Mosè di Michelangelo

This guide to Michelangelo's Moses in Rome follows a commission gone wrong: in 1505 Pope Julius II asked for a tomb monument with some forty statues, only for rival architect Bramante to redirect the funding and send Michelangelo fleeing Rome in fear for his life. Over four decades the design shrank six times, ending up not in St. Peter's but in this small Esquiline church, a monument that holds no pope at all. Moses is the one figure Michelangelo finished to his own satisfaction, tablets tucked under one arm.