1 00:00:06,036 --> 00:00:08,737 ln 1506 Leonardo Da Vinci left his native Florence 2 00:00:08,936 --> 00:00:13,137 and took to the road in search for work and patronate 3 00:00:13,936 --> 00:00:15,337 His travels would take him to Milan, 4 00:00:15,936 --> 00:00:19,737 to Rome and finally to his exile in France. 5 00:00:19,943 --> 00:00:22,979 And for the last 13 years of his life 6 00:00:23,079 --> 00:00:25,047 everywhere he went 7 00:00:25,214 --> 00:00:26,950 hi carried with him one painting 8 00:00:27,084 --> 00:00:30,119 It was the portrait of a woman, 9 00:00:30,385 --> 00:00:32,721 and it was to become the most famous image 10 00:00:32,854 --> 00:00:35,089 in the history of art. 11 00:00:47,071 --> 00:00:50,240 A good painter has to bring out 2 things, 12 00:00:50,407 --> 00:00:53,576 the physical appearance of the subject he's painting, 13 00:00:53,743 --> 00:00:56,011 but also what is in the mind, 14 00:00:56,145 --> 00:00:58,647 the intentions of the soul. 15 00:00:58,780 --> 00:01:01,149 Achieving the first is easy, 16 00:01:01,316 --> 00:01:03,651 the second, very hard. 17 00:01:25,535 --> 00:01:26,903 Mona Lisa. 18 00:01:28,871 --> 00:01:30,673 Mona Lisa. 19 00:01:33,441 --> 00:01:35,376 Yeah- she's a man. 20 00:01:39,013 --> 00:01:40,580 She's ltaliana. 21 00:01:42,182 --> 00:01:43,850 When l was 8 years old, 22 00:01:44,017 --> 00:01:45,851 l saw it for the first time. 23 00:01:48,053 --> 00:01:49,688 Leonardo da Vinci. 24 00:01:52,457 --> 00:01:55,159 lt's beautiful, man. Wow. 25 00:01:59,711 --> 00:02:01,213 Michelangelo, Michelangelo. 26 00:02:18,711 --> 00:02:21,013 This is the story of the most famous work of art 27 00:02:21,146 --> 00:02:23,715 ever created by human hand, 28 00:02:23,882 --> 00:02:25,950 a painting so valuable it's impossible 29 00:02:26,050 --> 00:02:27,718 to put a price on it. 30 00:02:27,885 --> 00:02:29,553 ln the Louvre in Paris, 31 00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:33,056 it's simply known as 'Painting No. 779' 32 00:02:33,189 --> 00:02:35,391 lt's the portrait of an unknown ltalian lady, 33 00:02:35,524 --> 00:02:37,192 who seems to be smiling. 34 00:02:37,326 --> 00:02:38,994 Her name, Mona Lisa.... 35 00:02:39,127 --> 00:02:42,063 ..simply means Madonna, Lady Lisa. 36 00:02:42,196 --> 00:02:45,399 Yet from the moment she was painted, 500 years ago, 37 00:02:45,566 --> 00:02:48,735 she has obsessed and intrigued the whole world. 38 00:02:48,902 --> 00:02:51,870 But who was this mysterious lady 39 00:02:52,203 --> 00:02:54,673 and how did she become the superstar she is today? 40 00:02:54,873 --> 00:02:57,808 And what is the secret of her smile? 41 00:02:59,873 --> 00:03:01,808 When I look at this woman, 42 00:03:02,873 --> 00:03:05,209 gives the impression that she is looking at you. 43 00:03:06,873 --> 00:03:08,809 I heard that she was pregnant at that time. 44 00:03:10,173 --> 00:03:13,810 Because she was pregnant. She was having a baby, 45 00:03:15,273 --> 00:03:17,810 expecting a baby. 46 00:03:19,473 --> 00:03:22,110 I don't get it's a smile I think it's the way her face is formed. 47 00:03:22,273 --> 00:03:24,110 Some people have smiles of that kind. 48 00:03:24,273 --> 00:03:28,210 If I'm not smiling, which is probably why I always smile, 49 00:03:28,273 --> 00:03:30,410 50 00:03:30,473 --> 00:03:32,510 51 00:03:32,573 --> 00:03:35,010 no idea that's not the end of the world. 52 00:03:35,273 --> 00:03:38,010 And I think she's probably got an expression 53 00:03:38,273 --> 00:03:42,810 that is at peace with the world around her. 54 00:03:44,780 --> 00:03:46,915 l see a woman that's looking at someone 55 00:03:47,082 --> 00:03:49,750 and saying you've got me on my worst day of the month! 56 00:03:49,851 --> 00:03:51,952 What am l doing here? 57 00:03:52,086 --> 00:03:54,788 And you're trying to get me to smile at you. 58 00:03:55,889 --> 00:03:57,490 That's what l'm seeing. 59 00:03:58,591 --> 00:04:01,260 She's trying her best, 60 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:03,595 but she's pretty annoyed about it... 61 00:04:03,728 --> 00:04:05,530 and l don't blame her. 62 00:04:09,728 --> 00:04:13,530 The Secret Life Of The MONA LISA 63 00:04:25,746 --> 00:04:27,514 Today like a Hollywood star, 64 00:04:27,614 --> 00:04:31,117 the Mona Lisa has her own bodyguards and special security. 65 00:04:31,250 --> 00:04:35,120 She lives in a humidified air-conditioned concrete box, 66 00:04:35,254 --> 00:04:37,789 protected by triple, bullet-proof glass, 67 00:04:37,956 --> 00:04:39,190 but on the other hand it doesn't seem deter 68 00:04:39,290 --> 00:04:42,226 over 6 million tourists every year. 69 00:04:47,363 --> 00:04:49,965 So what's the secret of her fascination? 70 00:04:50,099 --> 00:04:52,801 Why has this of all the images in the world, 71 00:04:52,934 --> 00:04:55,370 gripped the imagination of so many people 72 00:04:55,503 --> 00:04:57,938 for the past 500 years? 73 00:04:59,073 --> 00:05:01,408 Kings, Emperors and Presidents 74 00:05:01,541 --> 00:05:03,843 have all paid their respects to her. 75 00:05:03,977 --> 00:05:06,312 On the Mona Lisa's American tour, 76 00:05:06,412 --> 00:05:07,980 President Kennedy greeted her 77 00:05:08,180 --> 00:05:11,616 as the ultimate symbol of western civilisation. 78 00:05:11,783 --> 00:05:14,752 We citizens of nations unborn, 79 00:05:15,386 --> 00:05:18,188 at the time of its creation, 80 00:05:18,321 --> 00:05:20,189 are among the inheritors 81 00:05:20,323 --> 00:05:22,992 and protectors of the ideals 82 00:05:23,192 --> 00:05:25,127 which gave it birth. 83 00:05:25,861 --> 00:05:27,662 For this painting is not only one 84 00:05:27,829 --> 00:05:30,031 of the towering achievements 85 00:05:30,164 --> 00:05:33,000 of the skill and the vision of art, 86 00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:36,536 but its creator embodied the central purpose 87 00:05:36,669 --> 00:05:38,604 of our civilisation. 88 00:05:44,876 --> 00:05:48,279 She's been exploited and replicated in so many forms, 89 00:05:48,345 --> 00:05:52,348 that it's easy to forget she was once a living breathing person, 90 00:05:52,483 --> 00:05:57,586 her image and expression caught in one moment of time, 91 00:05:55,686 --> 00:06:00,222 and immortalised by the hand of the artist. 92 00:06:02,323 --> 00:06:04,492 This is how l think the Mona Lisa first looked 93 00:06:04,692 --> 00:06:07,327 when Leonardo painted it in 1503. 94 00:06:07,461 --> 00:06:09,162 lt's a very cleaned up version of the picture 95 00:06:09,295 --> 00:06:10,663 that we're now familiar with, 96 00:06:10,797 --> 00:06:13,532 but to get to this there have been a great deal of changes 97 00:06:13,666 --> 00:06:16,401 and stages involved in making this picture. 98 00:06:16,568 --> 00:06:18,369 l'll show you some of those stages. 99 00:06:24,941 --> 00:06:27,210 This is a board of poplar wood, 100 00:06:27,310 --> 00:06:29,612 and this is what the Mona Lisa was painted on. 101 00:06:29,745 --> 00:06:31,380 Everybody thinks they would use canvas, 102 00:06:31,580 --> 00:06:34,115 but in those days they didn't, they painted on wood. 103 00:06:34,215 --> 00:06:36,150 ln the south of Europe it was generally poplar wood, 104 00:06:36,250 --> 00:06:38,252 in the north of Europe it was generally oak. 105 00:06:38,352 --> 00:06:39,987 lt was this nice solid wood 106 00:06:40,120 --> 00:06:42,088 that became a masterpiece. 107 00:06:43,323 --> 00:06:44,290 Chalk drawing, 108 00:06:44,390 --> 00:06:46,425 now almost certainly Leonardo 109 00:06:46,592 --> 00:06:48,060 would have done a chalk drawing 110 00:06:48,193 --> 00:06:50,395 or some kind of an image perhaps in pen, 111 00:06:50,595 --> 00:06:51,529 or silver point, or something, 112 00:06:51,696 --> 00:06:53,764 to give an idea of the kind of look of the portrait, 113 00:06:53,931 --> 00:06:55,599 to feel the portrait. 114 00:06:55,766 --> 00:06:57,334 The drawing would be transferred to the panel 115 00:06:57,467 --> 00:07:00,036 by a process called pricking and pouncing. 116 00:07:00,837 --> 00:07:03,172 The little lines would have been effectively joined up 117 00:07:03,305 --> 00:07:05,641 by some red- via the wet fluid paint. 118 00:07:07,909 --> 00:07:10,511 This will surprise you, the green face, 119 00:07:10,645 --> 00:07:12,880 brown dress, blue background. 120 00:07:12,946 --> 00:07:14,214 What's happening here? 121 00:07:14,347 --> 00:07:16,349 Well basically Leonardo's just roughing in 122 00:07:16,483 --> 00:07:18,918 what goes where colour-wise. 123 00:07:21,286 --> 00:07:22,321 And we're starting to rough 124 00:07:22,454 --> 00:07:24,589 in the warm flesh tones over the green, 125 00:07:24,756 --> 00:07:27,558 so it still comes through in some areas. 126 00:07:31,695 --> 00:07:33,429 And of course the background and the sky now, 127 00:07:33,563 --> 00:07:34,464 the marvellous blue, 128 00:07:34,597 --> 00:07:37,166 deep sort of ultramarine type sky. 129 00:07:41,836 --> 00:07:43,137 Mona Lisa. 130 00:07:54,146 --> 00:07:56,248 Painting excels because it does not fade 131 00:07:56,348 --> 00:07:58,750 as music does as soon as it is born. 132 00:07:58,850 --> 00:08:00,117 lt endures, 133 00:08:00,318 --> 00:08:02,619 and keeps all the appearance of being alive, 134 00:08:02,753 --> 00:08:05,822 though in fact it's confined to one surface. 135 00:08:05,989 --> 00:08:08,824 lt can preserve the transient beauty of mortals 136 00:08:08,991 --> 00:08:10,659 and endow it with a permanence greater 137 00:08:10,793 --> 00:08:12,094 than the works of nature, 138 00:08:12,194 --> 00:08:14,462 for these are the slaves of time, 139 00:08:14,596 --> 00:08:18,332 even when death has destroyed nature's original, 140 00:08:18,465 --> 00:08:22,502 painting preserves the image of divine beauty. 