„In foramine petrae“. Michelangelo’s Literal Rendering of the Vulgate and the Horns of his Moses in the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula

Abstract

For depictions of Moses in Northern Europe the facies cornuta (Ex 34, 29–35), the horns of the Vulgate were common, but only a handful of depictions of Moses with horns have survived from Florence and Rome before Michelangelo. In canonical Latin commentaries on the Vulgata since the Glossa ordinaria, the “horns” were associated with light, relying on the Hebrew Bible and Rashi. So, the horns of Michelangelo Moses (ca. 1513–1516) were both a literal rendering of the Vulgate and – within central Italy – a deliberate anachronism.
Michelangelo read the Vulgate in the translation of Niccolò Malermi. In his Moses he interprets the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul confronts Moses’ “tablets of stone” with “tablets of the heart of flesh” (2 Cor 3), i.e. with the living body of the Christian resp. the converted Jew, permeated by the new revelation of God’s Spirit and Grace and by an undisguised vision of God.
Since 1544, when Michelangelo put his Moses deep into a niche in the center of the tomb of Pope Julius II in the church of Sancti Petri ad Vincula, the positioning of the statue and the visionary inclination of its head are reminiscent of Exodus 33, 22–23. The final location of the statue brings into mind the wording of the Vulgate of verse 22: Cumque transibit gloria mea, ponam te in foramine petrae (“And when my glory shall pass, I will set you in a hole in the rock”).