The Unchained Art of the Renaissance (Art History Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] this may look like an ordinary door in florence but it isn't the man who lived here invented the renaissance there he is vasari the one with the interested cherub looking on vasari was a painter and as you can see not a particularly good one his work lacked elegance and grace in a word it was clunky he was actually born just down the road from here in a retso but when he was in his teens very impressionable he came here to florence and weedled his way into the company of the city's greatest artist the divine michelangelo for the rest of his career vasari remained a michelangelo groupie it shows in his painting and more importantly for us it shows in his writing in 1550 vasari published a book a very special book because it turned out to be the most influential art book ever written [Music] it was called the lives of the most eminent painters sculptors and architects though these days we usually shorten that to the lives of the artists [Music] as the first book of its kind the sorry's lives set the agenda for all the art books that followed [Music] inside it was packed with biographies of the artists that the sari admired and in the preface for the first time in art the sari uses the term renashita to describe what was going on around him is italian for rebirth or as we call it now renaissance what vasari says in his famous preface is that under the ancient greeks and romans civilization reached its greatest height and the arts achieved perfection [Music] then along came the barbarians who destroyed everything and the arts fell in to ruin until we get to vasari's own times roughly between about 1400 and 1600 the dates are little vague when there's this great this renaissance and civilization returns to italy a rousing tale of cultural triumph unfortunately it's just not true civilization wasn't completely lost for a millennium and a half and it wasn't reborn suddenly in renaissance italy [Music] the sarees renaissance is the creation of a jingoistic florentine who's cheering on his own team in the great football match of civilization but if the momentous rebirth didn't happen what did [Music] so [Music] so this is padua and that is the famous equestrian statue of the mercenary gatamalata by donatello now this was made in around 1450 and according to vasari this was the first great equestrian statue of the renaissance the first time a renaissance artist matched the achievements of the ancients but was it if we head north from padua out of italy a long way north into the land of the barbarians or as we call them today the germans we'll find a different storyline being enacted [Music] the germans poor mites they barely get a mention in vasari but in the real world their artistic achievements were huge [Music] this stone fellow here is called the bamberg horseman he's life size and he was made here in germany in around 1220 so that's two and a half centuries or so before donatello's gatamalata the bamberg horseman isn't mentioned in visari and when you do come across him in books he's invariably dismissed as a piece of gothic art something backward or primitive but that's not what i see up there i see a remarkable piece of equestrian carving look at the detail of the cloth the hair the musculature of the horse this isn't some impossible bronze beast ridden by an impossible bronze warrior this is something more modest less heroic and real horses ridden by real people have proportions like these the fact is when vasari ignored the north in his story of the renaissance he ignored some of the key developments in art [Music] so in this series yes we'll be looking at leonardo da vinci and at vasari's divine michelangelo [Music] and at botticelli and his venuses all vasari's italian favorites will be looked at but not yet not before their time first we need to catch up with the furious progress that was being made in this bubbling cauldron of renaissance creativity bruges ah bruges these days it's so pretty and well preserved it's hard to imagine what a frantic cutting edge wild west of a town this was in the early days of the renaissance if you're ever in the stat bibliotech in berlin ask to see the manuscript of anthony of burgundy and open it on folio 244 it shows you what went on in the bath houses in bruges in around 1400 when the businessmen were in town on the right the baths on the left the beds all those fellows in the bath houses the traveling businessmen were trading in cloth fabrics that's what made the city rich and they were doing it here in the cloth hall in bruges at its peak there'd be 400 stalls crammed into here selling cloth from around the world and if you want to know what these fabulous fabrics looked like it's all recorded in spectacular close-up in the art of renaissance flanders [Music] so all these merchants in here were from spain poland russia england and one of them an italian we know very well because his face is one of the most memorable in renaissance heart ah yes the arnold feeny marriage by jan van ike and there's giovanni arnolfini himself wealthy cloth merchant from lucca pledging his