Moses

Michelangelo's Moses sits in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, on the Oppian Hill a short walk from the Colosseum, as the centrepiece of the tomb of Pope Julius II. Julius commissioned the tomb in 1505 as a free-standing monument with more than forty statues; after his death in 1513 the project was cut down again and again, and it was finished only in 1545, with a fraction of the original figures. The Moses, carved around 1513-1515 and 2.35 m tall, would have sat high on the upper tier of the first design; in the final version it is at eye level, in the middle of the lower tier.

The prophet is seated, his head turned sharply to his left, the tablets of the Law clamped under his right arm, his fingers raking through a beard that falls like a river of carved hair. Giorgio Vasari wrote that the beard was so soft it seemed the chisel had become a brush. The horns on his head come from a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate of the passage in Exodus where Moses' face shines after speaking with God, and were a common convention in Christian art. Sigmund Freud spent weeks studying the figure in 1913 and argued that Michelangelo showed Moses not about to smash the tablets in rage but in the moment after mastering that anger.

The church itself is worth the visit. It was built in the 5th century to house the chains said to have bound Saint Peter, which are still kept in the church and give it its name, Saint Peter in Chains. Julius II, as Cardinal della Rovere, paid for a major rebuilding before he became pope. The Florentine sculptor Antonio del Pollaiuolo, who is thought to have added the twins to the Capitoline Wolf, is buried to the left of the entrance.

Getting there

San Pietro in Vincoli is near Cavour metro station in central Rome, a few minutes' walk from the Colosseum. Ciampino Airport (CIA) is about 14 km away and Fiumicino (FCO) about 23 km.