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Programme Title MA History of Art

Module Title Frameworks: Histories and Theories of Art, Architecture, Photography

Module Code (listed on student timetables) ARVC247S7-AAA

Module Tutor Professor Steve Edwards

Assessed Essay 2: Stephen Bertman and Sigmund Freud on Michelangelo’s

Coursework Title
Moses

Word Count 3,528 Date Submitted 12/01/2020

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1. Introduction

Michelangelo’s Moses is a sculptural object that has loomed large in the field of art history
from its very inception. In his Lives of the Artists, Vasari, himself a contemporary of
Michelangelo, figures it as ‘a statue in marble of five braccia, which no modern work will
ever equal in beauty’ –1 and although for many in the field this is an enduring consensus,
there are others who rally against it.

As necessitated by its position at the birth of art history’s literary canon, the work has
inevitably attracted a plethora of interpretations, creating a locus against which various art
historical and hermeneutic frameworks can be tested. This is true of the two texts I wish to
focus on over the course of this study, Stephen Bertman’s The Antisemitic Origin of
Michelangelo’s Horned Moses and Sigmund Freud’s The Moses of Michelangelo.2 My aim is
to clearly delineate the intersectional approaches used by both writers, taking into account
their divergent fields and modes of rhetoric. Starting from a stance of contextual grounding,
we shall explore the latent motivations of both writers, points of comparison and division
within their methodologies, how the sculpture itself is summoned in their writings, and
finally, their engagement with the wealth of critical discourse and historical material.

2. The Texts

Published at opposing ends of the 19th century, the two texts engage with Moses from
starkly distinct perspectives, with vastly differing aims. In many ways they have been
selected because of this gulf between them, through which we can in some sense chart the
evolution of the discipline of art history and associated critical discourse, despite the
authors’ intersectional approaches.

1
G. Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors & Architects, (London: Macmillan and Co. & The
Medici Society, 1912-14) p.24
2
S. Bertman, ‘The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses’, Shofar, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Indiana: Purdue
University Press, 2009); S. Freud, ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’, The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIII, (London: The Hogarth Press and The Institute of
Psychoanalysis, 1955)
Freud’s The Moses of Michelangelo was initially published anonymously in the spring of
1914 in the third volume of his own journal Imago which was (and remains to this day)3
primarily dedicated to furthering the cause of psychoanalysis. It is tempting therefore, to
view the entire text as Freud beating the drum for the potential application of
psychoanalytic frameworks to areas outside of the field’s traditional concerns. Certainly, as
Laurie Schneider Adams has since made evident, both fields ‘require a historical approach –
art history to chronologies of culture, documentation and style, and psychoanalysis to the
developmental history of the individual.’4 Freud approaches a new conception of
representation in Michelangelo’s work, concluding that the artist has departed from the
biblical transcripts in depicting a figure ‘superior to the historical or traditional Moses’,
emblematic of ‘the highest mental achievement that is possible in a man’. 5

However, Freud’s motivations for publishing anonymously have been the cause of sustained
speculation. Figures close to Freud such as Dr Ernest Jones suggest that Freud identified
personally with the bringer of law due to a schism within the field which led to the
departure of Adler and Jung from Freud’s inner circle.6 Erich Fromm writes that ‘the Moses
figure was of great emotional importance to Freud, yet an importance which was not clearly
recognised consciously, and against the recognition of which must have existed a
considerable resistance’.7 Clearly, this is not a problem we can address with any certainty,
and while psychoanalytic theorising concerning Freud’s own mentality is pervasively rife
within the field, it would not serve the aims of this study to continue courting conjecture.
We must therefore base our conclusions on what is contained within the text itself, and the
general rationale of Imago.