fidelity to the lovely mrs arnolfini exactly what they're pledging has been the subject of much controversy which i'm not going to add here what i want to discuss is something much more important what the arnold feelys are wearing let's start with mrs arnolfini now she's wearing a bulky green dress that's made from a bruges speciality wool like this outfit here now this wool was mostly imported from england then woven here by the famous flemish weavers now in the painting the dress looks rather bulky that's because it's lined with fur if you look carefully at the edges you'll see this white fur poking out now that is actually the fur of one of these a red squirrel and not just any bit of the fur but this bit here the white bit the purest bit what they used to call minerva it would have taken around 2 000 squirrels to line mrs arnolfini's dress so when you look at her again at the national gallery in london try to forget she's actually wearing 2 000 dead squirrels that's for her headdress which looks so complicated that's just a piece of white linen like this which has been folded over five times and is then worn on the head like so kept in place with pins so that's mrs arnolfini but what about him well he's wearing these pine martens imported from the forests of poland and russia hugely expensive the second most expensive fur after sable and arnolfini's tunic would have required about a hundred of these so that's a lot of money right there on top of the fur there's this dark purple velvet that's probably imported from lucca arnolfini's hometown where the best velvet was made but the most interesting thing he's wearing i think is his hat that huge wobbly top hat affair that looks several sizes too big for him it's actually made of this straw that's been dyed black and it's a kind of fashionable renaissance boater that everyone was wearing in 1432 very light practical and as you can see flattering look closely at van ike's hat and all becomes clear in the microscopic almost magical detail that was van ike's trademark 30 years before the birth of leonardo 50 years before michelangelo was born the artists of bruges were already seeing as clearly as this what was happening here in the early years of the 15th century was nothing less than a pictorial revolution a completely new way of seeing and painting and in its clarity its precision it was far ahead of anything that was happening in italy at the time but that's not how art history sees it ever since vasari until very recently these early masters of bruges and flanders have been looked down on patronized do you know what they call them in art history books this is what they call them [Music] at the back of the arnold feeny marriage high up on the wall there's one of these a convex mirror these convex mirrors keep popping up in flemish art in various ways and for various reasons in the arnolfini marriage van ike uses it to smuggle in a cunning self-portrait now if i ask our handsome cameraman matt to step up to the mirror and film it you'll see his reflection in the glass and in exactly the same way van ike uses it to show himself at a mysterious second figure rhyming as it were with the arnold feenies at the front but other flemish artists used them in different ways when quentin maxis put one on the table used by a money changer and his wife [Music] it's there for their protection in flanders the bankers used them to see round corners and make sure no one was sneaking up on them [Music] it's like there's helpful mirrors you get on the london underground and the corridors so you can see if anything's coming the other way interestingly here in bruges the guild of the mirror makers was the same guild the guild of saint luke to which painters also belonged [Music] said luke was actually the patron saint of painters so you often see him in renaissance art presented as an artist who's drawing the madonna imagining the unimaginable [Music] with saint luke by their side the painters of bruges were changing what art does [Music] and how it does it [Music] this is the madonna with joris van der parler as it's called painted by van ike again in 1436 and it's another miraculous feat of observation look at the robes that saint donation on the left is wearing his cross his mitre or on the other side the lovely reflections in saint george's armor and look there's van ike again haunting the picture with his secret presence [Music] now us see as clearly as this you either need eyesight that's miraculously good or you need these [Music] van der pala who commissioned this great devotional picture from van ike has been using his glasses to help him read his prayers [Music] joris is dutch for george and that's why saint george is presenting his patron to the madonna and making sure he's read his prayers even though his old eyes are going the glasses weren't actually invented in bruges in the 1400s they were invented in italy about a century earlier in pisa and if you examine the older faces in renaissance art you'll see a pair of specks popping up quite often sometimes in unexpected places some are painted some are carved some are for seeing god others for seeing money bosh the great flemish