Michelangelo’s Moses sculpture was made with extreme anatomical precision
Michelangelo Buonarroti is famous for the incredible beauty and anatomical precision of his sculptures. That is because he did anatomical studies on corpses to see how the muscles connected. These studies were illegal in Renaissance Italy, but Michelangelo did not let that stop him, and with good reason. As his Moses statue shows, his research paid off.
That small muscle that the yellow arrow is pointing to helps lift the fingers, and if you look closely you can see that Moses’ index finger is raised. Another interesting detail is that he has horns. This is because his liking is based on a description given in chapter 34 of the Exodus in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible.