| Artist | Michelangelo |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1513 – 1515[1] |
| Type | Marble |
| 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.
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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] This was, however, a mistranslation of the original Greek text, which reads in the Septuagint: "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. The church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch comments about this: "Jerome, [the translator of the Old Testament into Latin], mistaking particles of Hebrew, had turned this into a description of Moses wearing a pair of horns - and so the Lawgiver is frequently depicted in the art of the Western Church, even after humanists had gleefully removed the horns from the text of Exodus."[6]
According to Giorgio Vasari in his Life of Michelangelo, the Jews of Rome came like "flocks of starlings" to admire the statue every Shabat.
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[7]: (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,[8] relates the sculpture to a second set of Tables and the event mentioned in Exodus 33[9]:
(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[10]:
(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 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."[11]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Michelangelo". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.