The Prisoner - Atlas

The symbolic meaning of these figures intended for the tomb of Julius II, and worked on by Michelangelo at different times, perhaps between 1513 and 1536, has been much debated, and the literature on Michelangelo has offered the most diverse interpretations of it ever since the Cinquecento. What is certain is that all of them, whether they represent the liberal arts, subjugated provinces, or unbelieving peoples subjected to the true faith, give form to the moral torment of the human soul, struggling against or resigning itself in despair to the enslavement to matter that humiliates and oppresses it; a torment which, in terms of expressive research, is translated into the struggle between "form" and "matter".