Moses – Wikipedia events

Moses removes his shoes (retail)

Feminine face (detail)

Moses tests (an Italy: Tests of Moses ) is a fresco (348.5 × 558 cm ) by Sandro Botticelli, dated from the years 1481-1482 and located at the Vatican Sistine Chapel.

The October 27, 1480 , Sandro Botticelli, with other Florentine painters, left for Rome, where he had been called in the context of the reconciliation project between Laurent de Médicis, Florentine statesman and manager in fact of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance and Pope Sixtus IV. The Florentines began to work in the Sistine Chapel, from the spring of 1481, with the Perugin, which was already there.

Sandro Botticelli, helped by many assistants, painted three scenes. THE February 17, 1482 , his contract is renewed, in order to carry out the other scenes to complete the decoration of the chapel. However, the February 20 , his father dies: he returned to Florence without returning to Rome.

The theme of decoration is a parallel between the biblical episodes concerning Moses and those of Christ, as a sign of continuity between the Old and the New Testament. Continuity also exists between the divine law of the tables and the message of Jesus, who, in turn, chose Pierre, the first bishop of Rome, as his successor in order to finally lead to a legitimization of the popes of Rome, successors of the last.

The fresco is symmetrical of that located on the opposite wall of the Sistine Chapel, also of Sandro Botticelli, which depicts Jesus temptations . The frieze includes registration: Tempatio Moisi written by a legator .
It shows seven episodes of the youth of Moses, taken from the book of the Exodus:

1. Right lower corner: Moses kills an Egyptian from his sword who beat a Hebrew (parallel with the episode of Jesus who defeated the demon). A woman puts Hebrew injured in safety in her house.
2. Moses flees in the desert for the country of Madian: he is on a path that is lost in the depths of the composition.
3. Moses defends Jethro’s girls whose future wife sephora against shepherds who want to chase them while they draw water from the well.
4. In the center of the composition: Moses gives the sheep drinking young girls under a large oak.
5. Upper left corner: Details of the first meeting of Moses with God whose sheep of Jethro; Moîse is seated in the meadow, taking off his second shoe.
6. Moses kneels and then receives the divine revelation of the burning bush: bare feet, the stick against the shoulder.
7. Lower left corner of the table: Moses performs the mission that God entrusted to him on Mount Horeb and led the people of Israel outside Egypt towards the Promised Land.

Moses is distinguished by its golden yellow dress and the green coat.

A young man wearing a dog resembling a chihuhua (detail)

One of the Hebrews carries under his arm a dog strongly resembling a chihuahua while the fresco was made ten years before the first trip of Christopher Columbus to America, which aroused theories on the origins of this dog generally considered as Mexican ^{[ first ]} .

The painters of the Sistine Chapel have adopted common agreements in order to provide homogeneous work: use of a common dimensional scale, rhythmic structure and representation of the common landscape. They also used a single palette and gold finishes.

Of the three episodes produced by Botticelli, he is the most ordered in the representation of the episodes of the scene told. Moses is always recognizable by his golden dress and her green coat.

The best effect, however, remains the vigor of portraits and the richness of iconographic innovations, which nevertheless in certain cases form a fragmentary whole, perhaps because of the disorientation of the painter operating in unconventional dimensions and themes and in an environment that He is a foreigner.

The fresco is part of the imaginary museum of the French historian Paul Veyne, who describes it in his work precisely entitled My imaginary museum ^{[ 2 ]} .

• Bruno Santi, « Botticelli  » in The protagonists of Italian art , Scala Group, Florence 2001 (ISBN  8881170914 )