1 00:00:09,750 --> 00:00:13,350 Welcome to the Low Countries - a vast flatland 2 00:00:13,350 --> 00:00:18,390 where continental Europe threatens to slide into the North Sea. 3 00:00:20,070 --> 00:00:24,110 If it weren't for the dikes and the continual pumping away of water, 4 00:00:24,110 --> 00:00:27,390 thousands of square miles would simply be washed away. 5 00:00:34,750 --> 00:00:37,390 The region of the Low Countries has always been 6 00:00:37,390 --> 00:00:42,030 a place of shifting borders and uneasily coexisting tribes. 7 00:00:42,030 --> 00:00:44,390 It can't be pinned down to a single nation 8 00:00:44,390 --> 00:00:47,030 or even a particular mother tongue. 9 00:00:47,030 --> 00:00:50,310 Labels like Dutch, Netherlandish, Flemish, Walloon, 10 00:00:50,310 --> 00:00:54,950 they're nebulous, they meant different things at different times. 11 00:00:54,950 --> 00:00:56,870 And there's the paradox. 12 00:00:56,870 --> 00:00:58,910 This place, which sometimes seems 13 00:00:58,910 --> 00:01:01,550 as difficult to grasp as water itself, 14 00:01:01,550 --> 00:01:04,630 has exerted an enormous tangible influence 15 00:01:04,630 --> 00:01:07,710 on the whole course of Western civilisation. 16 00:01:07,710 --> 00:01:11,870 And if you want to understand how this watery world has 17 00:01:11,870 --> 00:01:16,270 shaped our modern world in terms of politics, science, 18 00:01:16,270 --> 00:01:20,510 the advancement of learning, economics, history, I think there's 19 00:01:20,510 --> 00:01:25,230 no better way to begin than by exploring the rich story of its art. 20 00:01:31,190 --> 00:01:35,190 Behind the obvious cliches - the beer and the moules frites, 21 00:01:35,190 --> 00:01:40,390 the chocolate and waffles, the windmills and clogs, 22 00:01:40,390 --> 00:01:42,990 lies a vivid, complex tale 23 00:01:42,990 --> 00:01:46,630 encapsulated in some of the world's most compelling works of art. 24 00:01:50,470 --> 00:01:54,070 From the world of medieval Flanders, rich and poor, 25 00:01:54,070 --> 00:01:56,790 sacred and secular... 26 00:01:56,790 --> 00:02:00,870 to the glories of the Dutch Golden Age... 27 00:02:00,870 --> 00:02:05,070 to the somewhat tortuous emergence of modern Holland and Belgium. 28 00:02:07,750 --> 00:02:10,710 It's the art of an Atlantis in reverse, 29 00:02:10,710 --> 00:02:14,190 a land that rose from beneath the water 30 00:02:14,190 --> 00:02:17,070 to reach the pinnacle of civilisation. 31 00:02:49,510 --> 00:02:53,990 The Zwin Estuary - this is the spot where modern day Belgium 32 00:02:53,990 --> 00:02:57,110 and the Netherlands meet each other, and the sea. 33 00:03:00,190 --> 00:03:03,310 Despite thousands of years of human presence here, 34 00:03:03,310 --> 00:03:07,550 it still feels uncanny - a strange, shifting land. 35 00:03:10,710 --> 00:03:13,870 To the Romans, this coastline was frontierland, 36 00:03:13,870 --> 00:03:17,750 the uncouth edge of Empire, the arse-end of the world. 37 00:03:17,750 --> 00:03:21,470 The Roman historian Tacitus described this tidal, 38 00:03:21,470 --> 00:03:26,110 watery region as "a place somewhere between land and sea, 39 00:03:26,110 --> 00:03:31,390 "inhabited by wretched natives leading primitive lives." 40 00:03:31,390 --> 00:03:34,830 For heat, they burned clods of dried earth, 41 00:03:34,830 --> 00:03:40,750 and for sustenance they had little more than this... 42 00:03:47,070 --> 00:03:51,390 Modest beginnings, perhaps, but the marshy mix of water and land 43 00:03:51,390 --> 00:03:54,070 that disgusted the Romans 44 00:03:54,070 --> 00:03:57,630 was the very thing that the "wretched herring-eating natives" 45 00:03:57,630 --> 00:04:00,390 would eventually turn to their advantage. 46 00:04:00,390 --> 00:04:03,030 By the 10th century, they were building dikes, 47 00:04:03,030 --> 00:04:07,350 man-made humps to fence off parcels of land from the sea. 48 00:04:07,350 --> 00:04:11,990 Bit by bit, the threat of floods was replaced with stable farmland, 49 00:04:11,990 --> 00:04:14,830 then towns, then cities. 50 00:04:17,870 --> 00:04:19,910 Through sheer hard graft, 51 00:04:19,910 --> 00:04:23,910 the Lowlanders created a sophisticated society from almost nothing. 52 00:04:29,230 --> 00:04:32,510 But I think what made the whole culture of the Low Countries 53 00:04:32,510 --> 00:04:36,950 unique was that this really was a civilisation built on a network, 54 00:04:36,950 --> 00:04:40,830 a trading network, and a network of canals, 55 00:04:40,830 --> 00:04:42,910 the gentle terrain of the Lowlands, 56 00:04:42,910 --> 00:04:44,870 the fact that it was a civilisation 57 00:04:44,870 --> 00:04:47,630 that had been conjured from water, against all odds, 58 00:04:47,630 --> 00:04:50,550 was also the thing that enabled it to become 59 00:04:50,550 --> 00:04:52,830 a great flourishing civilisation. 60 00:04:52,830 --> 00:04:55,350 From the late Middle Ages on well into the Renaissance, 61 00:04:55,350 --> 00:04:59,310 Men from Flanders were known for their skill at managing water. 62 00:05:08,350 --> 00:05:11,550 It's nice to see the city from the water, because you can feel 63 00:05:11,550 --> 00:05:13,910 how the houses actually face this way. 64 00:05:13,910 --> 00:05:17,470 Naturally, these beautiful little gardens all facing on to the water. 65 00:05:22,230 --> 00:05:26,710 Location was crucial - canals connected the Low Countries 66 00:05:26,710 --> 00:05:30,830 with sea lanes north to the Baltic, 67 00:05:30,830 --> 00:05:34,030 west to the British Isles, 68 00:05:34,030 --> 00:05:37,830 south to Iberia and the Mediterranean. 69 00:05:37,830 --> 00:05:41,310 By the 1300s, the Low Countries 70 00:05:41,310 --> 00:05:46,070 dominated trade in Northern Europe, and this city, Bruges, 71 00:05:46,070 --> 00:05:51,030 was at the heart of one of the greatest trading centres in the world. 72 00:05:51,030 --> 00:05:55,550 It was the economic powerhouse of a place known as Flanders, 73 00:05:55,550 --> 00:05:58,230 part of a Low Countries patchwork of mini-states. 74 00:05:59,830 --> 00:06:03,150 Low Countries success was founded, above all, on cloth. 75 00:06:06,830 --> 00:06:10,070 As these people had woven land and sea to create the world 76 00:06:10,070 --> 00:06:16,070 they lived in, so they wove their identity into their fabrics. 77 00:06:16,070 --> 00:06:18,950 And when does it really start to get busy? About midday? 78 00:06:21,590 --> 00:06:25,750 Flanders became an international byword for quality textiles - 79 00:06:25,750 --> 00:06:31,270 none brighter or finer. 80 00:06:31,270 --> 00:06:34,230 So it's entirely fitting that Lowlanders found their first 81 00:06:34,230 --> 00:06:37,390 great artistic expression not in paint, 82 00:06:37,390 --> 00:06:38,830 but in cloth - 83 00:06:38,830 --> 00:06:44,470 threading vivid images into the medium of tapestry. 84 00:06:51,470 --> 00:06:55,030 A little to the east of Bruges in the Belgian town of Mechelen 85 00:06:55,030 --> 00:06:57,510 is the De Wit Royal Manufacturers of tapestry. 86 00:06:58,910 --> 00:07:03,270 Housed inside a 15th century building is a truly superb 87 00:07:03,270 --> 00:07:06,790 collection of these Flemish masterpieces, 88 00:07:06,790 --> 00:07:10,430 displayed just as they might have been by their original owners. 89 00:07:11,870 --> 00:07:15,070 Now this room is where they keep some of the very earliest 90 00:07:15,070 --> 00:07:17,830 tapestries in the whole De Wit collection, 91 00:07:17,830 --> 00:07:21,590 including this one - it's perhaps the smallest piece in the collection 92 00:07:21,590 --> 00:07:25,150 but it's one of the most important because it's phenomenally early, 93 00:07:25,150 --> 00:07:29,870 it's possibly as early as the 1430s, certainly no later than the 1450s. 94 00:07:29,870 --> 00:07:34,310 It was created in Tournai in what is now Southern Belgium. 