MOSES

Moses
Michelangelo
1515, The Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome.

Moses appears here as a figure of exceptional gravity and grave intensity. He towers over the viewer as a colossal figure not only of history but of character. A force as hard as the marble of which he is carved. His body is muscular and full of motion. Your gaze spirals from his eyes down through his body to his back left foot, following the flow of movement in his beard and arms. Moses is frozen in a moment of decision, his legs look ready to stand yet his upper body and arms look relaxed, as if the decision to stay his hand has been made and the restraint is traveling down through his body.

Tucked under his right arm is the tablets of Law, his grasp on them is feeble signalling both the failure of Gods people to carry them out and the enormous weight that the law lays on those who live by it.

Sigmund Freud who spent years studying this work made this observation:
“In his first transport of fury, Moses desired to act, to spring up and take vengeance and forget the Tables; but he has overcome the temptation, and he will now remain seated and still, in his frozen wrath and his pain mingled with contempt. Nor will he throw away the Tables so that they will break on the stones, for it is on their particular account that he has controlled his anger; it was to preserve them that he kept his passion in check. In giving way to his rage and indignation, he had to neglect the Tables, and the hand which upheld them was withdrawn. They began to slide down and were in danger of being broken. This brought him to himself. He remembered his mission and for its sake renounced an indulgence of his feelings. His hand returned and saved the unsupported Tables before they had fallen to the ground.”
- Sigmund Freud. The Moses of Michelangelo (1914)

Most startling to our eyes is the horns on Moses’ head, Horns are a common signifier of Moses in art, they come from a miss-translation of Exodus 34:29 in the Latin Vulgate, where the word קָרַן  (keren) is translated as “cornata” meaning horned, modern translations use the term ‘radiant’, to describe Moses’ face as emitting rays of light.
(Exodus 34:29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was “horned/radiant” because he had spoken with the Lord.)

Moses’ gaze is fixed in the distance, his face looks pained yet sure. I imagine him to be looking over the promised land. The land that he longs for, a land that he is shown, but will not enter. As this sculpture sits on the Tomb of Pope Julius II, I picture his gaze reflecting the longing of the Christian for the world to come. Staring sorrowfully at death, with the calm assurance of the hope of resurrection and soul’s delivery.
looking through the low mist of death to the brightness beyond.
“And death is a low mist which cannot blot. The brightness it may veil”
Percy Bysshe Shelly. Adonais (1822)