Description
The basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains) stands on the Oppian Hill, in the Monti district of Rome. It is famous for two things: it keeps the chains of St. Peter and houses the tomb of Pope Julius II with Michelangelo's Moses.
Moses sits at the center of the monument, in the right arm of the transept, two meters thirty-five tall. His beard flows down his chest, his body twists suddenly. According to legend Michelangelo struck him on the knee with his hammer: “Why don't you speak?”
The horns on his forehead come from a mistake: Michelangelo read as horns what in the Hebrew text were meant to be rays of light. Twenty-five years after completing it he turned the statue's head, perhaps to avert its gaze from the chains.
Moses is just one piece of a tomb smaller than the dream. In 1505 Pope Julius II had asked for a monument with more than forty statues. The project was changed six times, Michelangelo spoke of the “tragedy of the tomb,” and in the end there were seven statues.
Then there are the chains of St. Peter, under the high altar, in a reliquary with gilded bronze doors from 1477. According to tradition, the chains brought from Jerusalem, when held up to those of his Roman imprisonment, fused together.
The church was commissioned by Empress Eudoxia, who had it built starting in 432: that is why it is also called the Eudoxian basilica. It was consecrated in 439. Inside, twenty Doric columns of Greek marble divide the space into three naves.
On the ceiling stands out the fresco by Giovanni Battista Parodi from 1706, with the miracle of the chains. Near the entrance is the tomb of the Florentine painters Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo.
In the crypt under the altar is kept the sarcophagus of the seven Maccabee brothers, martyred in the second century BC and also venerated by Christians. It was found in 1876 during work on the presbytery.
Moses sits at the center of the monument, in the right arm of the transept, two meters thirty-five tall. His beard flows down his chest, his body twists suddenly. According to legend Michelangelo struck him on the knee with his hammer: “Why don't you speak?”
The horns on his forehead come from a mistake: Michelangelo read as horns what in the Hebrew text were meant to be rays of light. Twenty-five years after completing it he turned the statue's head, perhaps to avert its gaze from the chains.
Moses is just one piece of a tomb smaller than the dream. In 1505 Pope Julius II had asked for a monument with more than forty statues. The project was changed six times, Michelangelo spoke of the “tragedy of the tomb,” and in the end there were seven statues.
Then there are the chains of St. Peter, under the high altar, in a reliquary with gilded bronze doors from 1477. According to tradition, the chains brought from Jerusalem, when held up to those of his Roman imprisonment, fused together.
The church was commissioned by Empress Eudoxia, who had it built starting in 432: that is why it is also called the Eudoxian basilica. It was consecrated in 439. Inside, twenty Doric columns of Greek marble divide the space into three naves.
On the ceiling stands out the fresco by Giovanni Battista Parodi from 1706, with the miracle of the chains. Near the entrance is the tomb of the Florentine painters Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo.
In the crypt under the altar is kept the sarcophagus of the seven Maccabee brothers, martyred in the second century BC and also venerated by Christians. It was found in 1876 during work on the presbytery.