141 00:08:30,141 --> 00:08:32,243 To find the first ever mention of the Mona Lisa 142 00:08:32,377 --> 00:08:34,011 in any historical document, 143 00:08:34,145 --> 00:08:37,047 we have to travel 150 miles from Paris 144 00:08:37,180 --> 00:08:40,149 to Amboise in the Loire Valley. 145 00:08:40,350 --> 00:08:41,751 Leonardo came to live and work here 146 00:08:41,851 --> 00:08:42,953 near the end of his life, 147 00:08:43,086 --> 00:08:47,022 at the invitation of King Francis l. 148 00:08:47,155 --> 00:08:50,458 This is the fine house the King gave him to live in 149 00:08:50,624 --> 00:08:52,593 On October 10th 1517 150 00:08:52,693 --> 00:08:55,262 two travellers on the Grand Tour came to pay his respects 151 00:08:55,362 --> 00:08:56,629 to the great painter. 152 00:08:56,763 --> 00:09:00,866 They were cardinal Luigi of Aragon and his secretary De Beatis 153 00:09:01,033 --> 00:09:04,736 This is what De Beatis recorded in his diary. 154 00:09:05,703 --> 00:09:08,339 Leonardo showed the Cardinal three pictures. 155 00:09:08,472 --> 00:09:10,707 One of them was of a certain Florentine lady, 156 00:09:10,874 --> 00:09:14,143 painted from life at the request of Guliano de Medici. 157 00:09:14,277 --> 00:09:16,212 lt was absolute perfection. 158 00:09:16,378 --> 00:09:18,547 This l have seen with my own eyes. 159 00:09:25,254 --> 00:09:26,321 By 1530, 160 00:09:26,488 --> 00:09:30,391 the Mona Lisa found her way into the Royal Collection. 161 00:09:30,525 --> 00:09:31,326 Unfortunately King Francis 162 00:09:31,460 --> 00:09:34,194 decided she would look particularly good 163 00:09:34,361 --> 00:09:36,063 on the walls of his suite of bathrooms. 164 00:09:36,163 --> 00:09:37,531 She was kept there for many years, 165 00:09:37,598 --> 00:09:39,733 and present day experts believe 166 00:09:39,933 --> 00:09:42,402 that the crack allure on the surface of the picture 167 00:09:42,535 --> 00:09:45,904 is partly due to the steam, from the royal ablutions. 168 00:09:49,605 --> 00:09:52,341 And from the bathroom to the bedroom. 169 00:09:52,474 --> 00:09:55,843 The King also possessed this curious striptease version 170 00:09:55,977 --> 00:09:58,512 of the Mona Lisa, called the Mona Vanna. 171 00:10:00,079 --> 00:10:01,547 What could possibly connect this 172 00:10:02,579 --> 00:10:03,947 and Leonardo's masterpiece? 173 00:10:06,051 --> 00:10:07,886 lts origins are obscure, 174 00:10:08,852 --> 00:10:13,389 but it's clearly related to the portrait of the Mona Lisa 175 00:10:13,489 --> 00:10:15,090 except she's not wearing anything! 176 00:10:15,291 --> 00:10:18,860 Now there is a rather unusual taste 177 00:10:18,994 --> 00:10:20,895 at the Court of Francis l, 178 00:10:20,995 --> 00:10:23,731 for nude portraits of respectable women. 179 00:10:23,864 --> 00:10:25,399 There's a great one of 2 women, 180 00:10:25,566 --> 00:10:27,133 his mistress and her sister in the bath, 181 00:10:27,267 --> 00:10:28,902 pinching each other's nipples. 182 00:10:29,035 --> 00:10:32,037 Now this is actually a way of celebrating their fecundity, 183 00:10:32,171 --> 00:10:34,906 because breast milk is a symbol 184 00:10:35,073 --> 00:10:38,109 of the way that you create children. 185 00:10:38,242 --> 00:10:41,045 So the Mona Vanna may fit in best 186 00:10:41,178 --> 00:10:45,114 with the taste of the French Court. 187 00:10:46,281 --> 00:10:47,949 The Mona Vanna was probably the work 188 00:10:48,049 --> 00:10:50,785 of Leonardo's favourite pupil Salai. 189 00:10:50,952 --> 00:10:53,254 The original Mona Lisa stayed locked away 190 00:10:53,387 --> 00:10:54,255 in the Royal Collection, 191 00:10:54,790 --> 00:10:56,524 until the people of France decided 192 00:10:56,658 --> 00:10:59,594 they didn't want a monarchy any more. 193 00:11:03,463 --> 00:11:06,132 When the French Revolution began in 1789, 194 00:11:06,266 --> 00:11:09,935 the aristocracy was sent in the thousands to the Guillotine. 195 00:11:10,769 --> 00:11:14,572 Soon King Louis XVl and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, 196 00:11:14,639 --> 00:11:17,441 would themselves be executed. 197 00:11:17,975 --> 00:11:19,743 The royal collections were plundered 198 00:11:19,843 --> 00:11:23,146 and the Palace of the Louvre became a people's museum, 199 00:11:23,279 --> 00:11:26,881 and it was there that the Mona Lisa was put on public view 200 00:11:27,015 --> 00:11:28,716 for the first time. 201 00:11:31,253 --> 00:11:32,621 When Napoleon came to power 202 00:11:32,788 --> 00:11:34,689 and was crowned Emperor of France, 203 00:11:34,823 --> 00:11:36,524 one of the first demands he made 204 00:11:36,657 --> 00:11:37,992 was to have the Mona Lisa removed from the Louvre, 205 00:11:38,159 --> 00:11:40,627 and placed in his private bedroom in the Tuileries, 206 00:11:40,794 --> 00:11:44,864 thus reviving the tradition of the Royal Collection. 207 00:11:48,298 --> 00:11:50,299 He kept her there for nearly a decade, 208 00:11:50,399 --> 00:11:52,835 and called her Madam Lisa. 209 00:11:53,502 --> 00:11:57,839 His fascination with Leonardo continued, as he invaded ltaly . 210 00:11:59,972 --> 00:12:03,508 and there he found Leonardo's drawings and notebooks. 211 00:12:03,642 --> 00:12:06,344 He took them back to France too. 212 00:12:07,044 --> 00:12:09,546 He said all men of genius are French, 213 00:12:09,680 --> 00:12:12,415 no matter what their country of birth. 214 00:12:14,753 --> 00:12:16,154 After the fall of Napoleon, 215 00:12:16,287 --> 00:12:18,156 the Mona Lisa returns to the Louvre, 216 00:12:18,289 --> 00:12:21,425 and starts its life as a major tourist attraction 217 00:12:21,525 --> 00:12:22,993 in the French capital. 218 00:12:23,193 --> 00:12:24,994 Then 100 years on, 219 00:12:25,094 --> 00:12:27,663 on August 21st 1911 220 00:12:27,830 --> 00:12:29,665 in the early hours of the morning 221 00:12:29,832 --> 00:12:31,566 she becomes the leading player 222 00:12:31,700 --> 00:12:33,234 in a story of crime, 223 00:12:33,368 --> 00:12:36,203 politics and extortion. 224 00:12:45,843 --> 00:12:47,878 The thief had spent the Sunday night 225 00:12:48,011 --> 00:12:49,212 hide in the building, 226 00:12:51,048 --> 00:12:53,682 When the security guard was asleep, 227 00:12:53,749 --> 00:12:55,784 he slipped out through a back door, 228 00:12:55,884 --> 00:12:57,319 into the courtyard . 229 00:12:57,452 --> 00:12:58,987 and then made his escape 230 00:12:59,153 --> 00:13:02,023 along one of the quays of the River Seine. 231 00:13:02,091 --> 00:13:04,726 Visitors to the Louvre were undeterred, 232 00:13:04,893 --> 00:13:06,494 for some time afterwards they queued up 233 00:13:06,594 --> 00:13:08,129 to contemplate the blanck space, 234 00:13:08,229 --> 00:13:10,531 where the Mona Lisa had once hung. 235 00:13:12,531 --> 00:13:16,900 The theft made headline news around the world, 236 00:13:17,034 --> 00:13:18,902 a massive police hunt was launched 237 00:13:19,035 --> 00:13:21,704 and among those suspects brought in for questioning 238 00:13:21,871 --> 00:13:24,039 was a radical young Spanish artist, 239 00:13:24,173 --> 00:13:26,274 called Pablo Picasso. 240 00:13:26,775 --> 00:13:29,043 But by this time the Mona Lisa 241 00:13:29,177 --> 00:13:31,212 was a long way away. 242 00:13:37,483 --> 00:13:38,884 On November 11th, 1913, 243 00:13:38,985 --> 00:13:41,920 Alfredo Gerri, a Florentine antiques dealer, 244 00:13:42,087 --> 00:13:44,923 received a letter offering him the Mona Lisa. 245 00:13:45,023 --> 00:13:47,124 The price would be half a million lira, 246 00:13:47,258 --> 00:13:50,193 in today's money about a million pounds. 247 00:13:50,327 --> 00:13:53,463 The letter was signed ''Leonardo'' 248 00:13:55,527 --> 00:13:56,963 Signore ecco l'hotel Gioconda. 249 00:14:03,131 --> 00:14:05,567 A month later the mysterious Leonardo 250 00:14:05,667 --> 00:14:07,034 instructed Signor Gerri 251 00:14:07,135 --> 00:14:10,904 to meet him at this hotel in the Via Panzani. 252 00:14:11,305 --> 00:14:13,773 Gerri took with him Giovanni Poggi, 253 00:14:13,940 --> 00:14:18,243 a Leonardo expert and the Director of the Uffizi Museum. 254 00:14:19,378 --> 00:14:20,779 The 2 men then made their way 255 00:14:20,912 --> 00:14:24,782 to the man's room on 2nd floor of the hotel. 256 00:14:35,119 --> 00:14:37,621 What happened next, Signor Gerri recalled 257 00:14:37,754 --> 00:14:40,089 as the most exciting moment of his life. 258 00:14:41,657 --> 00:14:43,926 At first all we could see was dirty, 259 00:14:44,093 --> 00:14:45,761 festering old clothes, 260 00:14:45,894 --> 00:14:49,097 but then we noticed the trunk had a false bottom. 261 00:14:52,900 --> 00:14:54,734 As soon as it came into our view, 262 00:14:54,835 --> 00:14:56,803 we had the conviction that this indeed 263 00:14:56,936 --> 00:15:00,372 was the authentic work of Leonardo da Vinci. 264 00:15:01,640 --> 00:15:04,142 Poggi had been told by the Louvre to look 265 00:15:04,309 --> 00:15:06,444 for a tell-tale splinter mark on the back 266 00:15:06,611 --> 00:15:09,179 of the wooden panel, it was there. 267 00:15:09,313 --> 00:15:13,483 lt confirmed that this was the real Mona Lisa. 268 00:15:16,616 --> 00:15:18,151 The smile of the Mona Lisa 269 00:15:18,284 --> 00:15:19,993 was again alive in Florence! 270 00:15:25,284 --> 00:15:28,120 Florentines were particularly proud that the picture. 271 00:15:28,284 --> 00:15:29,520 was recovered here in Florence. 