In the case of Bertman, his motivations are far clearer. This is a piece that endeavours to cut
through the chaff of historical critical debate surrounding Michelangelo’s Moses in order to
level a clear charge of anti-Semitic bias at the artist, as reflected immediately in the titling. A
professor emeritus of Classics at the University of Windsor who has produced work ranging

3
Although known by a slightly different name. Imago was relaunched as American Imago by Freud and his
fellow psychoanalyst Hanns Sachs in 1939.
4
L. S. Adams, Art and Psychoanalysis, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994) p.1
5
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.233
6
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.230
7
E. Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission: An Analysis of his Personality and Influence, (New York: Open Road,
2013) p.54
across a variety of disciplines, Bertman publishes his piece in a 2009 edition of Shofar, the
journal of Jewish Studies. It is consequently important to remind ourselves that
Michelangelo’s Moses is a monumental piece of Christian art and constitutes a loaded zone
for the Jewish academic. Bertman figures the sculpture as indicative of a persistent
demonisation of Jewish communities within the art historical and literary canons,
particularly evident within the writings of Vasari. As Gerd Blum clarifies, ‘The Live’s narrative
of the history of art stems from theological “meta-histories,” and it attributes to the Jews
and to Judaism the very role that, mutatis mutandis, had been traditionally ascribed by
Christian theology of history to the Jews of the Hebrew bible.’. 8 Bertman writes an
iconographic study of one particular element of Moses, his horns, in order to rectify this
historical imbalance. This constitutes a mode of thinking which would have been met with a
frosty reception in 1914, with Jewish studies and post-colonial disciplines only gaining
sustained popularity in the latter half of the 20 th century.

When viewed comparatively with Freud’s article, which attracts almost as much
commentary and criticism as the statue itself, Bertman could perhaps be seen as operating
on the relative academic fringes. Yet still, there are inevitable points of relation in their
writing. To name but a few, both figures linger over fragments of Biblical verse, both engage
heavily with the critical discourse surrounding the sculptural object, and both, as Jones
points out in Freud, fail to ‘directly discuss the theme of aesthetic appreciation.’9, this being
secondary to their key objectives.

3. Methodologies

When reading Freud and Bertman it is immediately clear that they are both deploying
sophisticated methodological frameworks in order to effectively interpret the sculptural
object. Bertman’s approach is iconographic and historical, focusing on Moses’ horns as
symptomatic of ‘a derogatory pictorial code’ which ‘was consciously and consistently
applied … to portray the Jewish people as a monstrous race in league with the devil’.10 This

8
G. Blum, ‘Vasari on the Jews: Christian Canon, Conversion, and the "Moses" of Michelangelo’, The Art
Bulletin, Vol. 95, No. 4, (New York: CAA, 2013) p.560
9
E. Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud Volume III, (New York: Basic Books, 1957) p. 414
10
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.102
approach is not surprising considering Bertman’s multi-disciplinary output, with
iconographic frameworks having close ties to linguistics. Indeed, as Giulio Carlo Argan posits,
Erwin Panofsky’s original formation of the term bears close proximity to a ‘semiotic of art’. 11

This can be viewed as a point of comparison between the two writers. Freud’s own pictorial
and literary codex, presented in his earlier work The Interpretation of Dreams, is deployed at
various points within The Moses of Michelangelo,12 and could be described as a semiotic of
psychoanalysis. As Gerald L. Bruns posits, ‘Like the dream, the statue is not simply a
composition of images but a work of concealment which must be reassembled into an
intelligible discourse’.13 Freud readily falls upon details of supposed insignificance within the
sculptural object in order to press forward his interpretation - the carefully arranged mantle,
the fingers of the right hand. Freud even goes as far as to relate the techniques of
psychoanalysis to the methods of art-identification utilised by Morelli,14 finding a kindred
spirit in the connoisseur’s predilection for overlooked minutiae.

Nevertheless, Bertman’s close historical analysis of the horned motif or image throughout
his study proves far more convincing.15 Bearing witness to the passage of racially charged
iconography from societal bias to art history, becoming codified by its inclusion in the canon
as a weighted sign, the construction of meaning is convincingly supported by a framework of
historical grounding that is absent in Freud, whose subjective interpretations are almost
entirely built on the shaky terrain of contemporary criticism alone. For example, Bertman
also makes evident the visibility of anti-Semitic trends in Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine
Chapel, discussing a Jewish figure who ‘anachronistically wears the yellow badge of shame
on the cloak that covers his left arm’. 16 The act of anachronism is of greatest importance
here, highlighting how the societal imbalances of a given age instinctively pass into artistic
or literary signification, effectively restructuring history through the lens of the
contemporary time.

