Originally conceived for the tomb of Pope Julius II in the Basilica of Saint Peter , the Moses and the tomb were finally placed in the minor church of San Pietro in Vincoli , in the Esquiline area , after the death of the pope. Members of the della Rovere family, from which the pope came, were the patrons of this church, and the pope himself had been its titular cardinal before his appointment to the head of the Catholic Church .
The tomb of Julius II, a colossal structure that was supposed to give Michelangelo enough space for his superhuman and tragic beings, became one of the great disappointments in the artist's life when the pope, without offering any explanation, interrupted the donations. , possibly diverting said funds to the reconstruction of San Pedro by Donato Bramante . The original project consisted of a freestanding, unsupported, three-tiered structure with approximately 40 statues. After the death of the pope in 1513 , the scale of the project was gradually reduced until, in 1542, a final contract specified a tomb with a simple wall and with less than a third of the figures included in the original project.
The spirit of the work, however, can be seen in the figure of Moses , completed during one of the resumes of the work in 1513 . Designed to be viewed from below, and balanced by seven other huge, similarly-themed shapes, today's Moses , in its ludicrous context compared to the original project, can hardly have the impact desired by the artist. The leader of Israel appears seated, with the Tablets of the Law under his arm, while with the other hand he strokes the curls of his beard. The imagination can place this representation of Moses in the passage of ecstasy after receiving the Commandments in theMount Sinai , while, in the valley at the foot of the mount, the people of Israel once again indulge in idolatry. Again, Michelangelo uses a turned head, concentrating an expression of tremendous anger that is also reflected in the powerful constitution of the statue and in its eyes.
The relevance of the details of the body and the folds of the clothing, which cause a certain psychic tension, can be appreciated by carefully studying the sculpture: the bulging of the muscles, the swelling of the veins, the large legs, heavy when starting to move. . As one writer claims, if this titan rose up, the world would shatter. Michelangelo carries the holy wrath of Mosesto its peak. However, it does contain it, since the passionate beings of the artist are prohibited from releasing their energies. It is a Neoplatonic representation, the right part is stable, it is the divine part, where inspiration comes from, in contrast, the left part is the part where danger and evil come. He is tense, seeing how his people have fallen into idolatry. It has four Neoplatonic elements, the earth, represented on the leg with the folds of the clothes as a cave. The air when you breathe, is perceived in the wings of your nose, which expand. The water represented in their beards like a waterfall. The fire represented with these "horns" (in painting it was easy to represent, with a light behind the character, but in sculpture he had to use this device).
Michelangelo's work inspired another statue of Moses in the Fontana dell'Acqua Felice , but this one is of a very low-key quality.
Moses, following a western iconographic tradition, is represented with two horns on his head. This image comes from the description of the prophet after lowering of Mount Sinai, as related in Chapter 34 of Exodus , as translated Latin known as the Vulgate. 8 In this text, and some vernacular translations such as the Douay Rheims Bible in English, it is read that the face of Moses was " cornuta " ("horned" in English). The Hebrew text indicates that the face of Moses shone, for which he uses the word qaran. (From the root qrn, which is usually translated as horn). Although some historians have argued that Jerome, the Latin translator of the Bible, made a mistake,the truth is that in his other writings, Jerome shows that he understands qeren as a metaphor for "glory," especially in his commentary on Ezekiel, where he writes that the face of Moses "was transformed into 'glorious', or, as we say in Hebrew, 'cuckold' During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, is clearly he understood the metaphor
The first representation of Moses with horns appears in an 11th century Anglo-Saxon manuscript (ca. 1050), a paraphrase of the Pentateuch and Joshua written by the monk Aelfric. Similar Images are common since then, throughout Western Europe ,including the stained glass windows of the cathedrals of Chartres and Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle.
In a book that appeared in 2008, Rabbi Benjamin Blech advanced the hypothesis that, in their original location, the "horns" would not be visible, but the light reflected from them would be; in this way the face of Moses would seem to radiate a supernatural glow.
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