22) And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will
cover thee with my hand while I pass by:” and (23) And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my
back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
This event is described further in Exodus 34[12] :
(4) And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up
unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. (5) And the
LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. (6) And the
LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, (7) Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and
transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (8) And Moses made
haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.
Even though Sigmund Freud never associates the statue with this latter event his description includes the following:
“As our eyes travel down it the figure exhibits three distinct emotional strata. The lines of the face reflect the feelings
Moses (Michelangelo)
which have won ascendancy; the middle of the figure shows the traces of suppressed movement; and the foot still
retains the attitude of the projected action. It is as though the controlling influence had proceeded downwards from
above."
Notes
[1] Sweetser 1878, p. 67
[2] (Latin) Biblia Sacra Vulgata Exodus 34:29-35
[3] Douay-Rheims Bible (http:/ / drbo. org/ cgi-bin/ d?b=drb& bk=2& ch=34& l=30& f=s#x)
[4] English Translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible (http:/ / www. ecmarsh. com/ lxx/ ). For Greek, see Εξοδος 34:29 (http:/ / www.
myriobiblos. gr/ bible/ ot/ chapter. asp?book=2& page=34)
[5] (Hebrew) Hebrew - English Bible (According to the Masoretic Text and the JPS 1917 Edition) Exodus 34:29
[6] Kleiner, Fred S., Christin J. Mamiya, and Helen Gardner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages. 12th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2004.
[7] Sweetser 1878, p. 92
[8] Sweetser 1878, p. 107
[9] Exodus 32:19
[10] Macmillan & Swales 2003
[11] Exodus 33:22-23
[12] Exodus 34:4-8
References
• Sweetser, Moses Foster (1878), Michel Angelo (http://www.archive.org/stream/
michaelangelo00sweegoog#page/n76), Boston, Houghton, Osgood and company
• Macmillan, Malcolm; Swales, Pete (2003), "Observations from the refuse-heap: Freud, Michelangelo's Moses,
and psychoanalysis", American Imago (Johns Hopkins University Press) 60 (1): 41–104,
doi:10.1353/aim.2003.0003, ISSN 0065-860X
• Freud, Sigmund. (1914b). Der Moses des Michelangelo. Imago, 3, 15-36; G.W., X, 172-201; The Moses of
Michelangelo. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 13: 209-238.
External links
• Psychoanalysis:The Moses of Michelangelo on Answers.com (http://www.answers.com/topic/
moses-of-michelangelo-the)
• See Location San Pietro in Vincoli on the Map (http://roma.cercachetrovi.it/
?q=san-pietro-vincoli-moses-statue)
• Horny Jew: What’s the deal with Michelangelo’s Moses? (http://galusaustralis.com/2009/09/
horny-jew-whats-the-deal-with-michelangelos-moses/)
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