11
C. Hasenmueller, ‘Panofsky, Iconography and Semiotics’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36,
No. 3, (Hoboken: Wiley, 1978) p.289
12
S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1997)
13
G. L. Bruns, ‘Freud, Structuralism and “The Moses of Michelangelo”’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 1, (Hoboken: Wiley, 1974) p.17
14
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.222
15
In his work Iconography and iconology: an introduction to the study of Renaissance art, Panofsky defines his
concept of an image as the fusion of an ideological theme and an aesthetic motif.
16
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.104
3.1 Interpreting Intent

It is perhaps unfair of us to compare Bertman to Freud in this reductive fashion. As Campbell

Crockett makes clear, ‘psychoanalytic criticism breaks across the boundaries, such as they
are, established by distinct classes of criticism’. 17 Freud is attempting a double-pronged
interpretation, one which probes the work, taking into account both sculptural form and
artistic will. Bruns reminds of this – ‘the work expresses both a sense and a reference, or
what he calls the meaning of what is represented in the work, in contrast to the ‘intention’
of the artist.’18 For Freud, these two parallel lines of analysis are essential in order to grasp
the true meaning of the work. One is reminded strongly of his psychobiographical work
Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of His Childhood when he speaks to Michelangelo’s
impetus for supposedly straying from biblical verse in his depiction of Moses; ‘And so he
carved his Moses on the Pope’s tomb … as a warning to himself, thus, in self-criticism, rising
superior to his own nature.’.19 The assumptions posited by Freud here, gleaned from details
in the work and fragments of historical supposition, are key to his framework as they make
manifest the psyche of the artist.

In contrast Bertman, considering historical and societal trends rather than the individual
mind, need not entertain the same speculative analyses. Bertman shows us that
Michelangelo’s will was not the only motivating force; he could have also been seen as
distilling the institutional values of the church into his works, consciously or unconsciously.
As Bertman reminds us, ‘these Church-sanctioned images served to justify, incite and
exacerbate its outbreaks and virulence’.20

4. The Sculptural Object: Modes of Viewing

We should therefore view these two methodologies and their aims as distinct, and focus
instead upon how reading them comparatively opens up new avenues of exploration within

17
C. Crockett, ‘Psychoanalysis in Art Criticism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol 17, No.1,
(Hoboken: Wiley, 1958) p.36
18
Bruns, Freud, Structuralism and “The Moses of Michelangelo”, p.13
19
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.234
20
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.102
the sculptural work itself. It would be prudent to ask ourselves then, how is the sculpture
itself made manifest within the texts?

Stressing his intimate familiarity with the statue is important for Freud, perhaps in order to
give some rhetorical justification for the writing of this paper by an anonymous ‘layman’. 21
Where he writes ‘How often have I mounted the steep steps from the unlovely Corso
Cavour…’,22 he seems to be subtly introducing the authority from which his conclusions are
based. Proceeding with connoisseurial tradition, Freud’s perspective is formed from
privileged access to the church of San Pietro in Vincoli and the work that lays within.
Interestingly, it is this very notion of access and familiarity that leads to one of Freud’s
biggest oversights, the fact that the original design of the tomb would have seen Moses
displayed at an elevation of some 15 feet. Viewed from the intended height and angle, the
dimensions and contortions of the body would be positively transfigured. As Earl E.
Rosenthal points out ‘Most scholars accept this placement, but they seem to forget it when
they describe the form or interpret the content of the statue’.23 We can thus understand the
omission as a shortcoming of the critical tradition itself, with Freud, as he darts from
Springer, to Justi, to Thode, merely participating in a long-standing annal of omission.

The reading of the sculpture that Bertman supplies, focusing as it does on one central motif,
manages to dodge this critical bullet. 24 Bertman draws the reader closer to the physical
work through the charting of horns as an iconographic image in the preceding ages before
the statue’s conception. It is only in the final pages that the sculpture is confronted as ‘a
work of marble … linked in the minds of his audience with the demonic’.25 This is a key
distinction between the two texts, Bertman is charting an ideological trend which to him
holds more importance than the overall formal quality of the piece, his approach being
‘“etymological” rather than interpretive of meaning’. 26

