“Ingenuity and darkness” (in the bookshop for Rizzoli) is a journey into the Renaissance, on the two giants of art history who did not love each other
Leonardo which seems to be molded from “the same substance as the clouds”. And it is already always elsewhere. As elusive as the contours of his self-portrait. Leonardo inconclusive that, while he sketches the sketches for the equestrian monument wanted by Ludovico il Moro, he gets lost looking first for a horse to inspire him and then for a method to keep the stables of the Castello Sforzesco clean. Vain Leonardo, who knows how to dress (and does not disdain pink), a man of the court, capable of delighting even with singing, amiable entertainer of Popes, patrons and noblewomen. Who leads a comfortable life while not caring about the accounts of his business. Leonardo who says yes to everyone to actually say almost only no. Extremist Leonardo of experimentation, curious apprentice of every smallest segment of creation, from the solar system to the flight of birds to the composition of transparent paints, and never a master. Determined to be himself. Leonardo who rejects the fresco technique when he paints theLast Supper, a masterpiece that immediately risks disappearing like a dream in the morning. Leonardo of uncertain sexuality, perhaps fluid: homosexual? Bisexual? Leonardo retouching the Gioconda for years without ever delivering it to its client.
And instead Michelangelo. Who works night and day. Who accepts every assignment and almost always brings it to completion. That sculpts the David commissioned by the Duomo of Florence, but also, in great secrecy, in order not to appear distracted, a Madonna with Child at the request of a wealthy Flemish textile merchant. Michelangelo who is wealthy, but he lives poor. Who doesn’t care about the appearance. That he has his nose crushed by a punch thrown at him by Pietro Torrigiano to the umpteenth provocation. Michelangelo who never changes his clothes and is grumpy. Michelangelo wondering about God. Burban and tormented about the meaning of things. Michelangelo who has a real obsession with male nudes. Muscular and “sculpted” even when he paints. Michelangelo who in the Sistine Chapel overturns the canons of representation with the creation of Adam no longer made alive by the breath in the nostrils, on the line of the biblical story, but by the index of God who soars in flight. And ever since, it has been.
But most of all Leonardo and Michelangelo together. Contemporary. Rivals. Tuscans who insist, by geniuses perhaps never equaled in human history, on the same stage of the Renaissance. With a corollary of other amazing and partly forgotten artists. Well: did they meet? They spoke? Perhaps. But like to think so. And that it was not a confrontation at the tip of foil. Genes “who have spoken ill of each other.”
It must be said that it took courage to write a book dedicated not only to one, but even to both. What can one add? Yet: you can always observe things from another angle. Furrowing less traveled territories and offering with passion a story capable of restoring the contours of men even before that of artists. Or rather: the weaknesses of man which are reflected in the greatness of genius.
The splendor of perfect gestures that coexists “with the darkness of obsession”. Ingenuity and darkness (published by Rizzoli) by Roberto Mercadini is a confirmation. Atomic bomb, his previous book, is therefore not an isolated fact. You can get lost in amazement, an irresistible temptation: “The thing that fascinated me the most is that these two masters, these two sacred monsters, met and didn’t like each other. This is so unsettling from a narrative point of view. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519, ndr) and Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564, ndr) not only are they totally different from each other, as every detail of their autobiography shouts, but each of them is different from the rest of his contemporaries. They are foreign bodies, yesquartz in the uniform wall of the norm, that allow us to glimpse a broader horizon. Together, although opposite, indeed precisely because they are opposites, they seem to want to instigate each of us to diversity, that is to say, to be what we really are, to the point of the most irreparable uniqueness ».
That is why this is not simply a book about Leonardo and Michelangelo. The reading flows. Gallop at times among the art workshops, the splendors of the works and the fallacy, at times, of behavior. The humanity of two geniuses.
The meeting
Roberto Mercadini was born in Cesena in 1978. With over 150 dates a year, he takes his storytelling shows around Romagna and Italy. For Rizzoli he published «Perfect history of error» (2018) and «Atomic bomb (2020). On Monday 13 June he will present «The talent and the darkness» in Lucera (Foggia) at 8.45 pm at the literary Cremeria.
June 13, 2022 (change June 13, 2022 | 15:16)
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