section_path: Cultural portrayals and references/Art
section_name: Art
paragraph_text: Art
  
  Moses often appears in Christian art, and the Pope's private chapel, the Sistine Chapel, has a large sequence of six frescos of the life of Moses on the southern wall, opposite a set with the Life of Christ. They were painted in 1481–82 by a group of mostly Florentine artists including Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino.
  
  Because of an ambiguity in the Hebrew word קֶרֶן (keren) meaning both horn and ray or beam, in Jerome 's Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible Moses' face is described as cornutam ("horned") when descending from Mount Sinai with the tablets, Moses is usually shown in Western art until the Renaissance with small horns, which at least served as a convenient identifying attribute. In at least some of these depictions, an antisemitic meaning is likely to have been intended, for example on the Hereford Mappa Mundi.
  
  With the prophet Elijah, he is a necessary figure in the Transfiguration of Jesus in Christian art, a subject with a long history in Eastern Orthodox art. It appears in the art of the Western Church from the 10th century, and was especially popular between about 1475 and 1535.