The Monument of Ornament
Michelangelo's Moses

Laurence Simmons

The human figure is the ideal ornament for the niche.
(Michelangelo Buonarroti)

There is no culture without the tomb and there is no tomb without culture.
(René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World)

just as the archaeologist builds up the walls of a building from the foundations that have remained standing, determines the number and position of the columns from depressions in the floor and reconstructs the mural decorations and paintings from the remains found in the debris, so does the analyst proceed when he draws his inferences from the fragments of memories, from the associations and from the behaviour of the subject of the analysis. Both of them have an undisputed right to reconstruct by means of supplementing and combining the surviving remains. Both of them, moreover, are subject to many of the same difficulties and sources of error.
(Freud, "Constructions in Analysis," 1937)