The Pope’s Raphael. The Painter Michael Triegel

Collectors and museums around the world adorn themselves with his works. Even the Church is enthusiastic. Yet many fellow painters consider Triegel an artistic reactionary. For his kindred spirits are above all painters of the Italian Renaissance, such as Raphael or Leonardo. Like no other, he masters the technique of the Old Masters, the practice of multiple oil glazes, with which he achieves virtuoso effects of light and shadow. His pictures are not produced on an assembly line. His work takes time. In his studio in the Leipzig Cotton Mill, where many artists of the New Leipzig School, such as Neo Rauch, work, canvases rise several meters high. Triegel comes here every day to paint. Eight hours. Through painting, Triegel engages with the world around him. With pictures that at first glance seem like familiar, well-known works, but at second glance reveal the doubts of our time. Watching the painter in his studio is like a journey into the past. Engaging with the content of his works shifts the view into the present.

He has been world-famous since his portrait of the Pope. Michael Triegel, born in Thuringia in 1968 and raised as an atheist in the GDR. He studied in Leipzig at the famous Academy of Fine Arts. The film accompanies Michael Triegel to Rome, to the sources of inspiration for his art, takes us to his childhood locations of Erfurt and Weimar, and shows the painter in conversation with representatives of the church, collectors, and above all, while painting. The film reveals the secret of his work and discovers a down-to-earth person.