21
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.211
22
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.213
23
E. E. Rosenthal, ‘Michelangelo’s Moses, dal di sotto in sù’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, No.4, (New York: CAA,
1964) p.545
24
Although Rosenthal suggests that when viewed from a worm-eye view Moses’ horns gain ‘the symmetry of
the “twin horned” rays of light, long an attribute of Moses’, I do not find this a convincing account of their
inclusion.
25
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.105
26
Hasenmueller, Panofsky, Iconography and Semiotics, p.295
It is interesting that Freud fails to mention the horns at all, except for a veiled allusion to
‘the animal cast of the head’.27 This is a notable omission considering that in the context of
the Old Testament Moses’ horned status could be read as evidence that the scene depicted
does indeed occur after Moses’ descent from Mount Sinai as Freud attests, for it is only
through theophany that this transfiguration takes place. 28

Disappointingly, when Bertman strays from the focus of Moses’ horned head, his argument
lacks conviction. Taking a brief and unnecessary foray into the genre of psychobiography,
Bertman suggests at the tail end of his text that Michelangelo had been compelled to
fashion the posture of Moses after Marcovaldo’s depiction of Satan on the ceiling of
Florence’s Baptistery. Explaining that the earlier work constituted ‘a vision of Hell that
would have surely burned itself into the consciousness of the young sculptor’, 29 Bertman
goes on to offer a brief comparison of the two represented bodies. Something Bertman
does not do is include plates of the works, possibly because this would undermine his
argument. Unfortunately, when viewed side by side there is little similarity, despite the
horned status of both figures.

Freud however, goes to great lengths to illustrate his interpretation of Moses, including a
series of drawings detailing the various stages of posture he posits as immediately preceding
the stance of the finished sculpture. Here we enter a strange zone of psychoanalytic
interpretation, as Freud attempts to read the emotional energy latent within the sculpture’s
pose, the positioning of beard and fingers, and project it backwards – ‘on the assumption
that even these details have significance’. 30 Adhering too closely to his traditional
psychoanalytic methods, he attempts to draw out a potentially non-existent contextual
background of emotional meaning ‘so that the work may finally be interpreted as an act of
speech’,31 wishing to treat Moses as patient rather than object.

27
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.215
28
T. B. Dozeman, Masking Moses and Mosaic Authority in Torah, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 119, No. 1
(Atlanta: SBL, 2000)
29
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.105
30
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.224
31
Bruns, Freud, Structuralism and “The Moses of Michelangelo”, p.17
5. Critical Discourse

The wealth of critical and historical material generated in response to Michelangelo’s Moses
is vast and invariably necessitates comment; one cannot fully comprehend our two texts
without placing them in discursive context.

Freud follows in the footsteps of contemporary critics of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. He parses Burckhardt, Springer, Wölfflin, and Thode, among others, pointing out
minor differences in their readings of the emotional energy of the sculpture. However,
instead of using this to highlight the subjectivity of art and how it affects the psyche, Freud
stresses that these interpretations are simply misguided and that the correct solution is yet
to be found. He supports this claim with the rhetorical query ‘Has then the master-hand
indeed traced such a vague or ambiguous script in the stone, that so many different
readings of it are possible?’.32

Seeking to modulate the work of his contemporaries, and add to debate rather than
supersede it, Bertman’s approach is perhaps indicative of the relative maturity of the field at
the time of his publication. Margit Linnéa Süring and Ruth Mellinkoff are credited for their
research into the horn motif, in the 4th and 11th centuries respectively. This is key due to
Bertman’s academic position against the tide of the traditional art historical can on – there is
a need to gather overwhelming cohesive evidence in order to dismantle ‘a legacy of anti -
Semitism that stretched from antiquity to the Renaissance.’. 33

Moving from contemporaneous figures to biblical scripture, both Freud and Bertman take
issue with the methods of translation and amalgamation evident within the theological
account. Bertman goes into great detail accounting for the conflicting translations of the
bible and the problematic production of the eventual ‘Vulgate’ or popular edition p roduced
by St Jerome in the 4th century – one of the first after Aquila to describe Moses as horned.
Writing that Jerome’s translation was ‘not envisioned as a dispassionate academic exercise’
by the Church, but instead ‘the spiritual ammunition it needed to defend the faith’,34 the
intentionality of anti-Semitic thought is effectively traced and rooted within the horn motif.

