Michelangelo's Moses can now be... touched: visual-tactile trail inaugurated

Since last December 14, Moses, one of the greatest masterpieces of Michelangelo Buonarroti (Caprese, 1475 - Rome, 1564), can be touched. We’re not talking, of course, about the marble original, but about 1:1 scale plastic and three-dimensional resin models that have been placed inside the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, the place that holds the tomb of Pope Julius II of which the Moses is a part, in the context of a visual-tactile itinerary wanted by the Special Superintendence of Rome as part of theEuropean Year of Cultural Heritage. The operation was carried out together with Rome’s La Sapienza University and an authority in the field of tactile routes for the blind, the Omero State Tactile Museum in Ancona.

Enabling the public to touch the face and beard of Moses required more than 1,500 photographs, 30 gigabytes of data and a budget of between 23 and 25,000 euros, with 10,000 funded by MiBAC. The project, Superintendent Francesco Prosperetti told ANSA, “perhaps for the first time in Rome transfers the experience of broadening accessibility to heritage knowledge to modern monuments. But to everyone’s surprise.” “These reproductions,” says instead Fernando Torrente of the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired, “make people rediscover the pleasure of touch. We see this especially in schools with children.” And now the intention of the Superintendency is to export the model to replicate it on other monuments, with the aim of making the artistic heritage even more accessible.

Ph. Credit Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma

Michelangelo's Moses can now be... touched: visual-tactile trail inaugurated

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