95 00:07:35,910 --> 00:07:39,350 It's an object of immense preciousness. 96 00:07:39,350 --> 00:07:42,030 We know from inventories of the time 97 00:07:42,030 --> 00:07:44,990 that something like this would have been valued far more highly 98 00:07:44,990 --> 00:07:47,590 because of the sheer amount of labour that went into it, 99 00:07:47,590 --> 00:07:49,750 than a painting or a sculpture, 100 00:07:49,750 --> 00:07:54,390 even objects made of gold or silver - tapestry was number one luxury item. 101 00:07:55,430 --> 00:07:59,870 So here we've got this image of Christ on the cross. 102 00:07:59,870 --> 00:08:03,990 Wonderful details - here's the bad thief with his lost soul 103 00:08:03,990 --> 00:08:07,590 on its way to hell at the moment of his death. 104 00:08:09,070 --> 00:08:12,870 This character was a centurion who's said to have pierced Christ's 105 00:08:12,870 --> 00:08:15,710 side with his sword, and as the blood gushed forth - 106 00:08:15,710 --> 00:08:18,950 look at that wonderful red blood - some of it 107 00:08:18,950 --> 00:08:24,190 went in Longinus' eye and he was miraculously cured of his blindness. 108 00:08:24,190 --> 00:08:27,670 If you look in close detail, and this is very, very rare to have 109 00:08:27,670 --> 00:08:32,070 survived, you can see that there are gold threads in the haloes. 110 00:08:33,990 --> 00:08:40,270 I think it reminds us that this was a culture simultaneously 111 00:08:40,270 --> 00:08:45,790 in love with luxury and wedded to a profound sense of piety. 112 00:08:56,270 --> 00:08:58,630 The tension between piety and luxury 113 00:08:58,630 --> 00:09:01,910 had its origins in the very creation of the Low Countries. 114 00:09:04,390 --> 00:09:08,350 This was a society ultimately built and owned by merchants 115 00:09:08,350 --> 00:09:11,470 and businessmen - secular people. 116 00:09:11,470 --> 00:09:14,350 But the foundations had been laid by monks and nuns. 117 00:09:15,430 --> 00:09:19,190 The ruins of the 13th century Cistercian Abbey at Orval, 118 00:09:19,190 --> 00:09:22,750 in what is now the French-speaking part of southern Belgium, 119 00:09:22,750 --> 00:09:27,630 might seem to evoke the otherworldly nature of the monastic life. 120 00:09:27,630 --> 00:09:30,790 Yet it was the practical know-how developed in monasteries 121 00:09:30,790 --> 00:09:36,550 that first made possible the region's rise from mud and poverty. 122 00:09:36,550 --> 00:09:39,590 It was monks who first reclaimed the land, 123 00:09:39,590 --> 00:09:43,070 and harnessed water for human use. 124 00:09:43,070 --> 00:09:45,630 In a society with no social services, 125 00:09:45,630 --> 00:09:49,550 monasteries were at the forefront of public health and welfare. 126 00:09:49,550 --> 00:09:53,230 And part of that was turning water into beer. 127 00:09:59,550 --> 00:10:04,670 Today, a community of Trappist monks continues Orval's brewing tradition. 128 00:10:04,670 --> 00:10:08,790 In some respects, the methods and ingredients are unchanged, 129 00:10:08,790 --> 00:10:12,510 but they also use state-of-the-art equipment, making them 130 00:10:12,510 --> 00:10:15,990 every bit as progressive as their 13th century predecessors. 131 00:10:19,950 --> 00:10:23,590 'Brother Xavier is the manager of Orval Abbey's brewery.' 132 00:10:23,590 --> 00:10:26,150 IN FRENCH: 133 00:10:29,990 --> 00:10:31,750 Hops! Special aromatiques. 134 00:10:33,470 --> 00:10:34,630 Mmm! 135 00:11:08,910 --> 00:11:11,590 Du pain liquide! That's a great phrase! 136 00:11:11,590 --> 00:11:15,350 Liquid bread, they called it because it had this sustaining ability. 137 00:11:25,030 --> 00:11:26,870 The monks of medieval Flanders 138 00:11:26,870 --> 00:11:29,390 only brewed enough beer for their own use. 139 00:11:29,390 --> 00:11:32,630 But the entrepreneurial Lowlanders knew how to turn monastic 140 00:11:32,630 --> 00:11:35,750 ingenuity into commercial success. 141 00:11:39,910 --> 00:11:44,910 By the 14th century, the Low Countries were the continent's biggest exporters of ale. 142 00:11:47,190 --> 00:11:50,990 Entrepreneurs also turned monastic art into big business. 143 00:11:55,310 --> 00:11:58,470 The illuminated manuscript, for centuries 144 00:11:58,470 --> 00:12:02,510 made by monks in the sanctity of their abbey scriptoria, 145 00:12:02,510 --> 00:12:05,310 was taken to a height of sophistication by secular 146 00:12:05,310 --> 00:12:08,870 Flemish artists whose workshops were in Flemish town centres. 147 00:12:11,470 --> 00:12:15,430 By the 1400s, all of Europe's ruling elite were commissioning 148 00:12:15,430 --> 00:12:18,270 manuscripts from Flanders - 149 00:12:18,270 --> 00:12:23,150 portable luxury objects even more precious than tapestries. 150 00:12:24,230 --> 00:12:28,110 The Mayer van den Bergh Museum in Antwerp houses what I think of 151 00:12:28,110 --> 00:12:32,990 as the single most brilliant illuminated book ever created. 152 00:12:32,990 --> 00:12:35,150 It was made in around 1500, 153 00:12:35,150 --> 00:12:38,070 probably as a wedding gift for the Queen of Portugal. 154 00:12:43,950 --> 00:12:46,950 Now, Claire, I think of this as possibly the finest 155 00:12:46,950 --> 00:12:52,390 illustrated manuscript produced by the whole Flemish tradition 156 00:12:52,390 --> 00:12:55,590 and I have to admit that when I put in a request that we might 157 00:12:55,590 --> 00:12:59,310 actually look at it, I didn't imagine that you would get it out 158 00:12:59,310 --> 00:13:02,950 and that we would actually be allowed to turn the pages. 159 00:13:02,950 --> 00:13:05,710 And you've started with an image of Christmas? 160 00:13:05,710 --> 00:13:10,310 Yes. It is one of the most beautiful illuminations 161 00:13:10,310 --> 00:13:14,150 here in the manuscript but there are lots of miniatures like this 162 00:13:14,150 --> 00:13:18,310 because it's a prayer book, a book of hours. 163 00:13:18,310 --> 00:13:22,390 Normally it was made for monks to use during the year. 164 00:13:22,390 --> 00:13:24,550 Well, that's, that's where it began, isn't it? Yes. 165 00:13:24,550 --> 00:13:26,950 But by the time we get to an object such as this, 166 00:13:26,950 --> 00:13:31,230 these books are being distributed to very rich people... Yes, it is. 167 00:13:31,230 --> 00:13:35,630 ..across Europe to aid them in their personal prayer. 168 00:13:35,630 --> 00:13:41,030 Yes. And it's interesting to me that the faces seem very Flemish. 169 00:13:41,030 --> 00:13:45,110 It's that medieval or late medieval habit of imagining the scene 170 00:13:45,110 --> 00:13:47,070 as if it's happening in your own time. 171 00:13:47,070 --> 00:13:50,670 Yes, it is because it doesn't look like Jerusalem or Bethlehem. No. Not at all. 172 00:13:50,670 --> 00:13:53,710 It's happening in Bruges or Flanders. 173 00:13:53,710 --> 00:13:57,110 I can see down here exactly what you're saying because this is... 174 00:13:57,110 --> 00:14:00,590 I think this is Mary and Joseph being told there's no room at the inn? 175 00:14:00,590 --> 00:14:03,910 Yes, it is, yeah. But it's a Bruges inn. 176 00:14:03,910 --> 00:14:06,750 And these buildings are built of brick and they've got those 177 00:14:06,750 --> 00:14:09,350 very, very characteristic Flemish windows. 178 00:14:09,350 --> 00:14:12,630 Yes, you even can see here at the background a tower, 179 00:14:12,630 --> 00:14:15,910 which could be a church in Bruges. 180 00:14:15,910 --> 00:14:17,950 Can we look some more? 181 00:14:20,670 --> 00:14:22,990 Where are you going to take us now? 182 00:14:22,990 --> 00:14:26,510 I can show you this one. 183 00:14:26,510 --> 00:14:31,590 It's just a decoration for... Just a... ..a normal page, just decoration. 184 00:14:31,590 --> 00:14:34,470 Yeah. But it's so beautiful because it's jewellery 185 00:14:34,470 --> 00:14:39,070 with beautiful gems hanging here on hooks. 