doom merchant even managed to find a pair being sported in hell although glasses had been around for the best part of a century it was in flanders at the time of van nuyk early in the 15th century that the art of lens making was perfected and great steps were taken in ways of seeing unfortunately i can't tell you exactly how these newly precise lenses and this new magnification were used in bruges flemish artists were very secretive about it to this day it's a controversial topic but when you look into the minute details crammed into this miraculous renaissance art a bit of help was surely needed let me put it this way either for the first few millennia of western art no artist anywhere was born with good enough eyesight to record reality as clearly as it was recorded here in flanders or after this first few millennia something happened here that made it finally possible to see things more clearly [Music] i know which version i believe [Music] [Music] i don't know if you've seen that rather bad george clooney movie the monuments men well this was the painting they were trying to steal back from the nazis it's vanek's greatest achievement the ghent altar a masterpiece of spectacular complexity and mysterious ambition with so much going on in it and this strange god looming up in the center like an all-powerful oriental potentate now the mirror makes a secret appearance in here as well sort of you see the virgin mary sitting on the right hand of god look at the band of writing above her head see what it says it's in latin but you can just about make out the first bit speculum scene and if you could see through that gorgeous bit of cloth below it would continue macula [Music] speculum cinemacula it means the immaculate mirror it's a quote from the bible the book of wisdom mary who was born without sin is being compared to one of these speculum sine macular and that is how van like paints her as well as a vision of unblemished female perfection [Music] as with so much flemish art the ghent altar is very confusing at first sight [Music] this is just a handy replica they keep at ghent cathedral but even this is a challenge as for the real thing that sits behind bulletproof glass in a dark chapel at the back where even the nazis can't steal it again and where it looms up before us like a daunting cliff face of dense flemish symbolism but that's only from a distance because the real joy of the ghent altarpiece the real joy of all of adamic's art is to get close and to see the details [Music] when you press your nose against van ike the confusion ceases and it all gets intoxicating botanists have identified 42 different species of plant painted accurately on the gent altar [Music] and see that delightful landscape at the back it's supposed to be the new jerusalem as described in the bible at the end of the world but it looks an awful lot like flanders doesn't it bruges made biblical [Music] all this perfectly recorded reality this shiny truth that flemish art invented isn't reality for the sake of it it's not trying to fool anybody this is reality as a powerful new weapon of conviction [Music] is smuggling big religious truths into the everyday life of flanders making them touchable bringing them nearer this is art that's having to envisage things that have never been envisaged before and what a feast of invention it is [Music] so how's it done to see that we have to get even closer now normally you can't get any closer than this to van ike's masterpiece but this isn't any old arts program this is the renaissance unchained on the bbc so i've managed to arrange some exclusive access to the ghent altarpiece not even george clooney could get as close as we're going to get [Music] in just a moment we're going to be going in there where they're restoring some of the panels of the ghent altar and we're going to get really close to van ike and see exactly how he does it but first i want to show you something this is by phillipo lippy a painter from florence much loved by vasari and it's a scene from the life of saint benedict painted in around 1450. so that's 20 or so years after the get alterpiece now this wasn't painted in oil paints which is what van ike used it was painted in egg tempera the medium they preferred in early renaissance italy [Music] it's basically watercolor with a binding of egg yolks to hold the pigments together and it dries very quickly into these fabulous glowing colors what a gorgeous pink that is so that's tempera over here but over here is van ike's annunciation so that's the angel gabriel telling the virgin mary that she's going to give birth to jesus and this was painted about 20 years before the philippo lippy but look how van is captured the fabrics look at what the angel's wearing and compare this with this see how the cloths done in the philippo lippy or these plants over here compare those [Music] with the plants in the van ike these beautiful white lilies which like the immaculate mirror symbolize the purity of the virgin mary it's a different world isn't it and critically a different technique [Music] now vasari tells us that vanillik invented oil paints and that's just not true they were already