Lunette: Nahshon

In the Book of Numbers, Nahshon is the leader of the tribe of Judah, the man at the head of its camp in the desert. Michelangelo painted him as a sulky teenager. He half reclines on the right in a red cloak with a green hood, blond curls framing a pouting face, one leg stretched out on the step of a reading desk in front of him. He seems aware of the woman behind him and unwilling to turn round. For the first time in the surviving series, the two figures face the same way instead of mirroring each other, an arrangement also used in the two lost lunettes that stood on the altar wall.

The woman stands with one foot on a stone step, leaning forward with an elbow on her raised knee, and looks at herself in an oval mirror while her other hand frames her face. Her long blond hair is gathered into a knot with a tail falling from it, she wears pendant earrings and a green gown trimmed with white fur, and her feet are bare. The pose may come from an ancient relief of Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, known from Roman sarcophagi.