Saint Matthew

Michelangelo himself used the term “bozato” (roughed out) in a letter to Giovan Francesco Fattucci, which rules out any intention on the sculptor's part in the “non finito” of this work. The sublime tension, the vibration of the figure emerging into the light amid the quivering claw-chisel marks and the breaks of the roughed-out forms, was to have been translated into the dynamic energy of the final structure, into the arduous interlocking of the fully completed compositional scheme.