in use in afghanistan in the 7th century in buddhist art but he did master them in ways that no one had mastered them before and used them with extraordinary skill and it's these oil paints along with the lenses and the glasses that made flemish art [Music] possible inside here they've been restoring van ike panel by panel so it's a wonderful opportunity to see exactly how it's all done [Music] the whole restoration of the ghent altarpiece is a very big project and the first step is outside wing panels which we're currently working on [Music] and we're already quite far we took already all the varnishes off the discolored varnishes and now we're actually in the process of removing old over paints so we're actually scraping away these later editions to reveal the original intention of the artists and you can see it actually really well there all those dark brown and greens here are actually dirty varnishes that we left on to show people and this is the original color that's underneath so there's a bright white underneath those dark discolored varnishes it's very vivid you do see very very clearly there the white now has sort of come out of the personal white beautiful looking uh at the angel uh what strikes me is this this as you said the colors are brighter this beautiful green that's come out of the angels wings yeah after the cleaning they are a bit brighter and especially yes the green does jump at you well i think it most importantly it has an effect on the depth of field because not only the colors i think the colors are as i said a bit muted but once we start taking off these first varnish and then the over paint you feel like you're in a room again [Music] you get drawn into the picture and i think the whole 3d effect will be i think it's this experience of being there in the in the room so what else could you do with these exciting new paints one of the things you could record more clearly was people in flanders the great artists of the northern renaissance began making their contemporaries immortal [Music] we simply haven't seen faces as tangible as these in art before this fierce looking chappie and vladimir putin look alike is chancellor roland staring with scary determination across one of vanek's finest landscapes and they say this is van ike himself in a big red turban and the touching crow's feet around his eyes [Music] there was so much invention too about this thrilling flemish portraiture this is the sanyent hospital in bruges and it's full of the work of hans memling a bruges master who is particularly good at portraits was a master painter of that very difficult subject young men well they haven't got any character yet no wrinkles or flabby beds this fellow here is martin van nievenhover and this is a two-part painting or diptych painted in 1487 and it's very clever [Music] martin van nieverhover is at a table praying look at that beautiful purple velvet jerkin he's wearing bought from the arnold fenies perhaps and in the other half the virgin mary and jesus noticeably less realistic and the objects of martin's prayer [Music] so he's praying to them but this is so brilliant they're both in the same room this space that space are next to each other look at the table here that goes across both pictures as well and see mary's robe it flows to the bottom goes over into martin von never hovers bit and it even overlaps a bit of the frame so it's a wondrous blending of realities and at the back there's a typical flemish payoff look a convex mirror and reflected in it mary and martin from the back and from the side sitting around the same table [Music] this is art that can paint miracles in the hands of the flemish reality became such a powerful weapon in the artist's armory yet look what they call it when vasari wrote the north out of the story of the renaissance he planted 500 years of prejudice in the annals of art [Music] another thing oil paints were especially good at capturing was textures oh my god they were good at textures in particular the artists of the northern renaissance had a lot of fun with armor and that's handy because one of the saints who pops up most often in their art was the armor painters delight saint george you know whenever i see saint george adopted as a nationalist symbol by right-wing factions in england for instance it always makes me laugh because he was actually a turk of greek origin who was born in palestine near tel aviv and who served in the roman army so all those skinheads who've got saint george tattooed on their foreheads they're actively promoting turkish greek palestinian roman and jewish unity well done lads saint george was popular because he saved a princess from a dragon and that made him a ready-made symbol of christian salvation and an exciting challenge for the new oil paints the new paints transformed armor into a delicate metal mirror on which sophisticated games could be played with light apart from encouraging all this exciting investigation of light and its symbolism something else the saint george story did was to pull renee songzard out of its comfort zone and to send it slithering into dark new areas of the imagination forced to imagine the