186 00:14:39,070 --> 00:14:41,310 It's an amazing thing, isn't it, 187 00:14:41,310 --> 00:14:43,830 cos it's almost like an imaginary jewellery box. 188 00:14:44,910 --> 00:14:47,710 The new queen of the King of Portugal. 189 00:14:47,710 --> 00:14:49,870 Nothing's too good for her, is it? 190 00:14:52,830 --> 00:14:56,710 And we have here a very beautiful... Wow! 191 00:14:56,710 --> 00:15:00,350 ..illumination where you can see all the apostles 192 00:15:00,350 --> 00:15:02,750 and Holy Mary with the blue... 193 00:15:02,750 --> 00:15:04,390 There again with the blue. 194 00:15:04,390 --> 00:15:09,270 ..gown looking at the clouds where you can see disappearing just... 195 00:15:09,270 --> 00:15:11,590 and only the feet of Christ. 196 00:15:11,590 --> 00:15:13,590 There he goes, up to heaven. 197 00:15:13,590 --> 00:15:14,910 And where... His feet. 198 00:15:14,910 --> 00:15:18,830 ..he started you can see but very, very little one, 199 00:15:18,830 --> 00:15:20,670 his two feet. 200 00:15:20,670 --> 00:15:22,110 Ah! 201 00:15:22,110 --> 00:15:23,910 In the rocks. His footprints. 202 00:15:23,910 --> 00:15:25,150 His footprints, yes. 203 00:15:26,870 --> 00:15:30,550 No-one can imitate this quality now 204 00:15:30,550 --> 00:15:36,710 because we don't have the, the art and also not the materials... 205 00:15:36,710 --> 00:15:40,630 It's a sobering thought that yes, I think you're exactly right - 206 00:15:40,630 --> 00:15:46,270 no-one will ever perhaps draw with that fineness... 207 00:15:46,270 --> 00:15:48,310 No. ..ever again. 208 00:15:59,550 --> 00:16:04,230 Flemish illuminators achieved unsurpassed levels of immediacy 209 00:16:04,230 --> 00:16:05,990 and imagination. 210 00:16:05,990 --> 00:16:09,430 It's often hard to know who the artists responsible were, 211 00:16:09,430 --> 00:16:12,310 because their names are rarely recorded. 212 00:16:12,310 --> 00:16:15,790 But throughout Flanders during the 15th century, the skills 213 00:16:15,790 --> 00:16:19,590 developed within the borders of a book's page would increasingly 214 00:16:19,590 --> 00:16:22,390 be applied to the more public medium of painting. 215 00:16:29,470 --> 00:16:33,350 And the first great painter to translate Flemish illumination 216 00:16:33,350 --> 00:16:37,990 on to this far grander scale would have such an impact on the whole 217 00:16:37,990 --> 00:16:42,310 course of Western art that we most certainly know his name. 218 00:16:42,310 --> 00:16:44,870 Jan van Eyck. 219 00:16:44,870 --> 00:16:48,030 Van Eyck may himself have started out as an illuminator. 220 00:16:49,150 --> 00:16:51,510 He lived and worked in Bruges, 221 00:16:51,510 --> 00:16:55,670 but it was another nearby city that he created his most spectacular work. 222 00:17:00,630 --> 00:17:02,510 Well, I'm in Ghent and it's raining. 223 00:17:02,510 --> 00:17:03,750 It's another grey day 224 00:17:03,750 --> 00:17:07,830 in the Low Countries, but then again who needs sunshine when there's 225 00:17:07,830 --> 00:17:12,230 so much light and colour in the art, and in the church behind me, 226 00:17:12,230 --> 00:17:16,310 there is, for my money, the most radiant Flemish masterpiece of the lot. 227 00:17:28,430 --> 00:17:33,670 In 1432, Jan van Eyck completed a commission for this cathedral - 228 00:17:33,670 --> 00:17:37,750 possibly begun by his brother, Hubert, but essentially his work. 229 00:17:40,030 --> 00:17:43,990 It was a chance for van Eyck to show off his breathtaking discovery, 230 00:17:43,990 --> 00:17:49,150 something never seen before - a way of applying layers of translucent 231 00:17:49,150 --> 00:17:53,630 oil paint to create astonishing illusions of depth and light. 232 00:18:00,790 --> 00:18:05,630 This work is now so cherished it's kept behind bulletproof glass 233 00:18:05,630 --> 00:18:09,670 under carefully controlled climate and lighting conditions. 234 00:18:14,470 --> 00:18:17,070 So here it is - van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, 235 00:18:17,070 --> 00:18:20,590 one of the very greatest paintings in the whole world. 236 00:18:20,590 --> 00:18:22,870 And what does it represent? 237 00:18:22,870 --> 00:18:26,070 Well, essentially it's a vision, it's a fantasy, 238 00:18:26,070 --> 00:18:31,670 it's a dream of what might happen at the end of the world. 239 00:18:31,670 --> 00:18:34,310 Everything converges on a sacred centre, 240 00:18:34,310 --> 00:18:40,350 here the sacred centre is that astonishing solemn, severe hieratic 241 00:18:40,350 --> 00:18:45,590 figure of Christ the judge and God the father rolled into one. 242 00:18:48,150 --> 00:18:51,710 And at the extreme edge on either side we have Adam 243 00:18:51,710 --> 00:18:57,230 and Eve represented with tremendous lack of idealism - 244 00:18:57,230 --> 00:18:59,430 these are real human bodies. 245 00:18:59,430 --> 00:19:02,190 And that's the whole point 246 00:19:02,190 --> 00:19:05,990 because it is their sin that has condemned us to live in a world of 247 00:19:05,990 --> 00:19:13,710 mortal time and that is what in this moment is being redeemed by Christ. 248 00:19:13,710 --> 00:19:18,030 This is the moment when all of the blessed, as described in the Book of 249 00:19:18,030 --> 00:19:25,670 Revelations, gather to enter the New Jerusalem, paradise, eternal life. 250 00:19:26,950 --> 00:19:30,670 They're all converging on that central mystical vision 251 00:19:30,670 --> 00:19:34,990 of the lamb of God, symbol of Christ, shedding his blood 252 00:19:34,990 --> 00:19:39,110 on an altar while angels bear the symbols of his Passion. 253 00:19:39,110 --> 00:19:44,910 It's like a church service taking place in a garden of utter beauty and delight. 254 00:19:46,870 --> 00:19:51,030 But what makes this picture truly extraordinary? 255 00:19:51,030 --> 00:19:55,150 What makes it one of the great works of art ever painted? 256 00:19:55,150 --> 00:19:58,550 I think it's partly to do with van Eyck's sense of composition 257 00:19:58,550 --> 00:20:03,790 and the way in which he's imagined heavenly perfection as this 258 00:20:03,790 --> 00:20:06,270 perfectly symmetrical universe of form. 259 00:20:08,950 --> 00:20:12,590 You can almost imagine the picture having just been painted one half 260 00:20:12,590 --> 00:20:16,750 and then folded over and the other half mirrors it perfectly. 261 00:20:18,390 --> 00:20:22,030 And yet when you look more closely into the picture, 262 00:20:22,030 --> 00:20:25,150 there are these wonderful lightning flashes of realism, 263 00:20:25,150 --> 00:20:27,590 these faces that jump out at you, 264 00:20:27,590 --> 00:20:33,070 beards that you feel you can touch, flowers that you feel you can smell. 265 00:20:34,390 --> 00:20:36,270 And how did van Eyck achieve this? 266 00:20:36,270 --> 00:20:41,830 Well, Giorgio Vasari, the great Italian art historian, tells us 267 00:20:41,830 --> 00:20:46,910 he invented a new form of art, it was called oil painting. 268 00:20:46,910 --> 00:20:49,150 Now, generations of modern art historians have said that 269 00:20:49,150 --> 00:20:51,550 that's a myth, of course van Eyck didn't invent oil painting, 270 00:20:51,550 --> 00:20:52,870 it was already around. 271 00:20:52,870 --> 00:20:57,430 But the fact is that van Eyck DID in effect invent oil painting - 272 00:20:57,430 --> 00:21:01,750 certainly he discovered the things that could be done with pigment, 273 00:21:01,750 --> 00:21:06,190 when it was suspended in this medium of oil. 274 00:21:06,190 --> 00:21:10,070 And this picture is a kind of encyclopaedia of his talents, 275 00:21:10,070 --> 00:21:13,910 "Look!" he's saying, look what I can do with oil paint. 