272 00:15:29,684 --> 00:15:33,420 Because they thought that long last the Mona Lisa had come home. 273 00:15:36,684 --> 00:15:40,120 This was after all Leonardo's native city. 274 00:15:40,284 --> 00:15:42,220 The place where he first trained as an artist. 275 00:15:42,284 --> 00:15:46,220 And where he first began to work on his most famous picture, 276 00:15:46,284 --> 00:15:47,420 In 1503 277 00:15:52,654 --> 00:15:55,357 Leonardo the thief was also a Florentine, 278 00:15:55,490 --> 00:15:57,291 an unemployed house painter, 279 00:15:57,425 --> 00:16:00,427 whose real name was Vincenzo Peruggia. 280 00:16:00,561 --> 00:16:01,728 He claimed to be a patriot, 281 00:16:01,828 --> 00:16:03,630 who stole the Mona Lisa simply 282 00:16:03,797 --> 00:16:06,432 so she could be returned to her motherland. 283 00:16:09,335 --> 00:16:11,971 He was tried, he got 6 months, 284 00:16:12,104 --> 00:16:15,574 a very lenient sentence incidentally, and 285 00:16:15,674 --> 00:16:17,809 in a way he became famous. 286 00:16:17,975 --> 00:16:20,277 When he died he had an obituary 287 00:16:20,411 --> 00:16:21,979 in the press. 288 00:16:22,145 --> 00:16:24,581 As the man who stole the Mona Lisa. 289 00:16:28,117 --> 00:16:30,819 The ltalian government was in a slightly embarrassing situation, 290 00:16:30,986 --> 00:16:32,821 because there was a wave of nationalism 291 00:16:32,954 --> 00:16:34,555 it was the moment where ltaly was trying 292 00:16:34,722 --> 00:16:35,756 to build an empire in Africa. 293 00:16:35,856 --> 00:16:37,324 so the government was under pressure, 294 00:16:37,458 --> 00:16:38,926 this is after all our painting 295 00:16:39,026 --> 00:16:40,860 Leonardo is ltalian, 296 00:16:41,027 --> 00:16:42,662 Mona Lisa is an ltalian woman 297 00:16:42,762 --> 00:16:43,729 Let's keep it. 298 00:16:43,896 --> 00:16:45,998 So it was shown in Rome, in Florence, in Milan. 299 00:16:46,131 --> 00:16:49,467 lt travelled and the crowds flocked. 300 00:16:51,869 --> 00:16:55,839 Unfortunately the French wanted their painting back. 301 00:16:56,006 --> 00:16:58,108 She's then taken back to Paris 302 00:16:58,208 --> 00:17:01,544 in a train and welcomed by a huge crowd 303 00:17:01,710 --> 00:17:04,179 at the train station. 304 00:17:04,346 --> 00:17:07,282 And then for 3 days, there is a special exhibit with her 305 00:17:07,382 --> 00:17:08,716 and again the crowds flocked. 306 00:17:08,816 --> 00:17:11,318 So you can see that the interest piles on the interest 307 00:17:11,452 --> 00:17:13,186 every little thing can be built up. 308 00:17:13,320 --> 00:17:15,321 l mean one should also add that other paintings 309 00:17:15,455 --> 00:17:16,656 had been stolen before, 310 00:17:16,722 --> 00:17:18,757 and they did not receive such publicity. 311 00:17:18,858 --> 00:17:20,859 So there was something about the Mona Lisa, 312 00:17:21,026 --> 00:17:23,628 but particularly something about Leonardo. 313 00:17:36,070 --> 00:17:36,939 By 1500 314 00:17:37,106 --> 00:17:39,542 Leonardo da Vinci had returned to Florence. 315 00:17:39,675 --> 00:17:42,044 He spent 17 years in Milan, 316 00:17:42,177 --> 00:17:44,846 but it was no longer safe for him there. 317 00:17:44,979 --> 00:17:46,347 His patron had been deposed 318 00:17:46,414 --> 00:17:49,349 and imprisoned by the invading French Army. 319 00:17:49,950 --> 00:17:51,651 By now he was totally absorbed 320 00:17:51,785 --> 00:17:54,854 with his inventions and scientific experiments. 321 00:17:55,954 --> 00:17:58,489 He wasn't painting any more. 322 00:18:06,260 --> 00:18:08,995 When he came to live here at the Servite Monastery 323 00:18:09,129 --> 00:18:10,930 the monks clearly expected some paintings 324 00:18:11,064 --> 00:18:13,732 in return for his board and lodging, 325 00:18:13,899 --> 00:18:16,501 but as one of the priests Father Pietro noted, 326 00:18:16,635 --> 00:18:21,072 Leonardo was by now weary of the brush. 327 00:18:22,072 --> 00:18:23,440 Then in 1503, 328 00:18:23,574 --> 00:18:27,744 something happened to rekindle Leonardo's interest in painting. 329 00:18:32,811 --> 00:18:34,779 A woman arrived in his studio for him 330 00:18:34,879 --> 00:18:38,783 to paint her likeness, and Leonardo agreed. 331 00:18:38,949 --> 00:18:40,384 He begins to work on the portrait, 332 00:18:40,484 --> 00:18:43,553 that would obsess him to the rest of his life. 333 00:18:47,420 --> 00:18:50,189 So what happened then, to make him change his mind? 334 00:18:54,420 --> 00:18:58,389 Part of the reason may simply have been money. 335 00:18:58,420 --> 00:18:59,989 This is the Santa Maria Nuovo 336 00:19:00,420 --> 00:19:02,389 A monastery in a hospital. Which also served as a bank. 337 00:19:02,420 --> 00:19:05,189 It was here that Leonardo kept his savings. 338 00:19:06,420 --> 00:19:08,189 And quite remarkably, 339 00:19:08,420 --> 00:19:13,189 his bank statements from those crucial months in 1503 still survive. 340 00:19:13,420 --> 00:19:16,889 They reveal that he was withdrawing 50 florins every few months, 341 00:19:16,920 --> 00:19:18,489 and not paying anything back in. 342 00:19:19,420 --> 00:19:23,089 Now, we know that he had an expensive household to maintain. 343 00:19:23,120 --> 00:19:24,389 So it's quite possible that he 344 00:19:24,420 --> 00:19:26,389 took on the commission of the Mona Lisa, 345 00:19:26,420 --> 00:19:28,489 simply to get some quick and ready cash. 346 00:19:30,420 --> 00:19:32,189 But even if he was short of money, 347 00:19:32,323 --> 00:19:34,358 why would he take on this particular commission, 348 00:19:34,491 --> 00:19:37,426 while turning down work for some of the richest 349 00:19:37,526 --> 00:19:39,962 and most influential patrons of the day? 350 00:19:41,266 --> 00:19:43,567 l think what is remarkable about Leonardo 351 00:19:43,701 --> 00:19:46,270 is that more than anybody else at his time, 352 00:19:46,436 --> 00:19:49,072 and indeed more than anybody else for decades thereafter, 353 00:19:49,172 --> 00:19:50,807 he worked for himself, 354 00:19:50,940 --> 00:19:53,142 he did what interested him. 355 00:19:53,309 --> 00:19:55,243 And it's not that he didn't need 356 00:19:55,377 --> 00:19:57,112 to make a living as an artist, he did, 357 00:19:57,245 --> 00:19:58,980 he needed that income, 358 00:19:59,113 --> 00:20:01,148 but he more than- he wanted to satisfy 359 00:20:01,282 --> 00:20:02,916 his patrons whoever they were, 360 00:20:03,083 --> 00:20:04,484 wanted to satisfy himself . 361 00:20:04,618 --> 00:20:06,286 his own intellectual curiosity, 362 00:20:06,486 --> 00:20:08,321 his own aesthetic needs. 363 00:20:08,454 --> 00:20:11,490 The patrons for him were, shall we say enablers? 364 00:20:11,657 --> 00:20:14,826 And inconveniences, sometimes at worst. 365 00:20:19,360 --> 00:20:22,095 From patrons you first get flattery, 366 00:20:22,195 --> 00:20:23,730 then hard work, 367 00:20:23,830 --> 00:20:26,732 then ingratitude and recriminations. 368 00:20:31,901 --> 00:20:33,669 The most obvious thing patrons wanted 369 00:20:33,736 --> 00:20:35,104 in their portraits 370 00:20:35,237 --> 00:20:37,205 was to establish their identity, 371 00:20:37,406 --> 00:20:38,840 but in the case of the Mona Lisa, 372 00:20:39,007 --> 00:20:40,641 Leonardo deliberately avoided 373 00:20:40,775 --> 00:20:43,477 even this basic requirement. 374 00:20:47,412 --> 00:20:51,549 ln his other portraits Leonardo usually left some clue or symbol, 375 00:20:51,715 --> 00:20:54,684 so that people could easily identify the sitter. 376 00:20:54,818 --> 00:20:57,120 This is the earliest of them. 377 00:20:57,253 --> 00:20:59,722 He places the subject in front of a juniper bush, 378 00:20:59,855 --> 00:21:02,657 because in ltalian juniper, or Ginepro, 379 00:21:02,791 --> 00:21:04,059 is a play on her name, 380 00:21:04,192 --> 00:21:06,094 Ginevra da Benci. 381 00:21:13,931 --> 00:21:17,034 And in his exquisite portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, 382 00:21:17,201 --> 00:21:20,770 the ermine she's holding is a mascot of her lover, 383 00:21:20,937 --> 00:21:22,705 the Duke of Sforza. 384 00:21:25,941 --> 00:21:26,808 But in the Mona Lisa, 385 00:21:26,942 --> 00:21:29,143 he left no clue on the picture at all, 386 00:21:29,277 --> 00:21:32,813 and there is no mention of her in any of his writings. 387 00:21:32,947 --> 00:21:35,148 She is simply a mysterious woman, 388 00:21:35,315 --> 00:21:37,450 sitting in a landscape. 389 00:21:38,352 --> 00:21:41,088 Leonardo may not have wanted to reveal her name, 390 00:21:41,221 --> 00:21:43,023 but his secret has inspired 391 00:21:43,156 --> 00:21:45,825 one of the greatest quests in the history of art, 392 00:21:45,959 --> 00:21:49,561 to discover the Mona Lisa's true identity. 393 00:21:50,462 --> 00:21:52,364 One person who would have loved 394 00:21:52,497 --> 00:21:54,499 to have had her portrait painted in oil 395 00:21:54,632 --> 00:21:56,033 by Leonardo da Vinci, 396 00:21:56,167 --> 00:21:57,901 is lsabella d'Este. 397 00:21:58,002 --> 00:21:59,703 The Marchioness of Manchua. 398 00:21:59,836 --> 00:22:01,704 When he visited her in Manchua, 399 00:22:01,805 --> 00:22:05,040 he obviously did at least 2 charcoal sketches, 400 00:22:05,141 --> 00:22:09,010 brief, rapid, bravura performances there. 401 00:22:09,177 --> 00:22:10,712 left one behind with her, 402 00:22:10,845 --> 00:22:14,081 and took the other on his travel down to Florence. 