Image Details

Courtesy of Carol Newsom
Moses, with a face like a horned mask, upper left, receives the tablets of the Law from God and then shatters them, upper right. In the lower panel of this illumination, the people worship a bright-eyed golden calf. This is a page from a compendium of Church doctrine, dated to c. 1295, entitled La Somme le Roy; it was compiled by the Dominican Frère Laurent for the benefit of Philip III of France. The page shown here comes from the finest copy, illuminated by
The image of the horned Moses, popular in art for over 900 years, derives from a disputed translation of a single word in Exodus,