276 00:21:13,910 --> 00:21:19,990 I can paint ermine-trimmed robes, I can paint each separate 277 00:21:19,990 --> 00:21:26,430 hair in a horse's mane, I can paint geology, architecture, I can 278 00:21:26,430 --> 00:21:32,750 paint the reflection in somebody's eye - it all started here. 279 00:21:34,230 --> 00:21:39,910 Now the first people who saw this picture were so stunned by it, 280 00:21:39,910 --> 00:21:41,710 so taken aback by it, 281 00:21:41,710 --> 00:21:46,350 they could not believe that an image that was made of nothing 282 00:21:46,350 --> 00:21:53,270 but paint applied to boards of wood could seem to them like life itself. 283 00:21:53,270 --> 00:22:00,910 So much so that the rumour was put about in Ghent, in Bruges, 284 00:22:00,910 --> 00:22:06,150 van Eyck's home town, that this painter wasn't just an artist, 285 00:22:07,390 --> 00:22:10,630 he was a magician, some kind of necromancer. 286 00:22:19,830 --> 00:22:23,790 Van Eyck's innovations would be enormously influential. 287 00:22:23,790 --> 00:22:27,990 Oil painting, the medium that he had pioneered, would be taken up all 288 00:22:27,990 --> 00:22:32,870 over Europe, from Venice to Northern and Central Italy, to Spain and beyond. 289 00:22:32,870 --> 00:22:38,550 And as generation after generation of painters 290 00:22:38,550 --> 00:22:46,470 explored its effects, art itself would be transformed forever. 291 00:22:48,470 --> 00:22:51,830 Van Eyck's mastery of oil paint made him one of the richest, 292 00:22:51,830 --> 00:22:56,470 most highly respected artists of his day. 293 00:22:58,430 --> 00:23:03,150 But where he used the medium to conjure up an entire world of vivid detail, 294 00:23:04,350 --> 00:23:07,510 it was another great Flemish artist who went beneath that 295 00:23:07,510 --> 00:23:12,750 glistening surface, to explore the far depths of human emotion. 296 00:23:15,110 --> 00:23:17,470 Brussels-based Rogier van der Weyden, 297 00:23:17,470 --> 00:23:20,910 believed to have portrayed himself here as St Luke, 298 00:23:20,910 --> 00:23:24,230 patron saint of artists, was described by his contemporaries 299 00:23:24,230 --> 00:23:27,670 as "the greatest", "the most noble" of painters. 300 00:23:32,350 --> 00:23:37,550 In his almost unbearable portrayal of Christ's Descent from the Cross, 301 00:23:37,550 --> 00:23:41,390 van der Weyden explored every last trick of oil paint - 302 00:23:41,390 --> 00:23:46,270 above all its ability to capture tears, and blood - to render 303 00:23:46,270 --> 00:23:50,270 the full horror of Christ's death immediate and shocking. 304 00:23:52,070 --> 00:23:56,830 This is pain, grief and sorrow made visible - almost tangible. 305 00:24:01,870 --> 00:24:06,030 In 1443, the founders of this hospital commissioned 306 00:24:06,030 --> 00:24:09,030 Rogier van der Weyden to paint what would be one of the great 307 00:24:09,030 --> 00:24:13,670 jewels in the crown of Flemish art - 308 00:24:13,670 --> 00:24:19,190 a consolation, or was it perhaps a warning, for those who lay sick 309 00:24:19,190 --> 00:24:23,430 and dying in a world of barely imaginable harshness and hardship. 310 00:24:26,230 --> 00:24:30,910 Smallpox and cholera were endemic, plague a regular terror. 311 00:24:32,790 --> 00:24:36,630 Monks who tended the sick were themselves at constant risk. 312 00:24:42,750 --> 00:24:45,870 But this wasn't just a hospital for curing bodies, 313 00:24:45,870 --> 00:24:50,110 it was a hospital for saving souls, and its focal point, 314 00:24:50,110 --> 00:24:52,910 placed at the end of the room of the sick, 315 00:24:52,910 --> 00:24:59,590 facing all of those beds, was this great picture, a Flemish altarpiece. 316 00:24:59,590 --> 00:25:03,630 It was painted by Rogier van der Weyden about 11 years after 317 00:25:03,630 --> 00:25:05,950 van Eyck painted the Ghent altarpiece 318 00:25:05,950 --> 00:25:09,990 and what it shows us is in effect the prequel to the Ghent 319 00:25:09,990 --> 00:25:15,270 altarpiece, because this is the moment of the Last Judgement. 320 00:25:15,270 --> 00:25:21,590 Christ sits in majesty over the world in a cloud of gold. 321 00:25:23,270 --> 00:25:30,470 In the centre, Saint Michael, depicted as a pale-faced Flemish 322 00:25:30,470 --> 00:25:34,990 prince of Justice, holds up the scales with which 323 00:25:34,990 --> 00:25:38,790 he will weigh the souls of all mankind. 324 00:25:40,830 --> 00:25:44,470 The heavier of the two souls represents sin - 325 00:25:44,470 --> 00:25:46,710 "peccata" is written on the painting. 326 00:25:46,710 --> 00:25:51,590 And he screams because he knows he's going to hell forever. 327 00:25:51,590 --> 00:25:56,270 Whereas the soul on the right looks almost complacent, kneels 328 00:25:56,270 --> 00:26:00,910 in prayer, rises up, he's a light soul, on his way to heaven. 329 00:26:03,070 --> 00:26:09,030 And as the four angels blow the last trump, the earth cracks open 330 00:26:09,030 --> 00:26:14,190 and the dead rise from their graves to discover their fate. 331 00:26:15,630 --> 00:26:23,430 Those on Christ's left are dragged vomiting, screaming, wailing, 332 00:26:23,430 --> 00:26:28,510 weeping into the flames of hell. 333 00:26:30,390 --> 00:26:34,670 On the right-hand side, it's all rather more tranquil. 334 00:26:34,670 --> 00:26:41,830 We can see, here, they troop off towards the heavenly city. 335 00:26:44,510 --> 00:26:47,990 I like this detail here - as the angel ushers them through the door, 336 00:26:47,990 --> 00:26:50,030 we know where they're going. 337 00:26:50,030 --> 00:26:55,950 They're going to that heavenly paradise garden depicted in van Eyck's altarpiece. 338 00:26:55,950 --> 00:26:59,630 It's, so to speak, "This way for the Ghent altarpiece". 339 00:27:01,070 --> 00:27:05,990 Now to a superstitious Christian in the 15th century, 340 00:27:05,990 --> 00:27:09,950 the purpose of this picture would have been eminently practical. 341 00:27:11,430 --> 00:27:16,710 Most of the people in those beds, in times of plague for sure, 342 00:27:16,710 --> 00:27:17,710 were going to die. 343 00:27:19,230 --> 00:27:23,270 Before they did so, each one of them would be 344 00:27:23,270 --> 00:27:28,670 instructed to come forward into the chapel at the end of the room, 345 00:27:28,670 --> 00:27:31,510 and to contemplate this picture. 346 00:27:31,510 --> 00:27:37,150 And the picture basically is there to give them a choice - 347 00:27:37,150 --> 00:27:38,710 where do you want to end up? 348 00:27:39,910 --> 00:27:46,750 To Christ's left, down in the flames of hell, or Christ's right, 349 00:27:46,750 --> 00:27:49,030 on your way to paradise? 350 00:27:49,030 --> 00:27:52,030 Makes the choice pretty unambiguous, I'd say. 351 00:27:52,030 --> 00:27:56,230 Having seen it, you're filled with terror. 352 00:27:57,470 --> 00:28:01,590 It's a cinemascope vision of what might happen to you. 353 00:28:01,590 --> 00:28:04,350 So you go back to your bed, you call the confessor, 354 00:28:04,350 --> 00:28:10,750 you confess your sins, and if you confess all of them, you're saved. 355 00:28:13,390 --> 00:28:16,270 It's an astonishing picture, 356 00:28:16,270 --> 00:28:21,710 it's one of the great masterpieces of Flemish art, 357 00:28:21,710 --> 00:28:25,550 it absolutely represents that great flowering of painting that 358 00:28:25,550 --> 00:28:29,230 took place in Flanders in the first half of the 15th century. 359 00:28:31,230 --> 00:28:36,070 And yet, and here's the sting in the tail, it's not actually in Flanders. 360 00:28:36,070 --> 00:28:41,030 It's hundreds of miles south, in a country we now call France. 361 00:28:54,590 --> 00:28:59,470 Our modern borders bear little relation to 15th century geography. 362 00:28:59,470 --> 00:29:02,630 This hospital, known as the Hotel-Dieu de Beaune, 363 00:29:02,630 --> 00:29:06,150 once stood at the heart of the powerful Duchy of Burgundy. 364 00:29:08,750 --> 00:29:11,590 The ambitious Dukes of Burgundy coveted the great 365 00:29:11,590 --> 00:29:13,350 riches of Flanders to the North. 366 00:29:14,510 --> 00:29:17,950 Through strategic marriages and clever alliances, 367 00:29:17,950 --> 00:29:21,070 they began to extend their power into the Low Countries. 