terrible beasties that saint george had to slay renaissance art took a step into dark new territories and not just in flanders back in italy that very strange painter kozumotura torah ferrara relocated his saint george on what looks like another planet so the saint george story pushed renaissance art into these dark new areas and that wasn't all it also made it necessary to tackle combat and movement and that had an especially powerful impact on sculpture this is what i think is the finest of the northern saint george's he's certainly the most spectacular you probably haven't heard of him because he's in stockholm in sweden in the church of saint nicholas what a thing bigger than life-size and carved out of wood with breathtaking skill and drama and the details are horrific bits of dismembered body are strewn across the plinth a little baby dragons poke their heads out of the ground waiting to be murdered and then in a very unrenaissance detail this bisexual dragon is so traumatized by saint george's mighty spearing that it emptied its bowels with fear this was made by a german sculptor called berndt knotka in around 1487 when michelangelo was still a teenager now burnt knocker isn't in vasari of course because this is a renaissance that obviously isn't trying to quote the greeks or the romans it's a renaissance that's slapping you about the face with action drama and darkness there's nothing italian about it that's true but why does that make it a lesser achievement the mad imaginings of the northern renaissance didn't stop with dragons when art armed itself with oil paints it armed itself with the power to make anything real this really is supposed to be it the mythical fountain of youth where you go in old and you come out young now you may not believe in the fountain of youth but plenty of renaissance folk did this is how lucas cranach prickly genius of the german renaissance envisaged its wondrous effects legend has it that a spanish conquistador called ponce de leon who'd been sent to the americas to find it landed here in florida in 1513 and discovered that it wasn't a myth the fountain of youth really existed in cranach's delirious masterpiece all the joan collins is in the village have been rounded up dipped in the special waters and turned again into saint trinion's girls it may have stopped working anyway here we are in the renaissance this great rebirth of ancient knowledge but all the old legends superstitions and myths are exerting just as powerful a hold on the artistic imagination as they ever did [Music] enjoying lucas cranach is like visiting a german nature camp what a lot of nudes there are romping about his pictures some of them are lucretias others are venuses but all of them you feel are here because cranach understood temptation and had personal reasons to warn us of its dangers perhaps that's why he's so unusually keen to paint adam and eve now the adam and eve story about the first man and the first woman committing the first sin was the only story in the bible that forced painters to paint nudes there's another way to do it clothes after all hadn't been invented [Music] yet set free in paradise in their birthday suits adam and eve gave renaissance art a perfect biblical excuse to depict tempting human nudity according to the bible eve's crime was to pick forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and to tempt adam with it but i think we all know what really went on in paradise when the first naked man met the first naked woman [Music] but all these adams and eves of the renaissance weren't just there for erotic reasons there were other forces at work on the art of the times and the one that's always forgotten but shouldn't be is geography it wasn't just the fountain of youth that was discovered round about now so too was paradise itself [Music] it's a story told gloriously in a renaissance art form that's been unfairly ignored the great art form of the map [Music] these days were blase about maps but in renaissance times maps were extraordinary creations with a huge cosmic significance i can't think of many things that would have been harder to make than this the so-called framauro map made in venice in around 1450 by a venetian monk [Music] in those days north was south and south was north so the world was upside down [Music] it's exquisite isn't it the glorious imagining of a glorious new world but interestingly round about here there's something missing a little place called america which hadn't been discovered yet so the first renaissance map with the americas actually on it is this one the valtsy muller world map of 1507. there's america there or as they called most of it in those days terra incognita [Music] when columbus discovered america in 1492 he didn't just change history he changed art and particularly the story of adam and eve their depiction has always triggered powerful guilts and worries some of the most anxious paintings of the renaissance are representations of the first man and the first woman and up on the sistine ceiling michelangelo has left us in no doubt whatsoever as to the terrible consequences of the first sin but these were still theoretical anxieties