Nikolaus Meyer on Michelangelo – Speyer

The story of a genius in texts, verses and images: Nikolaus Meyer illuminates highlights in the life and work of Michelangelo in an unusual way.

With this publication about the brilliant sculptor, great painter and extraordinary master builder Michelangelo Buonarroti (March 6, 1475 to February 18, 1564), the Speyer author and journalist Nikolaus Meyer is following the series on outstanding personalities of contemporary history that began in November 2021 with a focus on the Italian Renaissance. After the previous work on the penitential preacher Girolamo Savonarola, the author now reports in a condensed form on the life and work of a man who went down in history as a giant of art and who left posterity a unique life’s work.

In Meyer’s opinion, writing a book about Michelangelo represented a great challenge as a writer. After all, it was necessary to write a work that in some way stands out from what has been written about the brilliant artist and great artist in remarkable variety and quality over the course of decades Baumeister was published and to which TV stations such as the German-French television station Arte and ZDF set cinematic monuments. Meyer managed the balancing act brilliantly, because the present work is once again impressive proof of the author’s talent for conveying historical events in prose and poetry.

Richly illustrated

The richly illustrated book draws its attraction from the combination of vividly formulated texts and entertaining poems. The author’s aim was to reduce the reader’s fear of an unbelievable wealth of data and facts by concentrating on the essential stages of life and particularly outstanding works of art. Thus, sculptural, painterly and architectural masterpieces such as the creation of David, the painting of the Sistine Chapel and the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, which is considered an architectural marvel, were indispensable as recognition features. Essential importance has always been attached to due diligence.

On 132 pages, Meyer spans the arc from the birth of the genius in Caprese in Tuscany to his death in Rome and his burial in Florence. It quickly becomes clear that Michelangelo’s career was accompanied by dramatic secular and ecclesiastical upheavals and scandals. As an example, pages 13 to 19 deal with the murder of Guiliano de Medici in the cathedral of Florence (April 26, 1478). At that time a fatal consequence of claims to power and intrigues.

“The Last Judgement”

Such incidents also proved to be difficult companions for Michelangelo at times, but could not prevent groundbreaking successes such as the creation of the Roman Pietà. He achieved world fame with the production of David, the painting of the vaulted ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, which took place under great physical torture, and the giant fresco “The Last Judgment” at the same place. His influence as the master builder of St. Peter’s Basilica, who set standards, is also unforgettable. The gigantic life’s work also includes the unfinished tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome. As a homage to Michelangelo’s longtime center of life, the author underscores the special nature of the Arno metropolis of Florence in the appendix with pictures of works of art by other artists and poems about the city and the Ponte Vecchio bridge.

info

“Michelangelo – Story of a genius in texts, verses and pictures”. Publisher Books on Demand, Norderstedt. Hardcover with dust jacket. 132 pages. The format is 17.5 by 22.6 centimeters. Listed in major wholesale catalogues. Available in 6000 bookstores and over 1000 online bookshops. ISBN 978-3-7568-1720-7. Price 20.99 euros. E-book, ISBN 978 375 686 878 0, will be available in about two weeks.