403 00:22:14,281 --> 00:22:15,616 Now for the next 2 years 404 00:22:15,716 --> 00:22:17,751 she's in constant negotiation, 405 00:22:17,917 --> 00:22:21,320 pleading with him to finish the portrait 406 00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:22,988 or send the sketch back, 407 00:22:23,188 --> 00:22:26,791 or send her something from his hand. 408 00:22:28,292 --> 00:22:29,793 She was so desperately keen, 409 00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:32,195 she even pleased with Cecilia Gallerani 410 00:22:32,328 --> 00:22:34,463 to borrow her portrait by Leonardo, 411 00:22:34,630 --> 00:22:35,631 so that she could work out 412 00:22:35,798 --> 00:22:38,433 her own instructions to the painter. 413 00:22:38,633 --> 00:22:40,201 lsabella was a bit of pain, 414 00:22:40,335 --> 00:22:43,103 she would actually send artists lengths of string 415 00:22:43,204 --> 00:22:45,339 telling them how big the figures should be. 416 00:22:45,505 --> 00:22:47,974 Now even for people who are being used to told 417 00:22:48,141 --> 00:22:49,775 what to paint, that's- 418 00:22:49,876 --> 00:22:51,110 this was going a bit far! 419 00:22:52,376 --> 00:22:56,710 I think Leonardo probably found her rather oppressive. 420 00:23:02,145 --> 00:23:04,980 But there's no shortage of other possibilities. 421 00:23:05,147 --> 00:23:08,483 The visitors to Leonardo's house in 1517 422 00:23:08,650 --> 00:23:10,985 thought the model was lsabella Gualanda 423 00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:12,353 the exotic mistress 424 00:23:12,420 --> 00:23:15,589 of his old patron Giuliano de Medici. 425 00:23:16,390 --> 00:23:20,126 And as a further possibility the august figure of Costanza d'Avalos 426 00:23:20,259 --> 00:23:23,177 from a war mongering dinasty, she was a military commander 427 00:23:23,259 --> 00:23:24,561 in her own right. 428 00:23:25,695 --> 00:23:28,163 There's an ltalian poem of the time 429 00:23:28,297 --> 00:23:30,232 which named Costanza as the veiled lady 430 00:23:30,297 --> 00:23:32,232 in a portrait by an artist called Vinci. 431 00:23:36,268 --> 00:23:37,703 Finally there's the Florentine housewife, 432 00:23:37,836 --> 00:23:38,937 Lisa Gherardini, 433 00:23:39,571 --> 00:23:41,372 named by Leonardo's biographer, 434 00:23:41,539 --> 00:23:42,407 Vasari. 435 00:23:47,039 --> 00:23:49,407 The best way to clear up this confusion, 436 00:23:49,539 --> 00:23:50,808 is by going to Milan. 437 00:23:53,039 --> 00:23:54,409 I must look at some documents, 438 00:23:54,539 --> 00:23:56,409 which relate the history of the painting, 439 00:23:56,539 --> 00:23:58,409 and may have identified the most likely sitter. 440 00:24:00,039 --> 00:24:02,409 There are problems with all 4 candidates. 441 00:24:04,039 --> 00:24:07,999 Medici mistresses tended to flaunt their status with expensive jewels 442 00:24:08,039 --> 00:24:11,409 Not for them the restrained taste of the Mona Lisa. 443 00:24:16,039 --> 00:24:19,409 And the well in doubt Grand Duchess who was well under 40 444 00:24:19,539 --> 00:24:21,809 and a widow when Mona Lisa was painted. 445 00:24:22,039 --> 00:24:23,409 So she is unlikely. 446 00:24:27,039 --> 00:24:30,409 As for the vain and imperious Isabella d'Este, 447 00:24:31,039 --> 00:24:33,409 If she really had persuaded Leonardo to paint her portrait, 448 00:24:33,539 --> 00:24:36,999 wouldn't she have made absolutely sure the whole world knew about it? 449 00:24:38,539 --> 00:24:40,399 There are also doubts about Lisa Gherardini. 450 00:24:40,539 --> 00:24:43,499 Italian scholars find it particularly hard to believe 451 00:24:43,539 --> 00:24:45,399 Leonardo would have chosen to paint 452 00:24:45,539 --> 00:24:46,999 a middle-class house wife. 453 00:24:51,510 --> 00:24:53,512 After centuries of uncertainty, 454 00:24:53,712 --> 00:24:55,580 a vitally important piece of evidence 455 00:24:55,747 --> 00:24:57,215 has only just come to light 456 00:24:57,348 --> 00:24:59,817 in the Milan State Archive. 457 00:25:00,951 --> 00:25:01,985 It's a probate document. 458 00:25:02,151 --> 00:25:04,120 detailing the estate of one Gian 459 00:25:04,253 --> 00:25:05,854 Giacomo Caprotti, 460 00:25:06,021 --> 00:25:08,723 who was murdered in 1525. 461 00:25:08,857 --> 00:25:10,825 And we know Gian Giacomo 462 00:25:10,959 --> 00:25:13,294 as Salai, the Little Devil. 463 00:25:13,461 --> 00:25:16,130 Leonardo's lifetime companion 464 00:25:17,461 --> 00:25:19,301 The original is too delicate to handle, 465 00:25:19,461 --> 00:25:22,330 but from this fotocopy it's absolutely clear 466 00:25:22,361 --> 00:25:27,914 why Leonardo's scholars regard it as a crucial piece of the Mona Lisa jigsaw 467 00:25:27,961 --> 00:25:30,031 It's a list of all Salai possessions. 468 00:25:30,461 --> 00:25:33,324 And one entry in particular is absolutely fascinating. 469 00:25:33,461 --> 00:25:39,532 It refers to a picture "quadro ditto la honda", called "la honda", 470 00:25:40,461 --> 00:25:45,343 and it's valued at 505 lira A small fortune at the time. 471 00:25:45,461 --> 00:25:48,233 And the price which could only get cashed to a masterpiece. 472 00:25:48,461 --> 00:25:51,531 A Leonardo's masterpiece that he left to Salai. 473 00:25:53,461 --> 00:25:55,531 Now the plot thickens Because it's a second document, 474 00:25:56,461 --> 00:25:58,531 and in this document, the abbreviation "la honda", 475 00:25:59,461 --> 00:26:03,531 has been scratched out and replaced with the word "la Gioconda". 476 00:26:05,461 --> 00:26:08,731 Now we know that the married name of one of Leonardo's sitters, 477 00:26:08,861 --> 00:26:12,531 Lisa Gherardini, was in fact Lisa dal Giocondo. 478 00:26:15,161 --> 00:26:19,331 So, after 500 years, the mistery of the Mona Lisa's identity, 479 00:26:19,461 --> 00:26:21,531 has finally been resolved. 480 00:26:22,461 --> 00:26:25,332 Salai's inventory confirms 481 00:26:23,861 --> 00:26:25,334 Lisa dal Giocondo 482 00:26:25,461 --> 00:26:29,135 The Florentine housewife was indeed the Mona Lisa. 483 00:26:31,321 --> 00:26:34,657 This is one of the most amazing discoveries. 484 00:26:34,824 --> 00:26:36,792 l mean you sit in the Milan Archives, 485 00:26:36,925 --> 00:26:38,593 day after day after day, 486 00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:40,829 it's a freezing cold place, 487 00:26:40,962 --> 00:26:44,031 and you're reading all of this Latin, 488 00:26:44,165 --> 00:26:47,501 and then suddenly you've got it! 489 00:26:47,634 --> 00:26:49,202 You've got a document 490 00:26:49,335 --> 00:26:53,039 which tells you finally something you didn't know before. 491 00:26:53,335 --> 00:26:55,839 So who was Lisa dal Giocondo? 492 00:26:55,935 --> 00:26:57,839 By tracking down marriage and birth certificates, 493 00:26:58,035 --> 00:27:00,839 we managed to discover some tantalizing details. 494 00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,809 She lived here in the Via della Stufa, 495 00:27:04,976 --> 00:27:06,477 with her husband Francesco, 496 00:27:06,644 --> 00:27:08,545 a prosperous silk merchant. 497 00:27:08,679 --> 00:27:10,847 She was the daughter of a middle class landowner, 498 00:27:10,980 --> 00:27:12,515 got married at 16, 499 00:27:12,648 --> 00:27:14,784 and was Francesco's 3rd wife. 500 00:27:14,848 --> 00:27:18,584 His two other wives died tragically in childbirth. 501 00:27:18,648 --> 00:27:20,184 Lisa herself lost a daughter. 502 00:27:20,648 --> 00:27:23,184 But she did have 2 other children who managed to survive. 503 00:27:24,317 --> 00:27:27,553 What she meant to Leonardo we'll probably never know. 504 00:27:28,087 --> 00:27:31,422 But if this was meant to be a portrait of a respectable, 505 00:27:31,522 --> 00:27:32,923 middle-class housewife, 506 00:27:33,057 --> 00:27:35,625 then it's a very odd one indeed. 507 00:27:36,057 --> 00:27:38,625 Quite unlike any other picture of it's time. 508 00:27:40,057 --> 00:27:42,625 It's here at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence 509 00:27:43,057 --> 00:27:45,626 that you can get a clear idea of how radical the Mona Lisa 510 00:27:45,857 --> 00:27:47,627 must have seemed in those days. 511 00:27:48,357 --> 00:27:49,628 Just 3 decades earlier 512 00:27:50,257 --> 00:27:52,329 Even masters like Piero della Francesca 513 00:27:52,557 --> 00:27:56,830 was forced to abide by strict social conventions. 514 00:27:58,057 --> 00:28:01,631 The whole point of this portrait was to show up your status. 515 00:28:02,057 --> 00:28:06,032 So they had to of course wear their best clothes, the jewels, the finery 516 00:28:06,293 --> 00:28:09,329 so they could be seen in all their glory. 517 00:28:09,662 --> 00:28:12,830 As you can see in this picture, it was very much a man's world, 518 00:28:12,969 --> 00:28:14,030 and here you have the man, 519 00:28:15,062 --> 00:28:16,731 the owner really, essentially, 520 00:28:16,862 --> 00:28:18,131 of the wife who is his possession. 521 00:28:18,397 --> 00:28:21,065 She has to be modest chaste and virtuous. 522 00:28:21,397 --> 00:28:22,865 That was expected of her 523 00:28:22,907 --> 00:28:25,465 Loose hair was a sign of eroticism 524 00:28:25,497 --> 00:28:28,465 So it was something which was frowned upon. 525 00:28:28,697 --> 00:28:30,001 Constantly you could see 526 00:28:30,097 --> 00:28:31,965 that her hair was thrust up and decorated. 527 00:28:32,297 --> 00:28:35,165 Certainly not allow to flow in any way at all 528 00:28:35,797 --> 00:28:37,986 In the very materialistic culture 529 00:28:37,997 --> 00:28:39,765 of the early 16th century in Florence, 530 00:28:39,903 --> 00:28:44,539 everything was about keeping up the apparencies 531 00:28:45,273 --> 00:28:46,174 By comparison, 532 00:28:46,340 --> 00:28:49,510 Leonardo decides to throw away the rule book, 533 00:28:49,676 --> 00:28:51,378 far from being the height of fashion, 534 00:28:51,545 --> 00:28:54,147 her dress is utterly plain and timeless. 