32
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.215
33
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.106
34
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.100
Freud also queries this point, noting that the passage depicting Moses’ ascent to Mount
Sinai could not be read ‘without finding evidence that it has been clumsily put together from
various sources’.35 Noting that ‘the age of the Renaissance had naturally no such critical
attitude towards the text of the Bible’, 36 this mingling of sources is attributed to
Michelangelo’s supposed deviation from conventional scripture in Freud’s view, although no
further evidence is supplied to support this claim. Conversely, Bertman works from Jerome’s
own letters in which he accuses people of Jewish heritage of ‘having deliberately
mistranslated their scriptures into Greek [rather than Latin] out of hatred in order to
undercut Christianity’s claims’. 37 The validity that this approach, working from primary
sources, lends to Bertman’s central conceit is inexorable.

6. Conclusions

Viewing these two clearly divergent texts comparatively is primarily an exercise in

methodological taxonomy. Freud, the psychoanalyst, models his approach too closely to the
conventional analyst-analysand relationship, unfortunately overreaching in his attempts to
discern Michelangelo’s true intentions, as if that were the chief objective of art historical
interpretation. This relative naivety can be forgiven considering the era Freud was operating
in, one in which the connoisseurial approach to the discipline was paramount and
psychoanalytic frameworks were only just beginning to be applied with intersectional
intent. Interestingly, Freud anticipates our criticism, noting ‘What if we have taken too
serious and profound a view of details which were nothing to the artist?’. 38 It is here that
our view of the text as a testing ground for other applications of the psychoanalytic
framework gains the most validity.

Bertman, the classicist, carefully charts etymological strands in biblical tradition in order to
support his claims. Paying close heed to shifts in literary, ideological and pictorial tradition,
when we eventually meet Moses towards the conclusion of the text we feel so compelled by
Bertman’s meticulous historical research that it is hard to find fault with his argument. This

35
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.232
36
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.232
37
Bertman, The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses, p.101
38
Freud, The Moses of Michelangelo, p.236
iconographic continuum is the greatest strength of Bertman’s text, and it is only when he
deviates from this central conceit, for example to compare Michelangelo with Marcovaldo,
that his argument weakens.

Personally, the existence of “monumental” artists and works leaves me with mixed feelings.
These are the foundations of the canon and the discipline, and so it is only natural that new
interpretative frameworks be levelled against them. Nonetheless, I hope that the view of
the lone artistic genius removed from societal context, prevalent in Freud, less so in
Bertman, continues to recede.
7. Appendix

Fig 1: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Moses, (1505-1545, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome)

8. Bibliography

Adams, Laurie Schneider. Art and Psychoanalysis, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994)

Bertman, Stephen. ‘The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses’, Shofar, Vol. 27, No. 4
(Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2009)

Blum, Gerd ‘Vasari on the Jews: Christian Canon, Conversion, and the "Moses" of Michelangelo’, The
Art Bulletin, Vol. 95, No. 4, (New York: CAA, 2013)

Bruns, Gerald L. ‘Freud, Structuralism and “The Moses of Michelangelo”’, The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 1, (Hoboken: Wiley, 1974)

Crockett, Campbell. ‘Psychoanalysis in Art Criticism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol
17, No.1, (Hoboken: Wiley, 1958)

Dozeman, Thomas B. Masking Moses and Mosaic Authority in Torah, Journal of Biblical Literature,
Vol. 119, No. 1 (Atlanta: SBL, 2000)

Freud, Sigmund. ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIII, (London: The Hogarth Press and The Institute of
Psychoanalysis, 1955)

Freud, Sigmund. ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood’, The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XI, (London: The Hogarth Press and The
Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1955)

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1997)

Fromm, Erich. Sigmund Freud's Mission: An Analysis of his Personality and Influence, (New York:
Open Road, 2013)

Hasenmueller, Christine. ‘Panofsky, Iconography and Semiotics’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 3, (Hoboken: Wiley, 1978)

Jones, Ernest. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud Volume III, (New York: Basic Books, 1957)

Panofsky, Erwin. “Iconography and iconology: an introduction to the study of Renaissance art”,
Meaning in the Visual Arts, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)

Rosenthal, Earl E. ‘Michelangelo’s Moses, dal di sotto in sù’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, No.4, (New
York: CAA, 1964)

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors & Architects, (London: Macmillan and
Co. & The Medici Society, 1912-14)

9. Work Cited

Buonarroti, Michelangelo. Moses (1505-1545: San Pietro in Vincoli)

Marcovaldo, Coppo di. Mosaic on the Vault (circa. 1301: Florence Baptistery)