"Moses" by Michelangelo: "Radiant" not "Horned"
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.
Description
The marble sculpture appears to depict Moses with horns on his head, though some modern artists and historians claim that there were never intended to be horns.[2]
The depiction of a horned Moses 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.[3] 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."[4] This was, however, a mistranslation of the original Hebrew Masoretic text which uses a term equivalent to "radiant",[5] suggesting an effect like a halo. The Greek Septuagint translated the verse as "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified."[6]
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."[7]
The assumption for centuries was that Michelangelo simply "didn't know better" than the accepted mistranslation. However, as Rabbi Benjamin Blech pointed out in his 2008 book, Sistine Secrets,
Description
The marble sculpture appears to depict Moses with horns on his head, though some modern artists and historians claim that there were never intended to be horns.[2]
The depiction of a horned Moses 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.[3] 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."[4] This was, however, a mistranslation of the original Hebrew Masoretic text which uses a term equivalent to "radiant",[5] suggesting an effect like a halo. The Greek Septuagint translated the verse as "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified."[6]
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."[7]
The assumption for centuries was that Michelangelo simply "didn't know better" than the accepted mistranslation. However, as Rabbi Benjamin Blech pointed out in his 2008 book, Sistine Secrets,
"[The statue] never had horns. The artist had planned Moses as a masterpiece not only of sculpture, but also of special optical effects worthy of any Hollywood movie. For this reason, the piece had to be elevated and facing straight forward, looking in the direcion of the front door of the basilica. The two protrusions on the head would have been invisible to the viewer looking up from the floor below — the only thing that would have been seen was the light reflected off of them." [2][From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_(Michelangelo)]
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