Saint Matthew

Look at how the figure twists. The right shoulder falls back while the left leg drives forward, the head swings the opposite way, and the body forms a spiral within the shallow block. This serpentine pose, the figura serpentinata, became the signature of Michelangelo's mature work and of the Mannerist sculptors who followed him. The surface shows the point chisel at its most vigorous, with deep furrows across the drapery and the face barely sketched, the eyes two hollows under the brow. It is the earliest of his unfinished works and gives an unusually clear view of his method of carving from a single face of the block, as if uncovering a figure buried in it.

The statue stayed in the cathedral workshop for over three centuries, occasionally admired by artists who came to study it, and was moved here in eighteen thirty four. In the Hall of the Prisoners it forms a natural companion to the four figures from the Julius tomb, though it was made twenty years earlier and for a very different purpose. Notice the difference in energy: where the Prisoners strain against their stone, Matthew seems ready to stride out of it, an evangelist caught in the moment of inspiration.

Did You Know? Michelangelo was supposed to deliver one apostle a year for twelve years; he delivered none, and this rough beginning is all that remains of the plan.