368 00:29:23,630 --> 00:29:27,150 It took the Dukes of Burgundy a few generations to take over. 369 00:29:27,150 --> 00:29:31,790 They had to absorb each independent mini-state, one by one. 370 00:29:31,790 --> 00:29:34,430 By the mid 1400s, Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck 371 00:29:34,430 --> 00:29:38,470 and all their fellow Low Countrymen had become the subjects 372 00:29:38,470 --> 00:29:42,750 of the most illustrious Burgundian Duke of them all, Philip the Good. 373 00:29:44,790 --> 00:29:48,670 In fact, Philip wanted culturally rich Flanders so much that he 374 00:29:48,670 --> 00:29:52,790 even relocated his ancestral court 300 miles north, to Brussels. 375 00:30:11,190 --> 00:30:14,870 Philip the Good was good news for Flemish art. 376 00:30:14,870 --> 00:30:17,390 He was an enthusiastic patron, 377 00:30:17,390 --> 00:30:20,910 especially of great talents like van Eyck and van der Weyden. 378 00:30:22,630 --> 00:30:25,190 And he was no oppressive autocrat - 379 00:30:25,190 --> 00:30:28,230 he pretty much gave the Low Country states freedom to 380 00:30:28,230 --> 00:30:31,630 conduct their business and their lives the way they wished. 381 00:30:34,510 --> 00:30:39,870 Flemish society revolved around the upwardly mobile merchant classes. 382 00:30:39,870 --> 00:30:42,350 They'd grown used to the finer things in life, 383 00:30:42,350 --> 00:30:44,910 and they wanted their art to reflect that. 384 00:30:47,230 --> 00:30:50,110 They commissioned portraits of themselves, 385 00:30:50,110 --> 00:30:53,630 immortalised in all their finery, as evidence that they had made it. 386 00:30:55,670 --> 00:31:01,070 The most extraordinary portrait of all is also the oldest. 387 00:31:01,070 --> 00:31:02,230 Painted by none other than 388 00:31:02,230 --> 00:31:05,550 the first great Flemish pioneer of oil painting, 389 00:31:05,550 --> 00:31:07,590 it's the secular counterpart 390 00:31:07,590 --> 00:31:09,270 to his Ghent Altarpiece - 391 00:31:09,270 --> 00:31:12,230 not a vision of heaven, but a depiction 392 00:31:12,230 --> 00:31:16,950 of an inscrutable man and his wife in the comfort of their bedroom. 393 00:31:19,030 --> 00:31:25,470 Painted in 1434, this entrancing picture by Jan van Eyck opens 394 00:31:25,470 --> 00:31:34,030 the door to the private world of the wealthy Flemish merchant class. 395 00:31:34,030 --> 00:31:37,710 It used to be called The Arnolfini Wedding. 396 00:31:37,710 --> 00:31:41,230 It used to be thought that it depicted Giovanni Arnolfini, 397 00:31:41,230 --> 00:31:45,710 a wealthy banker from Lucca based in Bruges, and his wife. 398 00:31:47,270 --> 00:31:49,710 That's by no means certain, 399 00:31:49,710 --> 00:31:56,070 but I think we can say that these people were extremely well off. 400 00:31:56,070 --> 00:32:02,310 They were representative of this new upsurge of Flemish wealth 401 00:32:02,310 --> 00:32:03,790 and prosperity. 402 00:32:03,790 --> 00:32:08,550 But it would be a mistake to see this picture, 403 00:32:08,550 --> 00:32:15,150 for all its realism, as some kind of snapshot of their domestic world - 404 00:32:15,150 --> 00:32:21,270 it's a highly charged, symbolic, ritualised depiction of two people. 405 00:32:21,270 --> 00:32:23,830 There's something extremely solemn about it. 406 00:32:25,230 --> 00:32:29,910 If Jan van Eyck was a necromancer, a magician using paint, 407 00:32:29,910 --> 00:32:34,230 I think of this portrait very much as a kind of spell or 408 00:32:34,230 --> 00:32:40,070 incantation designed to bring good fortune on this couple. 409 00:32:41,110 --> 00:32:47,310 The dog stands at the couple's feet, stands for loyalty, 410 00:32:47,310 --> 00:32:51,230 for obedience, for fidelity. 411 00:32:51,230 --> 00:32:57,470 Behind the bride hangs a broom - symbol of purity, cleanliness. 412 00:32:58,590 --> 00:33:02,750 And around that beautiful convex mirror, 413 00:33:02,750 --> 00:33:06,870 there are painted scenes of Christ's passion, 414 00:33:06,870 --> 00:33:12,430 as if to indicate that this is a union blessed in the eyes of God. 415 00:33:13,710 --> 00:33:16,430 A single candle burns in the chandelier, 416 00:33:18,030 --> 00:33:21,910 emblem of the love that shall never be extinguished. 417 00:33:23,870 --> 00:33:28,870 And just above that pair of clasped hands, 418 00:33:28,870 --> 00:33:31,710 van Eyck has intruded another significant detail - 419 00:33:33,110 --> 00:33:35,830 a grinning, gurning gargoyle 420 00:33:35,830 --> 00:33:39,990 carved into the arm of the chair 421 00:33:39,990 --> 00:33:41,630 at the back of the room. 422 00:33:41,630 --> 00:33:44,390 And I think that gargoyle 423 00:33:44,390 --> 00:33:47,110 is here to do exactly the same job 424 00:33:47,110 --> 00:33:50,190 as gargoyles on the fronts of churches - 425 00:33:50,190 --> 00:33:53,230 namely to scare off evil spirits. 426 00:33:53,230 --> 00:33:57,470 To ward off all evil from damaging this union. 427 00:33:59,710 --> 00:34:02,270 Look on the window ledge, and look on the sideboard. 428 00:34:02,270 --> 00:34:04,310 A little cluster of fruit. 429 00:34:06,750 --> 00:34:09,430 Her belly is round - not because she's pregnant, 430 00:34:09,430 --> 00:34:10,870 because she's wearing a stomacher, 431 00:34:10,870 --> 00:34:12,710 but I think the hope is 432 00:34:12,710 --> 00:34:15,510 that this union will itself bear fruit. 433 00:34:17,630 --> 00:34:21,910 And on the back wall, Jan van Eyck has signed the picture 434 00:34:21,910 --> 00:34:26,150 in wonderful curlicue script. 435 00:34:26,150 --> 00:34:30,990 The inscription says, in Latin, "Jan van Eyck was here." 436 00:34:33,430 --> 00:34:36,990 And if you look just below it, if you look into that reflection 437 00:34:36,990 --> 00:34:40,870 in the convex mirror, so beautifully painted, what do you see? 438 00:34:40,870 --> 00:34:44,150 You see the couple from the back. 439 00:34:45,870 --> 00:34:50,230 And if you look closely enough, you can see a shadowy figure, 440 00:34:50,230 --> 00:34:51,910 perhaps two figures. 441 00:34:53,110 --> 00:35:00,870 I wonder if one of them is not meant to be Jan van Eyck himself. 442 00:35:00,870 --> 00:35:07,430 The painter, preserving forever this moment when he looks at them 443 00:35:07,430 --> 00:35:09,190 and they look at him. 444 00:35:09,190 --> 00:35:12,950 I wonder if this picture wasn't his wedding gift 445 00:35:12,950 --> 00:35:15,070 to the couple in the painting? 446 00:35:15,070 --> 00:35:18,110 If so, I do hope they were grateful. 447 00:35:28,550 --> 00:35:32,950 Flemish art's change of focus from sacred to secular 448 00:35:32,950 --> 00:35:36,510 was part of a seismic shift taking place across all of Europe, 449 00:35:36,510 --> 00:35:38,550 but especially in the Low Countries. 450 00:35:41,790 --> 00:35:45,230 Even under Burgundian rule, Lowlanders clung fiercely 451 00:35:45,230 --> 00:35:48,750 to their localised customs and independent ideas. 452 00:35:50,790 --> 00:35:53,950 Far from the shadow of the Vatican, there were religious 453 00:35:53,950 --> 00:35:57,870 movements - like the Brethren of Common Life - who were not afraid to 454 00:35:57,870 --> 00:36:02,350 criticise the Church, to challenge authority they saw as corrupt. 455 00:36:04,110 --> 00:36:08,590 This was a strange, unsettling time, especially when seen through 456 00:36:08,590 --> 00:36:13,750 the eyes of a medieval man of faith - like the artist Hieronymus Bosch. 457 00:36:15,790 --> 00:36:19,270 As far as we know, he spent his whole life in and around the small 458 00:36:19,270 --> 00:36:23,070 Dutch town from which he took his name - 's-Hertogenbosch. 459 00:36:25,550 --> 00:36:28,390 Yet his most famous work - known to us as The Garden 460 00:36:28,390 --> 00:36:32,030 of Earthly Delights - includes some of the weirdest objects 461 00:36:32,030 --> 00:36:36,910 and creatures, from worlds both known and unknown, ever seen in art. 462 00:36:43,910 --> 00:36:48,350 Painted around 1500, its meaning seems at first sight 463 00:36:48,350 --> 00:36:52,430 disturbingly obscure - and may never be fully explained. 464 00:36:55,350 --> 00:36:59,750 On the left we see Christ with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 465 00:36:59,750 --> 00:37:02,030 but it's an Eden unlike any other. 466 00:37:04,590 --> 00:37:06,710 There's a giraffe and an elephant - 467 00:37:06,710 --> 00:37:09,790 but also some rather frightening hybrid animals. 468 00:37:18,590 --> 00:37:21,510 On the right, some of art's most inventive 469 00:37:21,510 --> 00:37:25,550 impressions of the fate that awaits the damned. 470 00:37:25,550 --> 00:37:30,590 A pot-headed bird eats sinners and excretes them into the abyss. 471 00:37:30,590 --> 00:37:34,710 Instruments and forms of torture scatter the blackened landscape. 472 00:37:38,350 --> 00:37:41,070 But what does the central panel show us? 473 00:37:41,070 --> 00:37:43,670 The corruption of our earthly world? 474 00:37:44,750 --> 00:37:49,430 If so, what do the outsized fruit and birds represent? 475 00:37:51,270 --> 00:37:54,350 And why is it filled with the bizarrest of rituals? 476 00:38:03,910 --> 00:38:07,750 Might it be significant that Bosch painted this claustrophobic enigma 477 00:38:07,750 --> 00:38:11,550 just a decade after Columbus discovered the riches of America? 478 00:38:15,830 --> 00:38:19,910 One of my favourite details in Bosch's strange teeming 479 00:38:19,910 --> 00:38:23,830 panorama of a picture shows a little group of people holding up 480 00:38:23,830 --> 00:38:29,550 a gigantic strawberry - almost like the cult devotees worshipping 481 00:38:29,550 --> 00:38:31,630 this object, this exotic thing. 482 00:38:31,630 --> 00:38:34,510 And I think when you look at Bosch's painting, 483 00:38:34,510 --> 00:38:37,430 it's important to remember this was the first time anyone in Europe 484 00:38:37,430 --> 00:38:41,350 had ever seen a strawberry, it was an object of wonderment to him. 485 00:38:41,350 --> 00:38:43,790 It was as if the world that they'd known for 486 00:38:43,790 --> 00:38:46,750 so many centuries had suddenly been changed - they suddenly realised 487 00:38:46,750 --> 00:38:50,310 there was another whole universe out there, a new world. 488 00:38:50,310 --> 00:38:53,230 And I think Bosch's picture is in part an attempt to imagine 489 00:38:53,230 --> 00:38:55,870 what that new world might be like, 490 00:38:55,870 --> 00:39:00,390 this is a Pandora's box moment in the history of human civilisation. 491 00:39:17,190 --> 00:39:20,230 Bosch lived at a great turning point in history - 492 00:39:20,230 --> 00:39:24,230 a moment when the medieval mind, obsessed with the terrors of hell 493 00:39:24,230 --> 00:39:29,990 and damnation, was giving way before a modern world of rapidly 494 00:39:29,990 --> 00:39:33,510 expanding horizons, 495 00:39:33,510 --> 00:39:35,630 of science and knowledge, 496 00:39:35,630 --> 00:39:38,110 a world where the old order was being challenged 497 00:39:38,110 --> 00:39:40,350 by dangerous new ideas. 498 00:39:42,390 --> 00:39:47,070 These were the things made flesh as the beasts of Bosch's imagination. 499 00:39:50,310 --> 00:39:53,350 In his own highly original way, Bosch expressed 500 00:39:53,350 --> 00:39:56,790 both the fascinations and the anxieties of his age. 501 00:40:04,870 --> 00:40:08,790 And if you want to see his own solution to those anxieties, 502 00:40:08,790 --> 00:40:14,070 I think you have to turn to one of his simpler, least cryptic pictures. 503 00:40:14,070 --> 00:40:17,510 A work that hangs in the Fine Arts Museum in Ghent. 504 00:40:22,390 --> 00:40:28,030 This fairly small, fairly dark image of Christ carrying the cross 505 00:40:28,030 --> 00:40:32,830 is one of Bosch's cruder pictures, 506 00:40:32,830 --> 00:40:39,030 but I think it takes you right to the centre of what he has to say. 507 00:40:40,430 --> 00:40:43,190 It takes you to the centre of his vision of the world. 508 00:40:43,190 --> 00:40:49,630 Here, he sees the world as a kind of sea of malevolence, 509 00:40:49,630 --> 00:40:56,830 weirdness, evil, through which Christ has to pass. 510 00:40:56,830 --> 00:41:00,190 Look at that crowd. 511 00:41:00,190 --> 00:41:03,590 These three blokes down here including the evil thief - 512 00:41:03,590 --> 00:41:08,110 I suppose you might see them today on the street corner, drinking 513 00:41:08,110 --> 00:41:12,590 their Tennent's full strength lager at ten in the morning. 514 00:41:12,590 --> 00:41:15,950 Here's a fat-jowled soldier. 515 00:41:15,950 --> 00:41:20,630 A curious image of a witch with a hat 516 00:41:20,630 --> 00:41:25,510 that reminds me of Pink Floyd album covers, of 517 00:41:25,510 --> 00:41:27,870 their middle to late period weirdly enough. 518 00:41:27,870 --> 00:41:31,190 Up here, the hook-nosed mercenary. 519 00:41:32,470 --> 00:41:36,030 Here we see another soldier clutching the cross 520 00:41:36,030 --> 00:41:40,470 with his fingers - who knows why. 521 00:41:40,470 --> 00:41:44,870 And at the centre of it all, the image of Christ. 522 00:41:44,870 --> 00:41:48,910 I think you can just see a tear coming out of that, 523 00:41:48,910 --> 00:41:51,550 leaking out of his right eye. 524 00:41:52,830 --> 00:41:56,430 It's as if he is passing through this world 525 00:41:56,430 --> 00:41:59,030 as if it were a bad dream. 526 00:41:59,030 --> 00:42:01,190 He's right at the centre. 527 00:42:01,190 --> 00:42:07,550 And I think what Bosch is saying to us, is in this age of anxiety, 528 00:42:07,550 --> 00:42:12,910 uncertainty, religious unrest, intellectual change, 529 00:42:12,910 --> 00:42:17,310 geographical exploration, this world where we suddenly no longer 530 00:42:17,310 --> 00:42:24,750 know where we are, that's the one thing we CAN be sure of. 531 00:42:24,750 --> 00:42:27,110 That IS the one thing we can be sure of. 532 00:42:27,110 --> 00:42:30,350 In that sense Bosch is still a man of the Middle Ages, 533 00:42:30,350 --> 00:42:35,950 he does believe in God as the one route to salvation. 534 00:42:35,950 --> 00:42:40,310 And I think he gives us a little clue here, because there is actually 535 00:42:40,310 --> 00:42:43,670 other than Christ, one other good figure in the painting and 536 00:42:43,670 --> 00:42:48,310 that is Saint Veronica. She's got the veil, the veil that she used to 537 00:42:48,310 --> 00:42:52,430 wipe the brow of Christ - it's what lies behind the Turin shroud myth - 538 00:42:52,430 --> 00:42:57,470 on which is miraculously imprinted the image of Christ's face. 539 00:42:57,470 --> 00:43:01,030 She is on her way out of this maelstrom of evil - 540 00:43:01,030 --> 00:43:03,670 she's found her escape route, because her escape route 541 00:43:03,670 --> 00:43:08,070 is the image of Christ that she's holding in her heart. 542 00:43:08,070 --> 00:43:11,390 And Bosch is saying to all of us looking at the picture, 543 00:43:11,390 --> 00:43:14,310 "Do what she does." 544 00:43:15,430 --> 00:43:17,750 "Look at his face. 545 00:43:17,750 --> 00:43:20,510 "Burn it into your mind's eye - 546 00:43:20,510 --> 00:43:24,750 "because it's the only path through 547 00:43:24,750 --> 00:43:28,390 "this evil world, it's the only way out of these troubled times." 548 00:43:35,190 --> 00:43:39,230 The tides of change swept on regardless. 549 00:43:39,230 --> 00:43:43,750 Soon after Bosch's death in 1516, the Reformation shook 550 00:43:43,750 --> 00:43:46,910 the established Church to its foundations. 551 00:43:46,910 --> 00:43:49,590 Art too turned critical. 552 00:43:49,590 --> 00:43:51,190 The subtleties of oil paint, 553 00:43:51,190 --> 00:43:55,390 once used to conjure beauty or flatter the wealthy, 554 00:43:55,390 --> 00:43:59,110 were now deployed as weapons against corruption and ugliness. 555 00:44:01,110 --> 00:44:03,790 Satire was the order of the day. 556 00:44:03,790 --> 00:44:08,350 Grotesques that ridiculed the well-to-do as vain and pompous. 557 00:44:08,350 --> 00:44:11,190 Caricatures of the jobsworth bureaucrats 558 00:44:11,190 --> 00:44:13,590 who propped up unpopular rulers. 559 00:44:14,950 --> 00:44:19,590 The flames of unrest were fanned by a tyrannical new regime. 560 00:44:19,590 --> 00:44:24,070 In 1555, King Philip II of Spain inherited 561 00:44:24,070 --> 00:44:27,590 the Low Countries from his Burgundian ancestors. 562 00:44:27,590 --> 00:44:30,910 A fanatic Catholic, he was determined to stamp out heresy. 563 00:44:34,550 --> 00:44:39,750 The attempted clampdown only provoked more unrest. 564 00:44:39,750 --> 00:44:41,350 Free thinkers multiplied. 565 00:44:45,470 --> 00:44:48,950 Perhaps the most quietly radical idea of all was hatched in the 566 00:44:48,950 --> 00:44:54,790 imagination not of a philosopher or a scientist, but a painter who took 567 00:44:54,790 --> 00:44:58,630 his inspiration from the rituals and festivities of the common man. 568 00:45:00,910 --> 00:45:04,550 Well the architecture's changed a bit, the angels might be wearing 569 00:45:04,550 --> 00:45:07,550 peroxide Shirley Temple wigs, and the floats might be 570 00:45:07,550 --> 00:45:11,230 made of polystyrene, but otherwise remarkably little has changed. 571 00:45:11,230 --> 00:45:14,270 The fact is that the people of the Low Countries have been 572 00:45:14,270 --> 00:45:18,270 participating in popular religious festivals like this 573 00:45:18,270 --> 00:45:22,950 since the Middle Ages. This festival here in Mechelen, which celebrates 574 00:45:22,950 --> 00:45:27,990 the saving of the city from plague by the blessed Virgin Mary in 1272, 575 00:45:27,990 --> 00:45:31,390 has been going for more than 700 years. 576 00:45:31,390 --> 00:45:34,310 But the funny thing is that ordinary people doing this 577 00:45:34,310 --> 00:45:37,270 kind of thing simply don't appear in Flemish art 578 00:45:37,270 --> 00:45:40,910 until the middle years of the 16th century, and it's one man, 579 00:45:40,910 --> 00:45:46,790 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who puts the common people centre stage. 580 00:45:52,470 --> 00:45:55,910 Pieter Bruegel painted peasants going about their business - 581 00:45:55,910 --> 00:45:59,390 feasting, laughing, dancing, drinking. 582 00:46:02,710 --> 00:46:06,070 Bruegel's work was popular, and no doubt the wealthy clients who 583 00:46:06,070 --> 00:46:09,990 bought his paintings found comical entertainment in the rich detail. 584 00:46:12,270 --> 00:46:15,310 But there's also a gently subversive warmth 585 00:46:15,310 --> 00:46:17,950 and empathy for these ordinary people. 586 00:46:17,950 --> 00:46:20,830 It's as though Bruegel is saying that it's NOT just 587 00:46:20,830 --> 00:46:23,030 the high and mighty who are important - 588 00:46:23,030 --> 00:46:26,870 there's nobody who's an unworthy subject for art. 589 00:46:37,270 --> 00:46:40,710 This is one of the most famous pictures associated with 590 00:46:40,710 --> 00:46:43,030 the name of Pieter Bruegel the Elder - 591 00:46:43,030 --> 00:46:47,230 in fact people come specially on pilgrimage here to the Musee 592 00:46:47,230 --> 00:46:52,190 des Beaux Arts in Brussels just to see this one celebrated image. 593 00:46:55,030 --> 00:46:59,550 At first sight it's quite a baffling, disorientating picture. 594 00:47:00,870 --> 00:47:05,790 The eye is immediately drawn to this figure of the ploughman 595 00:47:05,790 --> 00:47:10,790 plodding along his modest patch of earth, 596 00:47:10,790 --> 00:47:15,350 ploughing it up into these meaty chunks, following his horse. 597 00:47:15,350 --> 00:47:22,350 Behind him is a shepherd, with his dog, and they both seem absorbed 598 00:47:22,350 --> 00:47:27,150 by something or other, we can't quite tell what, in these trees. 599 00:47:27,150 --> 00:47:30,750 Over here is another character, 600 00:47:30,750 --> 00:47:35,550 another person from ordinary life absorbed in an ordinary activity, 601 00:47:35,550 --> 00:47:37,270 fishing. 602 00:47:37,270 --> 00:47:39,310 Behind, there are ships. 603 00:47:39,310 --> 00:47:42,710 But then, you look at the title of the painting 604 00:47:42,710 --> 00:47:47,230 and you see Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus. 605 00:47:47,230 --> 00:47:49,350 Icarus, that character from mythology, 606 00:47:49,350 --> 00:47:53,110 the boy who makes himself wings from feathers and wax, flies 607 00:47:53,110 --> 00:47:58,070 too close to the sun, the wings melt and he falls to his death. 608 00:47:59,390 --> 00:48:01,270 Where's Icarus? 609 00:48:02,870 --> 00:48:05,790 You look all over the painting - 610 00:48:05,790 --> 00:48:10,150 and then suddenly, if you look hard enough, 611 00:48:10,150 --> 00:48:14,190 it's a sort of Breugelian "Where's Wally?" moment. 612 00:48:14,190 --> 00:48:18,950 There he is - a pair of white, floppy legs, 613 00:48:18,950 --> 00:48:24,750 splashing into this emerald green ocean. 614 00:48:26,910 --> 00:48:33,110 But what an extraordinary image of that mythological event this is. 615 00:48:33,110 --> 00:48:38,470 Here he's imagining what it actually feels like to be someone 616 00:48:38,470 --> 00:48:40,550 who's outside history. 617 00:48:42,550 --> 00:48:46,630 In a way it's a picture about the spear carriers, 618 00:48:46,630 --> 00:48:51,910 the people who aren't the heart of the action. 619 00:48:51,910 --> 00:48:54,470 But they are at the heart of their own lives, and it's a picture 620 00:48:54,470 --> 00:48:57,950 about the disjunction between big history and little history, 621 00:48:57,950 --> 00:49:00,990 and the little history doesn't even notice that the big history 622 00:49:00,990 --> 00:49:04,670 is going on, it's a picture about not looking, not seeing. 623 00:49:04,670 --> 00:49:09,030 And WH Auden wrote a wonderful poem about this picture. 624 00:49:13,470 --> 00:49:17,550 "Everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster. 625 00:49:17,550 --> 00:49:21,070 "The ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 626 00:49:21,070 --> 00:49:24,790 "but for him it was not an important failure. 627 00:49:26,910 --> 00:49:29,350 "The sun shone, as it had to, 628 00:49:29,350 --> 00:49:34,270 "on the white legs disappearing into the green water. 629 00:49:34,270 --> 00:49:37,510 "And the expensive delicate ship that must have seen something 630 00:49:37,510 --> 00:49:41,830 "amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 631 00:49:41,830 --> 00:49:46,870 "had somewhere to get to, and sailed calmly on." 632 00:49:48,470 --> 00:49:53,390 And I think the subversive implication behind it, 633 00:49:53,390 --> 00:49:57,230 perhaps for someone living in the Low Countries, 634 00:49:57,230 --> 00:50:01,950 someone unhappy with Spanish rule, 635 00:50:01,950 --> 00:50:03,950 the implication behind it is that 636 00:50:05,750 --> 00:50:10,870 if you don't like the history that's given to you 637 00:50:10,870 --> 00:50:14,230 by the great, perhaps the not so good, 638 00:50:14,230 --> 00:50:17,990 by kings from elsewhere, those 639 00:50:17,990 --> 00:50:21,550 coming into your world from outside, a little bit like Icarus - 640 00:50:21,550 --> 00:50:24,270 if you don't like their history, 641 00:50:24,270 --> 00:50:27,950 perhaps you're allowed to create your own. 642 00:50:34,390 --> 00:50:39,270 In reality, the lives of ordinary people went from bad to worse. 643 00:50:40,510 --> 00:50:44,070 When the Low Countries openly rebelled against Philip II's rule 644 00:50:44,070 --> 00:50:48,830 in the late 1560s, he tried to crush them with Spanish troops. 645 00:50:51,710 --> 00:50:56,510 Thus began a bloody 80-year war against Spanish oppression 646 00:50:56,510 --> 00:51:00,150 that would split the Low Countries in two. 647 00:51:03,270 --> 00:51:05,670 No-one would escape the fallout. 