Tables of The Law

The figure of Moses, therefore, cannot be suppo­sed to be springing to his feet; he must be allowed to remain as he is in sublime repose like the other figures and like the pro-posed statue of the Pope (which was not, how-ever, executed by Michelangelo himself). But then the statue we see before us cannot be that of a man filled with wrath, of Moses when he came down from Mount Sinai and found his people faithless and threw down the Holy Ta-bles so that they were broken. And, indeed, 1 can recollect my own disillusion­ment when, during my first visits to San Pietro in Vincoli, 1 used to sit down in front of the statue in the expectation that I should now see how it would start up on its raised foot, dash the Tables of the Law to the ground and let fly its wrath.