535 00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:58,283 Lisa is a married woman, but she wears no wedding ring. 536 00:28:58,417 --> 00:29:01,686 lndeed there's no jewellery, no adornment of any kind, 537 00:29:01,886 --> 00:29:04,989 apart from a simple gold braid on her neckline. 538 00:29:05,386 --> 00:29:09,589 That will tell nothing about her family's wealth or social position. 539 00:29:09,825 --> 00:29:12,126 Her loose hair would even have been seen 540 00:29:12,226 --> 00:29:14,728 at the time as implying loose morals, 541 00:29:14,895 --> 00:29:18,565 the curls falling sensually over her shoulders, 542 00:29:19,698 --> 00:29:23,035 and there's another radical innovation, her pose. 543 00:29:24,002 --> 00:29:25,994 Traditionally, Renaissance paintings 544 00:29:26,137 --> 00:29:27,371 would be in profile. 545 00:29:27,505 --> 00:29:29,140 lt would be like me standing like this, 546 00:29:29,206 --> 00:29:30,975 and you'd only see the profile. 547 00:29:31,375 --> 00:29:36,044 But what Leonardo does, it is as 548 00:29:36,110 --> 00:29:37,046 he's calling Lisa. 549 00:29:37,146 --> 00:29:39,748 He calls Lisa, Lisa turns towards him, 550 00:29:39,815 --> 00:29:41,917 looks at him, looks at you, 551 00:29:42,050 --> 00:29:45,686 and she has the upper part of her body looking somewhere else. 552 00:29:45,753 --> 00:29:46,821 So it's a snapshot, 553 00:29:46,954 --> 00:29:48,822 it is in the middle of a movement, 554 00:29:48,922 --> 00:29:51,424 and he's been able to do that and thus 555 00:29:51,591 --> 00:29:54,093 introducing into portrait painting something 556 00:29:54,260 --> 00:29:55,961 which existed of course in sculpture, 557 00:29:56,095 --> 00:29:58,463 in a single portrait. 558 00:29:59,764 --> 00:30:01,032 This was a- such an achievement, 559 00:30:01,232 --> 00:30:05,002 that Raphael and others started imitating it. 560 00:30:06,136 --> 00:30:08,071 lndeed nowadays when a photographer 561 00:30:08,271 --> 00:30:09,272 takes a picture of you, 562 00:30:09,439 --> 00:30:10,206 he'll always say 563 00:30:10,406 --> 00:30:12,974 please don't look at the camera, look slightly away and so on. 564 00:30:13,008 --> 00:30:15,509 They will try to disturb the staticity 565 00:30:15,743 --> 00:30:17,078 of the- of the pose, 566 00:30:17,212 --> 00:30:19,413 and in so doing, whether they know it or not, 567 00:30:19,646 --> 00:30:22,782 they are reproducing Leonardo's great discovery. 568 00:30:24,446 --> 00:30:26,082 And then there's her gaze 569 00:30:29,049 --> 00:30:33,152 But is she looking directly at us or through us? 570 00:30:33,285 --> 00:30:34,687 ls she even looking past us, 571 00:30:34,820 --> 00:30:37,923 over our shoulder at something we can't see? 572 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,723 Leonardo understood the compulsion 573 00:30:40,777 --> 00:30:42,523 we all feel when we first meet someone, 574 00:30:42,620 --> 00:30:45,423 to try to read the character from the face. 575 00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:48,424 He challenges us to interprete her thoughts. 576 00:30:48,620 --> 00:30:51,025 To capture, in his words, 577 00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:54,926 the emotions of her mind and the passions of her soul. 578 00:30:57,023 --> 00:30:58,524 But he teases us, 579 00:30:58,691 --> 00:31:02,127 he draws a veil of ambiguity across her features, 580 00:31:03,293 --> 00:31:04,861 and then of course, 581 00:31:05,028 --> 00:31:06,930 there's the riddle of that smile. 582 00:31:59,628 --> 00:32:01,431 It's one of the reasons, 583 00:32:01,508 --> 00:32:03,531 the smile so endlessly fascinates people, 584 00:32:03,628 --> 00:32:05,531 it's because they can't quite make it out. 585 00:32:05,628 --> 00:32:07,932 But I think that something of this is to do with the fact that 586 00:32:08,628 --> 00:32:10,533 it's lopsided, the smile. 587 00:32:10,628 --> 00:32:14,003 Now look at this. If I cover this side of the picture, 588 00:32:14,028 --> 00:32:15,535 now that is quite severe, 589 00:32:15,628 --> 00:32:18,536 If I turn around the cover, 590 00:32:18,628 --> 00:32:21,537 this side of the face, 591 00:32:22,628 --> 00:32:26,538 Now she looks like she's smiling 592 00:32:26,628 --> 00:32:30,539 And you see that the smile is also mirrowed in a way by the landscape, 593 00:32:30,628 --> 00:32:34,540 because the landscape seems both sided too. 594 00:32:34,628 --> 00:32:38,941 On the left hand side here, you see the water level in the frame, 595 00:32:39,028 --> 00:32:42,042 and on the right hand side it seems to be higher than the frame, 596 00:32:42,128 --> 00:32:45,543 protruding from that right hand side of the picture 597 00:32:45,828 --> 00:32:47,844 And of course Leonardo did nothing by accident. 598 00:32:47,928 --> 00:32:51,545 He was fascinated by optical effects 599 00:32:51,628 --> 00:32:53,546 Something must be intentional on it. 600 00:32:53,628 --> 00:32:55,970 It gives you a real sense of unease about the picture. 601 00:33:01,156 --> 00:33:02,457 What is she smiling at? 602 00:33:02,590 --> 00:33:04,325 What does she have that we don't have? 603 00:33:04,492 --> 00:33:07,161 What does she know about our thoughts, 604 00:33:07,294 --> 00:33:09,296 that we don't know? 605 00:33:09,496 --> 00:33:13,799 Leonardo was a man listening to voices unheard 606 00:33:13,933 --> 00:33:15,801 by other people. 607 00:33:16,835 --> 00:33:20,972 The smile to me is essentially saying 608 00:33:21,072 --> 00:33:24,608 l know things that you will never know. 609 00:33:24,775 --> 00:33:28,645 l understand you and the world in ways 610 00:33:28,811 --> 00:33:31,046 that you will never conceive of. 611 00:33:31,180 --> 00:33:33,315 lt's his message to the world, 612 00:33:33,515 --> 00:33:37,452 it's essentially his message to himself at the same time. 613 00:33:37,552 --> 00:33:40,621 That's why l think in this portrait, 614 00:33:40,754 --> 00:33:43,056 he's painting biography 615 00:33:43,190 --> 00:33:45,892 and autobiography at the same time. 616 00:34:06,608 --> 00:34:08,543 Leonardo's mother was a peasant girl 617 00:34:08,676 --> 00:34:09,710 Caterina, 618 00:34:09,877 --> 00:34:12,880 who had a brief liaison with his father Ser Piero. 619 00:34:13,815 --> 00:34:15,783 She was later married off to a man 620 00:34:15,883 --> 00:34:16,518 in the next village, 621 00:34:16,651 --> 00:34:20,219 but she's said to have wet-nursed Leonardo 622 00:34:20,353 --> 00:34:22,321 for at least 18 months. 623 00:34:24,991 --> 00:34:28,894 Then he was brought up by his step-mother Donna Albiera. 624 00:34:30,996 --> 00:34:34,499 Both women are said to have been deeply affectionate and loving, 625 00:34:34,899 --> 00:34:36,867 but the separation from his birth mother 626 00:34:37,034 --> 00:34:39,970 suggested another interpretation of the Mona Lisa, 627 00:34:40,103 --> 00:34:42,639 to the founding father of psycho-analysis, 628 00:34:42,772 --> 00:34:44,540 Sigmund Freud. 629 00:34:46,374 --> 00:34:48,609 We begin to suspect the possibility 630 00:34:49,776 --> 00:34:51,344 that it was his mother 631 00:34:51,477 --> 00:34:54,447 who possessed the mysterious smile, 632 00:34:54,580 --> 00:34:56,448 the smile that he had lost 633 00:34:56,582 --> 00:34:58,750 and that fascinated him so much, 634 00:34:58,917 --> 00:35:02,086 when he found it again in the Florentine lady. 635 00:35:04,388 --> 00:35:06,056 ln Leonardo's later painting, 636 00:35:06,256 --> 00:35:08,024 ''The Virgin and St Anne'' 637 00:35:08,157 --> 00:35:10,026 Freud saw the same smile, 638 00:35:10,092 --> 00:35:12,228 the Mona Lisa smile, on both women, 639 00:35:12,461 --> 00:35:14,897 as he saw it, both mother figures. 640 00:35:23,770 --> 00:35:26,739 Both of these women adored him, 641 00:35:26,906 --> 00:35:32,277 which becomes in the classical Freudian sense, 642 00:35:32,410 --> 00:35:35,479 the perfect situation in which a child, 643 00:35:35,646 --> 00:35:39,216 a male child, is likely to become homosexual. 644 00:35:42,418 --> 00:35:44,520 Leonardo probably was in the sense 645 00:35:44,653 --> 00:35:46,788 of we talk about being gay, 646 00:35:46,955 --> 00:35:47,789 l think he was gay 647 00:35:47,956 --> 00:35:49,157 l think he probably slept with men, 648 00:35:49,324 --> 00:35:51,993 l think that all the evidence in terms 649 00:35:52,159 --> 00:35:54,995 of what we know about his life, and also his art. 650 00:35:56,596 --> 00:35:58,631 Most of the drawings are of men 651 00:35:58,798 --> 00:36:01,033 and it's centred really round the midriff. 652 00:36:02,668 --> 00:36:04,469 You look at the care and the detail 653 00:36:04,536 --> 00:36:08,005 and the obsession with the ideal male form. 654 00:36:08,105 --> 00:36:12,175 lt is repeated and drawn over again and again and again, 655 00:36:12,376 --> 00:36:14,077 which doesn't compare to anything like the way 656 00:36:14,177 --> 00:36:16,812 in which the female form is represented. 657 00:36:16,979 --> 00:36:18,414 Leonardo's faces often seem 658 00:36:18,514 --> 00:36:21,983 to have some kind of sexual ambiguity. 659 00:36:23,918 --> 00:36:25,653 And here is that smile again 660 00:36:25,820 --> 00:36:27,821 on his most androgynous figure, 661 00:36:27,955 --> 00:36:30,223 the Portrait of St John. 662 00:36:30,357 --> 00:36:33,092 He too seems to have some secret knowledge, 663 00:36:33,226 --> 00:36:37,162 some understanding of what lies hidden in the darkness. 664 00:36:40,465 --> 00:36:43,100 What of Lisa dal Giacondo herself? 665 00:36:43,234 --> 00:36:44,601 While she sat for Leonardo, 666 00:36:44,735 --> 00:36:47,103 did she too have a secret? 