Before the GOP convention comes along and drives out every concern but politics, may I raise a question in art history?

Rearranging my bookshelf the other day, I found a fat book on Michelangelo I’d forgotten I owned, leafed through the book, and found myself struck, as I have been ever since I first set eyes on it during a visit to Rome twenty years go, by Michelangelo’s statue of Moses.

Michelangelo depicted Moses with…horns. Horns? Yes, horns. (To see for yourself, click here.)

But why? What are the horns supposed to signify? I’ve never heard an explanation that made sense, much less that seemed satisfactory. Like the author of my fat book, art historians fumble the question, almost always suggesting that the horns represent luminescence or rays of light (when Moses came down from Mount Sinai after meeting God, he shone with holiness). But this is ridiculous, isn’t it? Michelangelo knew how to convey luminescence. In the Madonna of the Stairs, sculpted more than two decades earlier, he indicated the Virgin’s holiness by giving her a halo. (To see for yourself, once again, click here.)

Horns on the patriarch. How can it be that noone seems to know why? Aren’t there any contemporary accounts? Didn’t somebody ask Michelangelo?

Anyone who provides an answer will a) gratify yours truly and b) prove that readers of this happy Corner really do know everything.