distant imaginings of distant biblical events when columbus discovered america that [Music] changed it wasn't just the fountain of youth that turned up in florida as news began to filter through europe of the strange new world discovered by columbus the renaissance mind began putting two and two together and paradise itself suddenly had a location [Music] this is hieronymus bosch's famous garden of earthly delights a painting about sin and its terrible consequences and look what adam and eve are sinning under a dragon tree satan's tropical succulent of choice paradise was no longer theoretical columbus had found it and that was bad news because according to the scriptures man and woman would only return to paradise after the day of judgment the last day of all when columbus discovered america he set in motion a countdown to the end of the world [Music] a less superstitious era might have laughed it off but the renaissance really wasn't one of those later in this series we'll be dealing in depth with hieronymus bosch for now all i ask is that you feel his anxiety the anxiety of his times [Music] at times like this times of deep renaissance despair turning to the era's greatest talent ought to be a relief but in this instance it isn't because albrecht dura the greatest german painter of the renaissance was a stoker up of anxieties not a reliever of them dura lived here in his house in nuremberg it's been kept exactly as he left it as a kind of shrine to him because one thing dora made sure of from the start is that everyone knew how great he was [Music] if they handed out medals for arrogance dura would have a shelf load born in nuremberg in 1471 he was so good so quickly that by the age of 13 he drew this a self-portrait as a teenage genius [Music] dura invented the artistic self-portrait other artists had put themselves in their pictures before but no one had made themselves the stars of their own art as dura did here he is at 22 enjoying mightily his own renaissance handsomeness [Music] and look at 26 he's put on his best dandyware and loves himself even more [Laughter] and then in 1500 in a momentous renaissance slippage of human modesty the 29 year old albrecht dura compares himself unmissably with christ [Music] all over jorah's art you find him interjecting himself into the story lines you even see it in his altarpieces [Music] in this busy crucifixion in vienna who is that standing at the back of the crowd oh look it's dora and who's invited himself along to join the virgin mary and christ in this ruined masterpiece in prague who do you think [Music] to my eyes dura's altarpieces are not as successful as he'd like us to believe he couldn't do grandeur or emotional bigness [Music] dura gets better as he gets smaller his portraits for instance are often transfixing as with this divine portrayal of a girl from venice it's as if he couldn't work with a big brush only a small one lots of little things combining to create the final image it's a talent which came in particularly useful here in his printing studio it's a belief widely held in art that dura was the greatest print maker of all he was certainly one of the busiest and so successfully did his prince spread his fame that even vasari heard of him and gave him a chapter in his book [Music] everyone knows duress melancholia it's probably the most famous print ever made a mysterious figure surrounded by all this scattered renaissance knowledge and made anxious by it lots of people have suggested that melancholia is another disguised self-portrait and i'm certainly prepared to believe that because as far as i can see dura never passed up an opportunity to put himself in his art but you know it wasn't actually jura's prince that finally convinced me of his genius or his altar pieces or even those extraordinary portraits of his the day that took my breath away and finally blew away all the doubts was the day i saw his watercolors [Music] the albatina in vienna has a collection of them that only goes on show every couple of decades if you're alive for such an occasion go there this is dura's famous hair twitching timidly before us and the wings of a roller colored so freshly and brightly they might have flown through yesterday's sky [Music] he thought he was divinely chosen and at moments like this you find yourself believing him so that's the northern renaissance an epoch of startling invention it gave us oil paints it gave us optics it gave us the truth [Music] in the next film i'm heading south again if the sari got the northern renaissance so wrong what did he also get wrong about the renaissance in italy

Channel: Perspective

Views: 95,498

Rating: 4.8954544 out of 5

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, art history, waldemar januszczak, renaissance (art period/movement), history documentary, documentary history, the arts (broadcast genre), fine art (industry), documentary movies - topic, documentary renaissance hd, waldemar januszczak documentary, history documentary hd, Van Eyck, Memling, Van der Weyden, Cranach, Riemenschneider, Durer

Id: mxU0wAjm0D4

Length: 59min 51sec (3591 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020