667 00:36:47,404 --> 00:36:51,206 One that might explain the mystery of her smile? 668 00:36:52,307 --> 00:36:54,176 lt's my personal thought 669 00:36:54,309 --> 00:36:56,811 that she is indeed pregnant. 670 00:36:57,011 --> 00:36:59,013 ln the first place if you look at her hands, 671 00:36:59,180 --> 00:37:01,715 here she is, she's supposed to be a relatively young woman 672 00:37:01,882 --> 00:37:04,117 in her early 20's, there's no question 673 00:37:04,217 --> 00:37:05,651 that she has swollen fingers 674 00:37:05,785 --> 00:37:07,553 As you look carefully at the picture, 675 00:37:07,720 --> 00:37:08,887 there's no question 676 00:37:08,987 --> 00:37:11,856 that she's holding her hands in a particular attitude, 677 00:37:12,023 --> 00:37:13,491 that we're accustomed to seeing 678 00:37:13,625 --> 00:37:17,728 on the upper abdomens of women far advanced in pregnancy. 679 00:37:18,025 --> 00:37:19,728 In 1502, 1503, 680 00:37:19,929 --> 00:37:23,366 Lisa dal Giacondo was expecting a child, 681 00:37:23,499 --> 00:37:24,733 2nd child. 682 00:37:24,834 --> 00:37:26,735 They're moving into a new house the next year, 683 00:37:26,902 --> 00:37:28,703 so it may well be quite prosaic 684 00:37:28,837 --> 00:37:32,173 that this was to celebrate her pregnancy. 685 00:37:35,837 --> 00:37:38,373 Although it's perfectly obvious, of course, 686 00:37:38,437 --> 00:37:41,741 that Leonardo wasn't physically atracted to women, 687 00:37:41,837 --> 00:37:45,275 he was fascinated by them both as an artist and a scientist 688 00:37:45,337 --> 00:37:48,376 Most men of this time for instance really believed 689 00:37:48,437 --> 00:37:52,474 that the male was responsible uniquely for the act of procreation. 690 00:37:52,537 --> 00:37:56,475 But Leonardo realized that the man's role was quick and easy. 691 00:37:56,537 --> 00:38:00,576 Was the woman's which was complex and full of mistery. 692 00:38:00,637 --> 00:38:03,774 He was convinced that women 693 00:38:03,837 --> 00:38:06,175 were key to the process of procreation. 694 00:38:19,240 --> 00:38:21,475 While he painted the Mona Lisa during the day, 695 00:38:21,575 --> 00:38:25,111 he would come here to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova 696 00:38:25,245 --> 00:38:29,313 and spend the night cutting up female corpses. 697 00:38:29,445 --> 00:38:32,113 He was determined to learn everything about females. 698 00:38:32,245 --> 00:38:34,313 Not just about the surface of the body, 699 00:38:34,445 --> 00:38:39,213 but what lay underneath. 700 00:38:39,545 --> 00:38:42,414 Leonardo was the very first anatomist, 701 00:38:42,545 --> 00:38:44,614 to document the female body. 702 00:38:45,594 --> 00:38:48,930 This astonishing drawing is called The Great Lady 703 00:38:49,063 --> 00:38:50,397 in the margins are some of 704 00:38:50,498 --> 00:38:53,233 Leonardo's characteristic notes to himself, 705 00:38:53,433 --> 00:38:55,435 ideas that will become the foundation 706 00:38:55,635 --> 00:38:58,838 for a new science, Embryology. 707 00:39:00,441 --> 00:39:03,743 Begins with the formation of the infant, 708 00:39:03,877 --> 00:39:06,612 put in such parts as our successively composed 709 00:39:06,779 --> 00:39:09,481 according to the duration of the pregnancy 710 00:39:09,615 --> 00:39:12,350 and how it is nourished until birth. 711 00:39:13,153 --> 00:39:16,489 Leonardo da Vinci makes the first ever drawings 712 00:39:16,556 --> 00:39:18,258 of the human foetus in the womb. 713 00:39:19,556 --> 00:39:23,758 He was making this, he'd obviously been doing the disection at the time 714 00:39:23,856 --> 00:39:25,759 that he was painting the Mona Lisa. 715 00:39:25,856 --> 00:39:28,960 That seems so extraordinary to me. 716 00:39:29,592 --> 00:39:31,494 This disection, which is really not a dissection, 717 00:39:32,594 --> 00:39:35,462 It's a great synthesis of everything that he was learning 718 00:39:35,562 --> 00:39:37,497 about the human body. 719 00:39:37,564 --> 00:39:43,732 Is, I think, almost the most remarkable, anatomical drawing ever made 720 00:39:43,964 --> 00:39:48,233 It's a drawing about what makes a living body, a living body. 721 00:39:48,932 --> 00:39:49,933 And one of the things 722 00:39:50,033 --> 00:39:51,302 he's most interested in his anatomy, 723 00:39:51,435 --> 00:39:57,574 is this cycle of life, death and maturity. 724 00:39:58,807 --> 00:40:01,475 And think he's doing Leda at the same time, 725 00:40:01,575 --> 00:40:04,311 this painting about generation. 726 00:40:04,445 --> 00:40:08,681 Here is this wonderful image of a bird - 727 00:40:08,781 --> 00:40:10,549 we know Leonardo's obsession with flight - 728 00:40:10,716 --> 00:40:12,718 mating with a woman, 729 00:40:12,851 --> 00:40:15,053 and producing babies from eggs. 730 00:40:16,254 --> 00:40:17,422 What a subject for Leonardo! 731 00:40:17,522 --> 00:40:19,557 You know she is absolutely perfect. 732 00:40:19,690 --> 00:40:21,732 lt's all the mysteries of generation, 733 00:40:21,825 --> 00:40:23,394 all in one package. 734 00:40:29,425 --> 00:40:31,294 I think if you put, 735 00:40:31,425 --> 00:40:33,305 as we've done literally, this together 736 00:40:33,425 --> 00:40:34,796 and think that 737 00:40:34,825 --> 00:40:39,397 Leonardo, with his great culture and things in his mind, 738 00:40:39,425 --> 00:40:43,098 in a sense, saw this inside her body. 739 00:40:43,125 --> 00:40:47,798 And I think, you start to think, well that is how Leonardo looked at it. 740 00:40:49,061 --> 00:40:52,831 He thinks he's really getting to the mystery of life. 741 00:40:52,925 --> 00:40:55,398 The cyclical nature of the death of things 742 00:40:55,699 --> 00:40:57,401 and the birth of things. 743 00:40:57,677 --> 00:40:59,612 Of course this then refracts back beautifully 744 00:40:59,779 --> 00:41:01,880 into the landscape and the notion of - 745 00:41:02,047 --> 00:41:04,582 of the cyclical change of things, 746 00:41:04,682 --> 00:41:08,452 and how landscape changes over vast periods of time. 747 00:41:12,389 --> 00:41:16,459 When you see a scene of the primeval 748 00:41:16,592 --> 00:41:21,729 or primordial world behind the person being portrayed, 749 00:41:21,896 --> 00:41:25,499 it immediately puts you in mind of creation 750 00:41:25,633 --> 00:41:27,968 of early forms that will evolve 751 00:41:28,101 --> 00:41:29,436 into what we are today. 752 00:41:29,569 --> 00:41:32,338 Now in the foreground, you are looking 753 00:41:32,538 --> 00:41:33,872 at a woman who represents 754 00:41:34,073 --> 00:41:36,374 exactly the same thing. 755 00:41:38,243 --> 00:41:41,245 lt strikes me as it's a very unstable picture. 756 00:41:41,412 --> 00:41:43,680 You have these towering mountains behind, 757 00:41:43,847 --> 00:41:44,815 they're overhanging, 758 00:41:44,948 --> 00:41:46,683 they look like they might fall down, 759 00:41:46,783 --> 00:41:48,451 tumble down any time. 760 00:41:48,584 --> 00:41:50,219 The lakes are very full, 761 00:41:50,352 --> 00:41:51,753 it looks like they might come 762 00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,622 tumbling over the dam and wash away the bridge. 763 00:41:54,756 --> 00:41:57,658 And l do wonder whether what he's depicting here 764 00:41:57,825 --> 00:42:00,894 is how he imagined the Arno Valley 765 00:42:01,061 --> 00:42:04,697 would have looked, in previous times. 766 00:42:04,897 --> 00:42:06,832 There is some very clear evidence 767 00:42:06,966 --> 00:42:08,634 in the notebooks that he thought 768 00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,069 there used to be a lake where Florence stood, 769 00:42:11,169 --> 00:42:13,571 and there was a lake lower down the valley as well, 770 00:42:13,671 --> 00:42:15,306 and maybe this is what he's seeing 771 00:42:15,472 --> 00:42:16,540 with these 2 lakes. 772 00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:20,476 He's imagining what the landscape used to look like. 773 00:42:22,845 --> 00:42:24,813 So what's going on here? 774 00:42:24,947 --> 00:42:26,348 How does the Mona Lisa connect 775 00:42:26,481 --> 00:42:29,884 with the strange primeval landscape behind her? 776 00:42:29,984 --> 00:42:31,785 lt's time to get out of the city, 777 00:42:31,986 --> 00:42:34,221 and go back to where it all began, 778 00:42:34,321 --> 00:42:35,755 the Tuscan landscape, 779 00:42:35,889 --> 00:42:39,759 where Leonardo spent his childhood and formative years. 780 00:42:41,355 --> 00:42:42,889 The Valley of the River Arno 781 00:42:43,022 --> 00:42:44,891 wasn't just his playground, 782 00:42:44,991 --> 00:42:47,026 it was his laboratory. 783 00:42:47,192 --> 00:42:49,361 Here he studied the principles of flight, 784 00:42:49,528 --> 00:42:53,564 the dynamics of water, light and perspective. 785 00:42:58,128 --> 00:43:00,501 So is the apparently fantastic landscape 786 00:43:00,728 --> 00:43:03,464 behing the Mona Lisa real or imagined? 787 00:43:04,380 --> 00:43:06,248 Here 30 miles from Florence 788 00:43:06,382 --> 00:43:09,684 the River Arno is crossed by the Buriano Bridge. 789 00:43:10,082 --> 00:43:12,684 Is this the bridge behind the Mona Lisa? 790 00:43:15,988 --> 00:43:17,389 What we do know for sure 791 00:43:17,556 --> 00:43:18,990 is that Leonardo knew the bridge 792 00:43:19,057 --> 00:43:21,225 and the surrounding area intimately. 793 00:43:21,556 --> 00:43:24,990 The Buriano had a vital strategic importance to the city of Arezzo. 794 00:43:25,392 --> 00:43:28,061 And just a year before beginning work on the Mona Lisa, 795 00:43:28,228 --> 00:43:29,796 Leonardo was sent here, 796 00:43:29,929 --> 00:43:31,330 as a Military Engineer, 797 00:43:31,397 --> 00:43:34,966 to the infamous warlord Cesare Borgia. 