The South Wall: The Stories of Moses

The south wall: the life of Moses

The south wall tells the Stories of Moses, the Old Testament counterpart to the Christ cycle across the room. The two walls were planned as a matched pair, scene answering scene, so that each moment in the life of Moses lines up with one in the life of Christ opposite. The same three-band layout applies: painted drapes below, the Moses narrative across the middle, popes between the windows, and the Ancestors of Christ in the lunettes above.

The cycle once began with the Birth and Finding of Moses by Perugino on the altar wall. It was lost when Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment, so the story now opens with Moses setting out for Egypt.

The Stories of Moses

The surviving panels move through the life of the prophet, often folding several episodes into one frame. The first shows the Journey of Moses into Egypt, with his farewell to Jethro and the circumcision of his son. Next come scenes from his early life: the killing of the Egyptian, the defence of Jethro's daughters at the well, and the burning bush.

The third panel is the Crossing of the Red Sea, followed by the great Handing over of the Tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai, which also works in the worship of the golden calf and the breaking and remaking of the tablets. Then comes the rare subject of the Punishment of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, three men swallowed by the earth for defying Moses and Aaron, and finally the Death of Moses within sight of the Promised Land. The cycle closes around the corner with the Dispute over the body of Moses on the entrance wall.

The lunettes: Ancestors of Christ

The lunettes over the south windows carry on Michelangelo's Ancestors of Christ, the same long genealogy that wraps around the whole chapel. He painted them as quiet family groups rather than heroic portraits: people waiting, dozing, minding children, set against plain coloured grounds. As on the north side, the inscribed names seldom point clearly to one figure, and the identifications stay open to argument.

The popes between the windows

The row of early popes runs along this wall as well, alternating with the figures opposite so the series reads across the room rather than down a single side. Painted by Perugino, Botticelli, Rosselli and Ghirlandaio, each pope stands in a niche in three-quarter view, holding a book or giving a blessing, a visual claim that the authority running from Moses to Christ passes on through the line of Roman bishops.

The false drapes below

Beneath the Moses scenes runs the same band of painted hangings found right around the chapel, each one shaded to mimic stiff brocade and marked with the oak emblem and the name of Sixtus IV. This is the strip later reserved, on feast days, for Raphael's woven tapestries, so the lowest level of the wall always kept the della Rovere stamp on the chapel that carries the pope's name.