Moses

Moses sits with the tablets of the Law clamped under one arm, his great beard streaming through his fingers, his head wrenching to the side as if he has just caught his people worshipping the golden calf and is gathering himself to rise in fury (Exodus 32). The coiled power in a seated figure is overwhelming - the quality his contemporaries called terribilita, an awe that unsettles. The small horns on his brow descend from an old mistranslation of the Hebrew for the rays of light that shone from his face. He was meant as one figure among many on Pope Julius II's tomb, of which little else was ever built.