798 00:43:38,736 --> 00:43:41,271 And only minutes away from the Buriano Bridge 799 00:43:41,405 --> 00:43:43,173 there is another connection 800 00:43:43,240 --> 00:43:45,375 with the Mona Lisa. 801 00:43:45,942 --> 00:43:48,878 This epic landscape is known to locals 802 00:43:48,978 --> 00:43:50,746 as The Valley of Hell. 803 00:43:52,578 --> 00:43:54,446 These primeval rock formations 804 00:43:54,578 --> 00:43:57,447 rise hundreds of feet out of nowhere 805 00:43:57,578 --> 00:44:01,748 to form a ridge running some 30 miles along the Arno river. 806 00:44:10,484 --> 00:44:13,220 The rocks appear frequently in his notebooks, 807 00:44:13,353 --> 00:44:17,056 and there are similar forms in the backgrounds of other paintings. 808 00:44:20,259 --> 00:44:22,194 The Virgin of the Rocks. 809 00:44:28,734 --> 00:44:30,569 The Virgin and St Anne. 810 00:44:33,636 --> 00:44:36,305 Little rivulet streams have carved their way 811 00:44:36,439 --> 00:44:38,840 down through these rocks and formed 812 00:44:38,974 --> 00:44:41,342 the amazing shapes that you see today. 813 00:44:41,476 --> 00:44:42,543 And that's l'm sure 814 00:44:42,644 --> 00:44:45,846 what Leonardo understood had happened. 815 00:44:48,215 --> 00:44:51,984 The Mona Lisa gives a very clear sense of time passing, 816 00:44:52,118 --> 00:44:55,454 l think particularly in the landscape in the background. 817 00:44:55,587 --> 00:44:57,856 There you have a clear depiction 818 00:44:57,989 --> 00:44:59,957 of the geological cycle. 819 00:45:00,124 --> 00:45:02,993 You have the river starting up in the mountains, 820 00:45:03,127 --> 00:45:06,096 these very jagged, unstable mountains. 821 00:45:06,296 --> 00:45:09,665 lt wends its way down bringing the sediment with it, 822 00:45:09,799 --> 00:45:12,134 until it eventually gets to the sea 823 00:45:12,267 --> 00:45:14,235 and Leonardo had this idea that it 824 00:45:14,336 --> 00:45:17,204 then was taken back up to the mountains again, 825 00:45:17,338 --> 00:45:18,405 and would start again. 826 00:45:18,506 --> 00:45:22,008 So you have this continuity, this continual cycle 827 00:45:22,142 --> 00:45:24,777 of geological time forever really. 828 00:45:30,645 --> 00:45:32,480 ln Leonardo's time, the natural world 829 00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:35,016 was regarded as a heathen wilderness, 830 00:45:35,149 --> 00:45:38,285 best avoided by God-fearing people. 831 00:45:39,349 --> 00:45:41,185 But Leonardo was not God-fear. 832 00:45:41,785 --> 00:45:44,354 Like his contemporary Christopher Columbus, 833 00:45:44,485 --> 00:45:46,454 Leonardo was an explorer. 834 00:45:47,021 --> 00:45:49,155 He had an insatiable curiosity 835 00:45:49,356 --> 00:45:51,824 to observe and chart the unknown world. 836 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:07,262 l came one day to the mouth of a great cavern. 837 00:46:08,029 --> 00:46:09,364 l had never been here before, 838 00:46:09,497 --> 00:46:11,866 never been aware of its existence. 839 00:46:12,366 --> 00:46:14,234 l stood for a time peering in to see 840 00:46:14,368 --> 00:46:16,836 what forms had been created there by nature, 841 00:46:17,003 --> 00:46:19,505 but the darkness of the cave was deep. 842 00:46:20,172 --> 00:46:22,941 l felt fear, and desire. 843 00:46:23,075 --> 00:46:25,610 Fear of the mysterious cavern, 844 00:46:25,777 --> 00:46:27,478 desire to see whether there might be 845 00:46:27,611 --> 00:46:29,947 any marvellous thing within its walls. 846 00:46:31,715 --> 00:46:32,849 Look! 847 00:46:37,820 --> 00:46:39,054 What is it? 848 00:46:39,187 --> 00:46:40,522 lt's a whale! 849 00:46:44,291 --> 00:46:48,862 Think how many years this beast 850 00:46:48,995 --> 00:46:51,497 has ploughed its way through the oceans, 851 00:46:52,732 --> 00:46:56,168 chasing the tuna fish, buffeting the ships, 852 00:46:57,602 --> 00:47:00,204 creating great storms in its wake. 853 00:47:04,541 --> 00:47:07,877 Oh time! swift destroyer of all things living, 854 00:47:08,077 --> 00:47:09,545 how many Kings, 855 00:47:09,712 --> 00:47:11,647 how many peoples have you brought low 856 00:47:11,847 --> 00:47:14,549 since this creature was flung here to die? 857 00:47:15,116 --> 00:47:17,885 lts bare bones become the columns 858 00:47:17,985 --> 00:47:19,853 to support a mountain. 859 00:47:21,888 --> 00:47:23,056 He's at the mouth of the cave 860 00:47:23,156 --> 00:47:25,091 and he's afraid to go in, 861 00:47:25,224 --> 00:47:28,527 but his curiosity is pulling him in. 862 00:47:28,627 --> 00:47:30,629 And ironically what does he find, 863 00:47:30,762 --> 00:47:32,030 when he gets in there? 864 00:47:32,130 --> 00:47:35,566 he finds the fossil of a great fish, very likely 865 00:47:35,733 --> 00:47:39,669 a whale, and the beginnings therefore, of the earth. 866 00:47:39,803 --> 00:47:42,138 Everything is tied in, in his work. 867 00:47:42,271 --> 00:47:46,575 The search for the maternal power of generation, 868 00:47:46,741 --> 00:47:50,378 and then the perpetuation of the species. 869 00:47:53,647 --> 00:47:55,248 Here's another sea creature. 870 00:47:55,415 --> 00:47:56,583 A thousand more. 871 00:47:56,749 --> 00:47:59,418 These shellfish once lived underneath the ocean, 872 00:47:59,585 --> 00:48:01,220 so how do you think they got up here, 873 00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:02,688 on the top of a mountain? 874 00:48:02,788 --> 00:48:05,290 The Great Flood? Noah? 875 00:48:05,456 --> 00:48:06,457 According to the Bible, 876 00:48:06,557 --> 00:48:08,526 fossils were carried onto the top of mountains 877 00:48:08,626 --> 00:48:10,093 by Noah's Flood, 878 00:48:10,227 --> 00:48:12,295 but to Leonardo this was nonsense, 879 00:48:12,462 --> 00:48:14,931 because fossils were not just found in one, 880 00:48:15,064 --> 00:48:17,132 but many different layers of rock. 881 00:48:17,299 --> 00:48:19,701 Did the Great Flood sweep them up in one mass 882 00:48:19,835 --> 00:48:22,603 and line them up in neat little rows? 883 00:48:23,304 --> 00:48:24,805 So what he realises is, 884 00:48:24,972 --> 00:48:27,140 that it actually it was just a coming 885 00:48:27,307 --> 00:48:28,808 and a going of the sea. 886 00:48:28,975 --> 00:48:31,477 The sea would come and wash over the land at some point 887 00:48:31,611 --> 00:48:32,912 and deposit these fossils, 888 00:48:33,012 --> 00:48:34,613 and then it would wash away again, 889 00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:36,548 and the fossils wouldn't be deposited. 890 00:48:36,681 --> 00:48:38,149 And therefore you would gradually 891 00:48:38,249 --> 00:48:39,917 build up these layers, 892 00:48:40,051 --> 00:48:43,453 and this was incredibly important 893 00:48:43,620 --> 00:48:45,855 because it was another 150 years, 894 00:48:45,989 --> 00:48:48,024 really, before this theory was- 895 00:48:48,157 --> 00:48:50,926 we call it the law of Superposition 896 00:48:51,060 --> 00:48:54,829 before people realised that that's what actually happened. 897 00:48:55,330 --> 00:48:58,299 Such heretical observations were unpublishable, 898 00:48:58,466 --> 00:48:59,933 but they provided Leonardo 899 00:49:00,067 --> 00:49:02,602 with a new theory of creation. 900 00:49:02,769 --> 00:49:04,837 Only observation he said, 901 00:49:05,037 --> 00:49:06,505 is the key to understanding, 902 00:49:06,639 --> 00:49:09,241 and his observations told him that the earth 903 00:49:09,341 --> 00:49:12,443 could not have been created in 6 days, 904 00:49:12,577 --> 00:49:16,847 that it took thousands, if not millions of years, 905 00:49:16,980 --> 00:49:19,349 of geological changes 906 00:49:19,516 --> 00:49:23,652 of atmospheric changes, of biological changes. 907 00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:25,520 So to him the evidence was everywhere. 908 00:49:25,721 --> 00:49:27,489 There was no question about the way 909 00:49:27,656 --> 00:49:28,957 the earth had evolved 910 00:49:29,090 --> 00:49:33,527 and evolved the same way a human being evolves. 911 00:49:36,729 --> 00:49:38,331 Drawing together all these threads, 912 00:49:38,531 --> 00:49:41,433 lt seems to me that the Mona Lisa provides us with a snapshot, 913 00:49:41,567 --> 00:49:43,835 of the mature Leonardo's mind, 914 00:49:43,935 --> 00:49:46,471 a distillation of all that he had discovered, 915 00:49:46,604 --> 00:49:48,539 through a lifetime's observation, 916 00:49:48,672 --> 00:49:51,174 into the secrets of nature. 917 00:49:52,610 --> 00:49:55,580 All his life Leonardo had wanted to control nature. 918 00:49:55,713 --> 00:49:57,582 He mapped town and countryside, 919 00:49:57,615 --> 00:50:00,417 planned to subdue and divert great rivers. 920 00:50:00,518 --> 00:50:03,819 He cut through mountains, built bridges 921 00:50:03,953 --> 00:50:07,189 all to re-arrange and order God's creation. 922 00:50:13,559 --> 00:50:17,128 But order had its flipside in disorder and chaos. 923 00:50:17,262 --> 00:50:19,063 Leonardo knew that nature 924 00:50:19,197 --> 00:50:22,199 could be both unpredictable and terrifying. 925 00:50:25,299 --> 00:50:27,067 lt strikes me it's a very unstable picture, 926 00:50:27,201 --> 00:50:28,235 towering mountains 927 00:50:28,368 --> 00:50:30,136 and they look like they might fall down, 928 00:50:30,270 --> 00:50:31,871 tumble down in time. 929 00:50:32,005 --> 00:50:34,407 Unease about the picture. 930 00:50:34,507 --> 00:50:38,109 was undergoing big, deepest cataclysmic changes imaginable 931 00:50:44,079 --> 00:50:46,547 The River Arno has always been unpredictable 932 00:50:46,647 --> 00:50:49,716 and subject to often devastating floods. 