Michelangelo's Moses Statue - Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome

Moses is a marble sculpture (height 235 cm) by Michelangelo, datable to about 1513-1515, retouched in 1542 and preserved in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. The creation is part of the statuary complex conceived as the Tomb of Julius II (in fact the pope is buried in San Pietro together with his uncle Sixtus IV). Among the first sculpted for the pope's mausoleum project, it was also the only one among those conceived from the beginning to be used in the resized final result, which saw the light only after forty years of tormented events.

The work was created between 1513 and 1515 and later modified in 1542 by Michelangelo himself who made him, so to speak, rotate his head.

It is imagined that already from the first project for the tomb of Julius II, in 1505, the upper register had to be decorated with four seated figures in the round, larger than life size due to the raised position, depicting Moses, Saint Paul (both had received the divine revelation), and the personifications of active life and contemplative life.

In the project of 1513, resumed after the Pope's death and resized in 1516, the statues still occupied the upper register, but instead of facing the two faces of the isolated monument, they were placed side by side at the corners of a monument leaning against a wall. It was probably in this period that the statue of Moses was made, when the artist also sculpted the two Prisons of the Louvre (Dying Slave and Rebel Slave), before the start of work in San Lorenzo for Leo X and Clement VII.

The sculpture was part of the more ambitious project of 40 statues commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere in 1505, for the mausoleum, which was to house and guard the remains of the pontiff.

The statue, in its composition, expresses the solemnity and majesty of the biblical character. The gaze of Moses defined as "terrible" is famous: it has been interpreted as an expression of Michelangelo's character, irascible, proud and severe, for which the term "terribility" was coined.

Map: Michelangelo's Moses Statue - Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome