Italiano 
English 
العربية Such is his energy that it might lead one to overlook a truly curious detail: the two horns protruding from his head. Why did Michelangelo, who sculpted as if God had lent him his hand, place two horns on Moses, one of the most revered prophets of the Bible?
Horns, in the collective imagination, are the mark of the devil, of deception, of temptation. And yet here they are, firmly set upon the head of God's lawgiver.
The answer is not trivial. It all stems from a mistranslation. In the Bible, after Moses receives the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, the Hebrew text says that his face is "karan," that is, radiant, full of light. But Hebrew, for those who do not know it, can be a minefield: it writes only consonants, so "karan" becomes "KRN." And so those translating the Bible confuse that word with "keren," which means "horns." The result? Moses does not come down with a radiant face, but with horns. And this mistaken version, also present in Saint Jerome's Vulgate—the most widespread Latin translation of the Bible in the Middle Ages—also passes before Michelangelo's eyes, who relies on tradition and persists in the error, which carries a strong flavor of provocation.
His Moses—sculpted for the tomb monument of Pope Julius II in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome—is anything but a serene man. His face is charged with tension. His gaze is oblique, penetrating, as if he were about to rise at any moment. His body is a spring ready to snap. Let us observe that almost imperceptible gesture of the hand grasping the long, intertwined beard. It conceals another small mystery.
The beard, shifted and knotted between Moses' fingers, is a brilliant solution to a dramatic problem: while Michelangelo was working the marble, a crack threatened to compromise the entire sculpture. The critical point was located precisely between the head and the chest. So the sculptor decided to carve the beard "shifted," making it curve in such a way as to cover the cracked area and preserve the integrity of the block. A masterpiece within the masterpiece. A solution that combines technical salvation and symbolic refinement.