933 00:50:49,816 --> 00:50:51,785 As recently as the 1960's, 934 00:50:51,951 --> 00:50:54,120 it caused terrible destruction to buildings 935 00:50:54,287 --> 00:50:56,789 and works of art in Florence. 936 00:50:56,989 --> 00:50:58,890 Leonardo himself had witnessed 937 00:50:58,990 --> 00:51:02,427 as a child one of the worst of all deluges, 938 00:51:02,593 --> 00:51:05,396 one he recalls years later. 939 00:51:06,730 --> 00:51:08,865 The air was darkened by the heavy rain 940 00:51:08,965 --> 00:51:11,067 driven aslant by the crosswinds. 941 00:51:11,234 --> 00:51:14,069 The fire rent and tore the clouds asunder, 942 00:51:14,169 --> 00:51:16,504 what fearful noises were heard through the dark air 943 00:51:16,638 --> 00:51:19,107 as thunder violently shot through to strike anything 944 00:51:19,240 --> 00:51:20,841 that lay in its course. 945 00:51:20,975 --> 00:51:22,576 What weeping and wailing 946 00:51:22,709 --> 00:51:26,446 as terrified beings flung themselves into the waters 947 00:51:26,613 --> 00:51:29,415 How many mothers wept for their dead children? 948 00:51:29,548 --> 00:51:32,617 their arms raised to heaven as the hills collapsed 949 00:51:32,751 --> 00:51:35,486 into the depths of the flooded valley. 950 00:51:40,191 --> 00:51:43,427 Leonardo even produces a record of the aftermath, 951 00:51:43,627 --> 00:51:47,297 furniture, books, the detritus of everyday life, 952 00:51:47,430 --> 00:51:50,733 heaped up after the terrible flood subsided. 953 00:52:01,608 --> 00:52:03,376 The deluge drawings are in a sense 954 00:52:03,543 --> 00:52:05,444 the ultimate reflection of this idea 955 00:52:05,545 --> 00:52:07,579 that there is a superior force, 956 00:52:07,713 --> 00:52:10,315 and these are vast forces 957 00:52:10,448 --> 00:52:12,550 and what happens in the human heart, 958 00:52:12,717 --> 00:52:15,653 what happens in the mind are all little microcosmic 959 00:52:15,853 --> 00:52:17,754 reflections of these vast forces, 960 00:52:17,854 --> 00:52:19,322 so it's a complete spectrum. 961 00:52:19,456 --> 00:52:20,790 And towards the end of his life, 962 00:52:20,923 --> 00:52:22,758 there are these amazing visions where 963 00:52:22,858 --> 00:52:26,995 there is an insight that however much you understand the forces, 964 00:52:27,128 --> 00:52:28,463 there is an awesome dimension 965 00:52:28,596 --> 00:52:31,599 which is outside human ability to control. 966 00:52:40,906 --> 00:52:44,476 The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, 967 00:52:44,676 --> 00:52:46,544 is expressive of what in the ways 968 00:52:46,644 --> 00:52:50,747 of 1000 years, men have come to desire. 969 00:52:50,914 --> 00:52:53,950 She is older than the rocks among which she sits, 970 00:52:54,083 --> 00:52:56,919 like the Vampire she's been dead many times, 971 00:52:57,052 --> 00:52:59,688 and learned the secrets of the grave. 972 00:53:00,188 --> 00:53:03,024 What was the relationship of a living Florentine 973 00:53:03,124 --> 00:53:05,359 to this creature of his thought? 974 00:53:06,093 --> 00:53:07,694 By what strange affinities 975 00:53:07,828 --> 00:53:11,030 had the dream and the person grown up thus apart, 976 00:53:11,164 --> 00:53:13,966 and yet so closely together? 977 00:53:16,368 --> 00:53:18,036 Leonardo never delivered the portrait 978 00:53:18,136 --> 00:53:20,171 of Lisa dal Giacondo. 979 00:53:20,338 --> 00:53:21,372 He carried it with him 980 00:53:21,539 --> 00:53:24,674 wherever he went for the last 16 years of his life 981 00:53:24,775 --> 00:53:27,377 even into exile. 982 00:53:36,510 --> 00:53:37,644 At the age of 61, 983 00:53:37,778 --> 00:53:40,447 Leonardo left ltaly never to return. 984 00:53:40,613 --> 00:53:42,215 Younger and more fashionable artists 985 00:53:42,315 --> 00:53:43,583 like Raphael and Michelangelo, 986 00:53:43,616 --> 00:53:46,320 were now flavour of the month and regularly gaining 987 00:53:46,416 --> 00:53:48,620 the most glamorous commissions. 988 00:53:52,787 --> 00:53:55,055 This is where his journey ended, 989 00:53:55,188 --> 00:53:58,725 at the French town of Amboise in the Loire Valley. 990 00:53:58,825 --> 00:54:01,127 lf Leonardo was under appreciated in his homeland, 991 00:54:01,260 --> 00:54:04,596 he was certainly welcomed by the French King. 992 00:54:07,130 --> 00:54:09,732 Francis l was determined to import the glories 993 00:54:09,832 --> 00:54:12,134 of the Renaissance. 994 00:54:15,267 --> 00:54:17,936 ln recognition of Leonardo's unique status, 995 00:54:18,069 --> 00:54:20,038 he gave him a large manor house, 996 00:54:20,138 --> 00:54:22,740 right next door to the royal castle. 997 00:54:22,910 --> 00:54:25,412 Leonardo's last years were not easy. 998 00:54:25,512 --> 00:54:29,448 He suffered a stroke which meant he lost the use of his right hand. 999 00:54:29,615 --> 00:54:32,051 But his increasing infirmity didn't seem to matter 1000 00:54:32,151 --> 00:54:33,418 to the young French King, 1001 00:54:33,618 --> 00:54:35,887 who treasured every moment he was able to spend 1002 00:54:36,020 --> 00:54:39,590 with such a wise old man. 1003 00:54:41,820 --> 00:54:44,390 Many believe that this tunnel in Leonardo's house 1004 00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:49,291 was directly connected to the royal castle in Amboise 1005 00:54:49,420 --> 00:54:54,592 and that king Francis I used it to visit Leonardo at nights. 1006 00:54:59,220 --> 00:55:01,293 They would talk through the night, 1007 00:55:01,424 --> 00:55:03,459 the old man and the young king. 1008 00:55:03,526 --> 00:55:05,228 So at last, towards the end of his life 1009 00:55:05,328 --> 00:55:07,929 Leonardo as so often misundertood 1010 00:55:08,396 --> 00:55:10,798 in taking to granted, he'd found a patron, 1011 00:55:11,065 --> 00:55:13,834 who really undertood the nature of his genius. 1012 00:55:21,503 --> 00:55:22,873 In his last years, 1013 00:55:23,060 --> 00:55:24,427 Leonardo tried to put together 1014 00:55:24,561 --> 00:55:27,063 thousands of pages of notes and drawings, 1015 00:55:27,230 --> 00:55:29,732 into a grand encyclopaedia. 1016 00:55:36,498 --> 00:55:40,500 But the task of compiling the observations of a lifetime, 1017 00:55:40,667 --> 00:55:43,002 like so many of his ambitious schemes, 1018 00:55:43,136 --> 00:55:44,971 remained unfinished. 1019 00:55:53,079 --> 00:55:55,748 While l thought l was learning how to live, 1020 00:55:55,948 --> 00:55:58,316 l've really been learning how to die. 1021 00:55:58,483 --> 00:56:00,852 As a day well spent brings happy sleep, 1022 00:56:01,018 --> 00:56:05,322 so a life well used brings contented death. 1023 00:56:12,124 --> 00:56:14,026 Leonardo died here in his room 1024 00:56:14,192 --> 00:56:18,162 in Clos-Luc� on 2nd May, 1519. 1025 00:56:18,296 --> 00:56:20,364 He was 67 years old. 1026 00:56:21,965 --> 00:56:23,934 It's to have died in the arms 1027 00:56:24,134 --> 00:56:25,702 of the French King. 1028 00:56:25,868 --> 00:56:27,637 This is how the painter Ingres 1029 00:56:27,770 --> 00:56:30,706 imagined the scene 300 years later. 1030 00:56:31,839 --> 00:56:34,341 The great architect Benvenuto Cellini, 1031 00:56:34,508 --> 00:56:37,709 who also served Francis I, wrote this: 1032 00:56:39,583 --> 00:56:42,251 l have to record the words the King spoke to me, 1033 00:56:42,352 --> 00:56:43,819 that he believed 1034 00:56:44,386 --> 00:56:46,421 there had never been another man born in the world, 1035 00:56:46,588 --> 00:56:48,757 who knew as much as Leonardo. 1036 00:56:48,923 --> 00:56:50,825 Not so much about painting, 1037 00:56:50,992 --> 00:56:53,594 sculpture, and architecture, 1038 00:56:53,727 --> 00:56:57,664 as that he was a very great philosopher. 1039 00:57:08,927 --> 00:57:10,364 It has taken 500 years 1040 00:57:10,527 --> 00:57:14,265 for many of Leonardo's ideas to become a reality. 1041 00:57:14,532 --> 00:57:16,401 Even now, we can only begin to understand 1042 00:57:16,502 --> 00:57:19,470 the sheer scale of his achievements. 1043 00:57:19,802 --> 00:57:22,373 When he began his restless journey through life 1044 00:57:22,502 --> 00:57:25,270 the painter was regarded as a little more than a lowly craftsman 1045 00:57:25,502 --> 00:57:27,170 Leonardo changed all that. 1046 00:57:27,402 --> 00:57:29,970 And in this one painting, the Mona Lisa, 1047 00:57:30,303 --> 00:57:33,339 all the passions and preoccupations of a lifetime, 1048 00:57:33,506 --> 00:57:35,540 come together. 1049 00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:38,476 The Mona Lisa is the first great psicological portrait. 1050 00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:41,376 It's Leonardo's attempt to capture the energy, 1051 00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:43,377 the essence of life itself. 1052 00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:46,478 Is not a mistery that is easily resolved. 1053 00:57:46,542 --> 00:57:49,211 But he has caught an an instant and an eternity. 1054 00:57:50,812 --> 00:57:54,581 Like a magician he's made the invisible, visible. 1055 00:57:57,484 --> 00:57:59,485 Don't pity the humble painter, 1056 00:58:00,619 --> 00:58:02,788 he can be lord of all things, 1057 00:58:03,222 --> 00:58:05,890 whatever exists in the universe, 1058 00:58:06,024 --> 00:58:09,460 he has first in his mind, and then in his hand. 1059 00:58:11,128 --> 00:58:15,431 By his art he may be called the Grandchild of God. 1060 00:58:17,128 --> 00:58:19,432 Subtitles by J. C. Germi 1061 00:58:21,128 --> 00:58:23,432 BBC 2003