The Moses Of Miguel Ángel Published In 1914

The Moses of Miguel Ángel published in 1914

Introduction

The Moses of Miguel Ángel published in 1914 anonymously, was one of the five trials on art that Freud wrote. The Hebrew prophet gave up another essay, Freud’s last.

The germ of this work is collected in a letter from Sigmund Freud written in 1912: I like to wander through the ruins of the palatine and by the villa Borghese, a huge park, although very Roman, and daily I will visit the Moses ofSan Pietro in Vincoli, on which, perhaps, I decide to write something.

Developing

Freud makes confession in the principle of this essay that some works of art exert a powerful action about him, and he needs to know why he experiences such an intense way, thus resorting to the interpretation of a work of art, one of them,The Moses of Miguel Ángel located in the church of San Pietro In Vincoli in Rome, although it was originally destined to the funeral monument that would keep the remains of Pope Julio II. From her she tells us that no other sculpture has ever produced me so powerful effect. Proof of this is the daily visit to this work during his stay in Rome.

Thus, in a letter writes: my relationship with this work was like the one with a son of love. Daily, for three lonely weeks in September 1912, I planted in the church before this statue studying it, measuring it and drawing it, until it raised in me the conviction that I only dared to express anonymously in the essay. Until much later I did not recognize this non -analytical child.

The author at no time questions or speaks of the artistic values of Michelangel. This description is made by exposing numerous judgments of important art critics such as Hermann Grimm, Justi or Burckhardt. These judgments between them are contradictory causing the essay to read, many doubts arise about the interpretation of the figure.

Freud gives special attention to details such as the beard, but without talking about its expressive or artistic value, but analyzes the route that the beard makes from the face to the lap of the Moses;He also the position of the tables of the law that are placed with singing, adding that it is an observation that can go unnoticed by the viewer.

The fact that Freud has so much interest in details of the Moses that generally go unnoticed is a reflection of the importance of the small details for him, since behind them we can find the way to the unconscious more simply. With this attitude approaches the method used by the Italian art critic Giovanni Morelli who maintains that each artist has a kind of key, uses in his works always equal secondary details, such as, for example, the representation of an ear in a certain way. Method that served to determine the paternity of a work of art.

Taking into account the analysis that makes the beard and the contact that maintains with the index finger of the right hand and how the tables of the law are arranged;The author proposes that in the work the introduction of a violent action is not seen, as has been traditionally explained, but that is what remains of the movement already executed. He will no longer strip the tables, since for them he has dominated I will be angry to save them from his choleric impulse. At this moment, at ETA attitude it is already still, and so Miguel Ángel represents it just.

conclusion

Taking into account the analysis of the beard and the contact that maintains with the index finger of the right hand and the position of the tables of the law, Freud proposes that in this work what we see is not the introduction of a violent action,As this work has been explained in a traditional way, but the residue of an already executed movement. Moses will no longer throw the boards, breaking them against the stone, because precisely because of them he has dominated their anger, endorsing to save them their passionate impulse. In this attitude it remained still, and Miguel Ángel has eternalized so.

Fredu ends up contributing a different interpretation to the traditional one in which Moses is represented at the time of raising by suggesting that the sculptor transformed the character of the Moses, a patent transformation into the fact of the containment of anger before the vision of the idolatrous people, with theIn order to avoid the rupture of the tables. Thus, the enormous body mass and the prodigious musculature of the statue are only a somatic means of expression of the highest possible psychic performance to a man, of the expiration of the passions themselves for the benefit of a mission to which it has been consecrated.