648 00:51:05,670 --> 00:51:08,950 Massacres on an epic scale, 649 00:51:08,950 --> 00:51:14,150 widespread famine, cities besieged till their starving citizens 650 00:51:14,150 --> 00:51:16,070 boiled shoe leather for food. 651 00:51:22,310 --> 00:51:26,830 This darkest of times would produce one last great 652 00:51:26,830 --> 00:51:31,030 flowering of Flemish art - 653 00:51:31,030 --> 00:51:35,590 the work of an Antwerp painter called Peter Paul Rubens, 654 00:51:35,590 --> 00:51:38,350 which for me represents both the end 655 00:51:38,350 --> 00:51:41,990 and the encapsulation of the whole Flemish tradition. 656 00:51:54,390 --> 00:51:58,230 Rubens was the supreme master of a new, bold style 657 00:51:58,230 --> 00:52:02,550 emerging from the Catholic Counter-Reformation - the Baroque. 658 00:52:04,950 --> 00:52:07,030 He spent most of his glittering career 659 00:52:07,030 --> 00:52:09,510 travelling Europe at the behest of his 660 00:52:09,510 --> 00:52:14,950 seriously impressive client list, painting grand state allegories 661 00:52:14,950 --> 00:52:19,790 of power for among others the royal families of France and England. 662 00:52:23,590 --> 00:52:27,030 At the public level, Rubens had lived out a personal version 663 00:52:27,030 --> 00:52:29,510 of the history of the Low Countries - 664 00:52:29,510 --> 00:52:32,350 trading with foreign powers, rising from low origins 665 00:52:32,350 --> 00:52:34,910 to achieve astonishing wealth. 666 00:52:36,190 --> 00:52:40,790 This is his house in Antwerp - the palace of a prince. 667 00:52:42,950 --> 00:52:47,750 But if you look behind its facade to the private Rubens, 668 00:52:47,750 --> 00:52:50,510 you discover that his most intimate dream 669 00:52:50,510 --> 00:52:54,390 was surprisingly humble, touchingly simple. 670 00:53:05,350 --> 00:53:10,190 Now, Rubens painted that piercing self-portrait in 1630. 671 00:53:10,190 --> 00:53:15,110 He was 53 years old, and on the face of it he had it all, 672 00:53:15,110 --> 00:53:19,510 he'd just been knighted by King Charles I of England. 673 00:53:19,510 --> 00:53:24,550 He's the painter to kings, princes, queens all across Europe. 674 00:53:24,550 --> 00:53:28,190 He is the single most powerful and influential artist who has 675 00:53:28,190 --> 00:53:33,470 ever lived, and at this point, he does something truly extraordinary. 676 00:53:33,470 --> 00:53:38,870 He decides to marry the 16-year-old daughter of a merchant 677 00:53:38,870 --> 00:53:41,670 here in Antwerp - she's called Helene Fourment, 678 00:53:41,670 --> 00:53:45,750 he's completely besotted with her, they'll have five children - 679 00:53:45,750 --> 00:53:48,790 and he decides to retreat completely from public life. 680 00:53:49,950 --> 00:53:52,310 He writes about it in a letter, he says, 681 00:53:52,310 --> 00:53:55,390 "I have decided to do myself a kind of violence. 682 00:53:55,390 --> 00:54:00,230 "I have decided to cut the golden knot of my own ambition." 683 00:54:01,230 --> 00:54:04,390 He retreats away from the world, 684 00:54:04,390 --> 00:54:10,830 and during his last 10 years he creates an extraordinary, 685 00:54:10,830 --> 00:54:16,030 deeply personal body of work. Highly idiosyncratic, utterly unique, 686 00:54:16,030 --> 00:54:18,750 and yet also, I think, 687 00:54:18,750 --> 00:54:23,550 the ultimate expression of a fantasy that had obsessed 688 00:54:23,550 --> 00:54:27,750 the imagination of people here in the Low Countries for centuries. 689 00:54:34,830 --> 00:54:37,990 Some of those final works are rapturous allegories 690 00:54:37,990 --> 00:54:39,990 of marital joy, 691 00:54:39,990 --> 00:54:41,630 invariably bursting with 692 00:54:41,630 --> 00:54:46,950 Rubens' characteristically voluptuous, fleshy bodies. 693 00:54:46,950 --> 00:54:48,670 Here we see Rubens himself 694 00:54:48,670 --> 00:54:52,870 gazing in adoration at his rosy-cheeked young bride. 695 00:54:55,110 --> 00:54:57,310 Everything in Rubens's late paintings 696 00:54:57,310 --> 00:55:00,990 seems to speak of desire - no-one had ever expressed it 697 00:55:00,990 --> 00:55:04,510 more urgently, more carnally. 698 00:55:04,510 --> 00:55:07,430 But I think it's essentially that same desire for colour, 699 00:55:07,430 --> 00:55:10,510 life, light and blessedness 700 00:55:10,510 --> 00:55:13,270 that had always infused the tapestries, 701 00:55:13,270 --> 00:55:17,390 illuminated books and paintings of Flanders right from the beginning. 702 00:55:17,390 --> 00:55:21,870 But for me, there's one work above all in which he revealed 703 00:55:21,870 --> 00:55:24,950 his true Low Country soul. 704 00:55:32,830 --> 00:55:37,790 Painted on an epic, panoramic scale, Rubens' Landscape With A Rainbow 705 00:55:37,790 --> 00:55:42,550 is quite simply one of the greatest landscapes ever painted. 706 00:55:42,550 --> 00:55:45,830 Like all of his pictures it's a cornucopia, 707 00:55:45,830 --> 00:55:50,670 a hymn to plenty and abundance. Ripeness is all. 708 00:55:54,270 --> 00:56:00,190 Look at those ducks - literal symbol of the fat of the land - 709 00:56:00,190 --> 00:56:03,830 clucking and quacking and waggling their feathers 710 00:56:03,830 --> 00:56:05,910 and diving into the water. 711 00:56:05,910 --> 00:56:09,790 The cows seem to be multiplying before our very eyes, 712 00:56:09,790 --> 00:56:12,870 and there, as so often in Rubens' art, 713 00:56:12,870 --> 00:56:15,950 a real touch of human carnality. 714 00:56:15,950 --> 00:56:20,790 There's a milkmaid, with her ewer balanced 715 00:56:20,790 --> 00:56:23,390 very ingeniously on her head, 716 00:56:23,390 --> 00:56:26,630 simultaneously flirting with a peasant, 717 00:56:26,630 --> 00:56:28,990 and giving us a wink at the same time, 718 00:56:28,990 --> 00:56:32,270 her companion flirting with the other peasant, 719 00:56:32,270 --> 00:56:36,070 the hay wain, as he winds his way into the picture. 720 00:56:36,070 --> 00:56:39,710 Constable, who painted The Hay Wain, loved this work of art. 721 00:56:42,070 --> 00:56:47,590 Look at that slab of yet to be cut hay. 722 00:56:47,590 --> 00:56:50,590 It could almost be a slab of butter. 723 00:56:51,830 --> 00:56:55,030 Look at the way the landscape has been laid out before us 724 00:56:55,030 --> 00:56:58,190 almost like a fertile body. 725 00:57:00,230 --> 00:57:05,030 A windmill's sails, glittering on the far distance. 726 00:57:05,030 --> 00:57:10,510 Even Rubens' sky is abundantly stocked with clouds. 727 00:57:10,510 --> 00:57:17,030 It's a dream of peace, and a dream of plenty. 728 00:57:17,030 --> 00:57:23,950 And I think that Rubens wants us to recognise that it IS a dream. 729 00:57:23,950 --> 00:57:29,550 Flanders in his day was not a place of utmost peace and prosperity 730 00:57:29,550 --> 00:57:34,070 and I think that's why he's included the rainbow, 731 00:57:34,070 --> 00:57:37,110 an old divine symbol of hope, 732 00:57:37,110 --> 00:57:40,230 of something that might come to pass in the future. 733 00:57:40,230 --> 00:57:43,990 I think Rubens himself knows that what he's depicted is a world 734 00:57:43,990 --> 00:57:47,870 that does indeed lie beyond the far end of the rainbow. 735 00:57:47,870 --> 00:57:51,750 A world that he hopes may one day come into being. 736 00:57:52,710 --> 00:57:59,950 So yes, the painting is a beautiful dream - 737 00:57:59,950 --> 00:58:02,310 but it's also a prophecy. 738 00:58:02,310 --> 00:58:05,350 Because not too far to the north, 739 00:58:05,350 --> 00:58:11,110 another upstart nation of the Low Countries, the Dutch Republic, 740 00:58:11,110 --> 00:58:16,830 would be attempting to turn that dream into a reality. 741 00:58:16,830 --> 00:58:18,750 But that's another story. 742 00:58:40,310 --> 00:58:42,310 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd