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(MUSIC) GlOVANNI GABRIELI: Sacrae Symphoniae

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The scene has changed from Florence to Rome,

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from the city of hard heads, sharp wits,
light feet, graceful movement

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to a city of weight.

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A city that is like a huge compost heap
of human hopes and ambitions.

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A wilderness of imperial splendour,
despoiled of its ornament,

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almost indecipherable.

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Only one bronze emperor, Marcus Aurelius,

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who was above ground in the sunshine
throughout the centuries.

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And, as you see, the scale has changed.

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This is part of the courtyard of the Vatican,

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at the end of which, the architect, Bramante
has built a suntrap, known as the Belvedere,

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from which the Pope could enjoy
a view of the ancient city.

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And it's in the form of a niche.

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But instead of being designed
to hold a life-size statue

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as it would have been 50 years earlier,
it is enormous.

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In fact, it has always been known
as Il Nicchioni

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The Monster Niche.

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It's the outward and visible sign

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of a great change that overcame the civilisation
of the Renaissance in about the year 1500.

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This is no longer a world of free and active men,

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but a world of giants and heroes.

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A world of giants.

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This bronze pine cone,
and it really is a big pine cone,

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came from that earlier world of giants -
antiquity.

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It was supposed to have been
the point at which the chariots turned,

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in their races round the hippodrome.

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Since, in that hippodrome,
many Christian martyrs were put to death,

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it was here that the Christian Church
elected to make its headquarters.

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Huge, cloudy concepts,

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compared to the sharp focus of Florence.

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But in Rome, they weren't so cloudy, after all,

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because the huge buildings of antiquity
were there

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very much more of them than we have today.

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Even after three centuries
in which they were used as quarries

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and in which our sense of scale has expanded,
they still are surprisingly big.

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In the Middle Ages, men had been crushed
by this gigantic scale.

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They said that these buildings
must have been the work of demons

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or, at best, they treated them simply as
natural phenomena, like mountains,

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and built their huts in them, as who should take
advantage of a ravine or sheltering escarpment.

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Rome was a city of cowherds and stray goats,

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in which nothing was built
except a few fortified towers

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from which the ancient families carried out
their pointless and interminable feuds,

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literally interminable,
because they're still quarrelling today.

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But by 1500,

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the Romans had come to realise that
these mountainous ruins had been built by men.

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The lively, intelligent individuals,
who created the Renaissance

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bursting with vitality and confidence,

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they weren't in a mood
to be crushed by antiquity.

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They meant to absorb it, to equal it, to master it.

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They were going to produce
their own race of giants and heroes.

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(Bell tolls)

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The scene has changed to Rome also
for political reasons.

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After years of exile and adversity,

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the sovereign pontiff
has returned to his seat of temporal power.

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Temporal powers that meant so much
to the popes of the 16th century,

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but, of course, are completely abandoned today.

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Now the Pope is solely a religious leader.

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(Applause)

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(Bell rings)

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(Blesses crowd)

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In what is commonly described as
the "decadence" of the papacy,

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the popes were unusually able men,
who used their international contacts

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their great civil service, their increasing wealth
in the interests of civilisation.

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And even Sixtus IV, who was as brutal and
cunning as he looks, founded the Vatican library

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and made the great humanist Platina
its first prefect.

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And here we see, for the first time
the splendid head of the young cardinal,

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who, more than any man, was destined to give
the High Renaissance its heroic direction,

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Guiliano della Rovere.

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What a lion he looks compared to the donkeys
of the papal secretariat.

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And when he became Julius II, he was able
by magnanimity and strength of will,

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to inspire and bully three men of genius,

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Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael.

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This programme is about
a few individuals of genius.

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And two of them, Michelangelo and Raphael,

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were, to some extent, the creation of Julius.

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Without him, Michelangelo would not have
painted the Sistine ceiling,

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nor would Raphael have decorated
the papal apartments.

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And so we should have been without
two of the greatest visible expressions

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of spiritual power and humanist philosophy.

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Well, this splendidly over-life-sized character

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conceived a project so audacious,
so extravagant,

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that, to this day, the very thought of it
makes me feel slightly jumpy.

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He decided to pull down old St Peter's.

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It was one of the largest
and most ancient churches in the world

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certainly the most venerable,

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because it stood on the place where St Peter
was supposed to have been martyred.

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Julius decided to pull it down

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and put in its place something even larger
and more splendid.

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In his thoughts for the new building,
he was influenced by two Renaissance ideals.

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It must be based on perfect forms,
the square and the circle,

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and it must be on a scale that surpassed
even the grandiose ruins of antiquity.

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He called on Bramante to provide a plan.

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He didn't get very far with it.

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You know, great movements in the arts,
like revolutions

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don't last for more than about 15 years.

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After that, the flame dies down
and people prefer a cosier glow.

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Julius II was pope for only ten years.

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St Peter's wasn't completed
till almost a century after his death.

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But the first step in this visible alliance
between Christianity and antiquity

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was taken when Julius decided
to pull down the old basilica

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and rebuild it in rivalry with the enormous
remains of Roman architecture.

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In the 15th century, Graeco-Roman sculpture

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had become a shining, almost inaccessible
model to the more adventurous artists

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and collectors had begun to compete
for fine examples.

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The greatest prize in the papal collection
was the Apollo of the Belvedere,

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an ideal of godlike beauty.

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But for some time, these discoveries
didn't influence their mental picture of antiquity.

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They read the ancient authors
with passionate attention,

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they wrote to each other in Latin,

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but although their minds
were full of antique literature,

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their imaginations remained entirely Gothic.

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When the average painter set out to depict
a scene of ancient history or legend,

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as in this picture of the Rape Of Helen,
he did so in the costume of his own time

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with dainty, fantastical movements,

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which show not the slightest consciousness
of the physical weight

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and the flowing rhythms of antiquity.

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Well, these are not ancient Greeks
but 15th-century Florentines,

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and the funny thing is that the humanists,

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who took such trouble about the text
of an author like Livy

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accepted a picture like this
of the death of Julius Caesar

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as a correct representation of the event.

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As long as there was
this rather comical discrepancy

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between the written word and the image,

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antiquity couldn't exert its humanising power
on the imagination.

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I suppose that the first occasion

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in which the dream of antiquity
is given a more or less accurate visible form

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is the series of decorations
representing the triumph of Caesar

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done for the court of Mantua
by Mantegna in about 1480.

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It's a piece of romantic archaeology.

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Mantegna has rummaged passionately
in the ruins of ancient Roman towns

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to find evidence for the shape of every vase
or Roman trumpet,

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but he has subordinated
all his antiquarian knowledge

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to a superb feeling for the drive
and discipline of Rome.

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I said that the gigantic and the heroic spirit
of the High Renaissance belongs to Rome

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and it's true

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but there was a sort of prelude in Florence.

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(Bells ring out)

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The Medici, who had been the rulers of Florence
for the last 60 years

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had been kicked out in 1494
and the Florentines had established a republic.

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They made speeches full of the noble,
puritanical sentiments

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which pre-Marxist revolutionaries
used to dig up out of Plutarch and Livy,

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and to symbolise their convictions
they re-erected two statues by Donatello,

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the lion of the republic, called the Marzocco,

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and Judith, the tyrant slayer,

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two figures belonging to an earlier period
of Florentine liberty.

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The city fathers also commissioned
various works of art on heroico-patriotic themes.

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One of them was a gigantic figure of David,

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the free, pure-hearted youth
who had killed the giant of corruption.

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The commission was given
to an alarming young man,

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who had just returned from Rome
to his native city, Michelangelo.

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Only 25 years separate this marble hero
from the dapper little figure,

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which had been the last word
in Medician elegance,

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the David of Verrocchio

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and you see there really has been
a turning point in the human spirit.

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The Verrocchio is light, nimble,

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smiling and clothed.

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The Michelangelo - this is the original,
the one you saw in the Piazza was a copy -

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the Michelangelo is vast,

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defiant, nude.

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It's rather the same progression
that we'll see again in music,

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between Mozart's Figaro
and Beethoven's Fidelio.

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What a man!

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Everyone who met Michelangelo

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recognised that he had an unequalled power
of mind and skill of hand.

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Even as a boy,
his spiritual energy terrified people.

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Personally, I believe that this small figure,

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which he carved in Bologna
when he was under 20, is a self-portrait.

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It shows that he never changed,
except that he grew sadder, like the rest of us.

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It has the indignant singleness of purpose
that alarms ordinary accommodating citizens.

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In a way, his art never changed.

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This relief of a battle is certainly
one of his earliest works

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and, already,
one sees the same expressive poses

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that reappear on the Sistine Ceiling,
even in The Last Judgement.

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It's inspired by a Greco-Roman relief.

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Antique art was always to Michelangelo a kind of
quarry from which he dug out his ideas of form,

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but, of course
it's still rather a rough version of antiquity.

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When he went to Rome

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he was able to make much more finished
versions of antique sculpture,

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some that were actually passed off as originals.

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This one even achieves some of
the unpleasant smoothness of a Roman copy.

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But when he returned to Florence

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he was able to charge this worn-out style
with his own vigour and potency.

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Seen by itself, the David's body might be
some unusually taut and vivid work of antiquity.

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It's only when we come to the head

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that we're aware of a spiritual force
that the ancient world had never known.

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I suppose that this quality,
which I've called "heroic"

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isn't a part of most people's idea of civilisation.

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It involves a contempt for convenience

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and a sacrifice of all those pleasures that
contribute to what we usually call "civilised life".

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It's the enemy of happiness.

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And yet we recognise
that to despise material obstacles

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and even to defy the blind forces of fate

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is man's supreme achievement.

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After all, we see that he's expressed this
by the body, no less than by the head.

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By this living cage of ribs.

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By those tense, architectural muscles
of the pelvis.

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Above all, by this huge Florentine hand,

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so far from the antique tradition of ideal beauty.

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Since, in the end

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civilisation depends on man extending
his powers of mind and spirit to the utmost,

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we must reckon the appearance
of Michelangelo's David

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as one of the great events
in the history of Western Man.

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And this brings us back to Rome
and to the terrible Pope.

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In fact, I'm sitting in the papal garden
in the Vatican.

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Julius II wasn't only ambitious
for the Catholic Church.

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He was ambitious for Julius II.

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In his new temple,

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he planned to erect the most grandiose tomb
of any ruler since the time of Hadrian.

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It was a staggering example of "superbia",
what we call "megalomania".

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Michelangelo, at that time, wasn't without
the same characteristic.

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I needn't go into the question of why
the tomb was never built. There was a quarrel.

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Heroes don't easily tolerate
the company of other heroes.

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Nor does it matter to us
what the tomb was going to look like.

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All that matters is that some of the figures
made for it survive

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and they are something new
to the European spirit,

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something that neither antiquity

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nor the great civilisations of India and China
had ever dreamt of.

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As a matter of fact, the two most finished of them
were derived from antiques.

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But Michelangelo has given them
a complex inner life

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that was almost unknown in antiquity

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and he has made them convey their emotional
conflicts by the action of their bodies.

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They're conceived as captives,

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bound captives,

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one of them struggling to be free.

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From what? From mortality?

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From the weight of his muscle-bound body,

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derived, as we know
from a Roman figure of a boxer?

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And the other

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sensuously resigned.

231
00:17:57,000 --> 00:17:58,950
"Half in love with easeful death".

232
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,670
Michelangelo had in mind
a Greek figure of the dying son of Niobe.

233
00:18:05,720 --> 00:18:08,068
These two are carved out in the round.

234
00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:11,588
The others, assuming they were part of
the same set, are unfinished.

235
00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:13,630
Their bodies emerge from the marble

236
00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:18,150
with the kind of premonitory rumbling
that one gets in the Ninth Symphony

237
00:18:18,240 --> 00:18:20,190
and then sink back into it.

238
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:24,950
(MUSIC) TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA:
Responsories For Tenebrae

239
00:18:33,788 --> 00:18:37,410
To some extent, the rough marble
is like shadow in a Rembrandt

240
00:18:37,509 --> 00:18:41,420
a means of concentrating
on the parts that are felt most intensely.

241
00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:45,430
But it also seems to imprison the figures.

242
00:18:45,509 --> 00:18:51,058
In fact, they're always known as The Prisoners,
although there's no sign of bonds or shackles.

243
00:18:57,788 --> 00:18:59,740
As with the finished captives,

244
00:18:59,828 --> 00:19:04,578
one feels that they express
Michelangelo's deepest preoccupation,

245
00:19:04,680 --> 00:19:08,630
the struggle of the soul to free itself from matter.

246
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,950
(MUSIC) TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA:
Responsories For Tenebrae

247
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:49,430
I'm standing in the Sistine Chapel.

248
00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,828
Above my head
is one of the greatest works of man.

249
00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:56,670
Michelangelo's Ceiling.

250
00:20:56,750 --> 00:20:58,298
People sometimes wonder

251
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:02,750
why the Italian Renaissance
didn't make more of a contribution to philosophy.

252
00:21:02,828 --> 00:21:05,858
The answer is that the most profound thought
of the time

253
00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:08,548
wasn't expressed in language, but in painting,

254
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:12,308
just as in the early-18th century,
it was expressed through music.

255
00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:14,150
Ofthis truism

256
00:21:14,240 --> 00:21:16,990
the chief example is Michelangelo's Ceiling.

257
00:21:18,308 --> 00:21:20,259
We owe it to Julius II.

258
00:21:20,348 --> 00:21:23,298
Ever since Michelangelo's earliest biography,

259
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:25,348
the Pope has been blamed

260
00:21:25,440 --> 00:21:28,788
for diverting his energies from the tomb
on which he'd set his heart

261
00:21:28,880 --> 00:21:31,990
and putting him to work
on the painting of the Sistine Ceiling.

262
00:21:32,068 --> 00:21:34,900
It was even said to be a plot
devised by his enemies.

263
00:21:35,960 --> 00:21:38,390
Well, I think it was a stroke of inspiration.

264
00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:43,150
The original project of the tomb included
almost 40 marble figures over life-size.

265
00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,798
How could Michelangelo ever have done it?

266
00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:49,068
It's true that he carved marble
faster than any mason,

267
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:53,990
but even with his heroic energy,
the tomb would have taken him 20 years,

268
00:21:54,068 --> 00:21:57,940
during which time his mind was changing
and developing.

269
00:21:58,028 --> 00:21:59,980
The very fact that, in the Ceiling,

270
00:22:00,068 --> 00:22:04,220
he decided to depict scenes,
not simply to concentrate on single figures,

271
00:22:04,308 --> 00:22:06,259
allowed him a range of experience,

272
00:22:06,348 --> 00:22:10,900
which would hardly have been possible
in the more concentrated medium of sculpture.

273
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:13,868
Look at this woman
holding her child in front of her,

274
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:17,578
and these piled-up men
Looking across the flooded landscape...

275
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:21,788
..and this wretched woman

276
00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:23,828
lying there in misery,

277
00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:25,670
abandoned.

278
00:22:26,788 --> 00:22:31,940
All these show a human side of Michelangelo,
which will scarcely appear again.

279
00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:37,630
The ceiling also allowed him
to express his thoughts about the divine plan,

280
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:40,180
but were they his thoughts?

281
00:22:40,269 --> 00:22:43,019
In most philosophical paintings
of the Renaissance

282
00:22:43,108 --> 00:22:45,740
the ideas were suggested
by poets and theologians,

283
00:22:45,828 --> 00:22:47,900
but in one of Michelangelo's letters,

284
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,348
he says that the Pope had told him
to paint what he liked.

285
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:56,190
So I suppose that the subject of the ceiling
was largely his own idea.

286
00:22:56,269 --> 00:23:00,140
Perhaps this is one of the reasons
why it's so difficult to interpret.

287
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:02,390
It's an extremely complex work.

288
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:07,910
Viewed from the ground, there is an acute,
physical difficulty in concentrating long enough

289
00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:11,470
to relate the scenes
and the individual figures to each other.

290
00:23:11,548 --> 00:23:13,500
Some scenes are clear.

291
00:23:13,588 --> 00:23:18,900
The contrast between the confident
sensual twist of Eve's body before the Fall...

292
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:22,710
..and the huddled, desperate animal after.

293
00:23:23,750 --> 00:23:27,420
As for the general scheme,
I think at least one thing is certain.

294
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:35,430
The Sistine Ceiling passionately asserts
the unity of man's body, mind and spirit.

295
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:40,509
You can admire the ceiling
from the point of view of the body,

296
00:23:40,588 --> 00:23:45,338
as 19th-century critics used to do,
who looked first at the so-called "athletes"

297
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:48,108
or from the point of view of the mind,

298
00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:51,950
as one does when one looks at
those great embodiments of intellectual energy,

299
00:23:52,028 --> 00:23:53,980
the prophets and sibyls.

300
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:58,910
But when one looks at the sequences of stories
from Genesis

301
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:03,230
I think one feels that Michelangelo
was chiefly concerned with the spirit.

302
00:24:03,308 --> 00:24:08,098
As a narrative, they begin with the Creation
and end with the drunkenness of Noah

303
00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:11,588
but Michelangelo compels us
to read them in reverse order

304
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,710
and, indeed, they were painted
in the reverse order.

305
00:24:14,788 --> 00:24:18,058
Over our head, as we enter the chapel,
is the figure of Noah,

306
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:21,230
where the body has taken complete possession.

307
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:26,910
At the other end, over the altar, is the Almighty,
dividing light from darkness,

308
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,028
in which the body has been completely
transformed into a symbol of the spirit

309
00:24:31,108 --> 00:24:35,778
and even the head, with its too-evident
human associations has become indistinct.

310
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:41,068
In between these scenes
comes the central episode,

311
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:42,910
the Creation Of Man.

312
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:47,108
It's one of those rare works
which are both supremely great

313
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:51,430
and wholly accessible, even to those
who don't normally respond to works of art.

314
00:24:51,509 --> 00:24:54,660
Its meaning is clear and impressive at first sight

315
00:24:54,750 --> 00:24:57,980
and yet the longer one knows it,
the deeper it strikes.

316
00:24:59,028 --> 00:25:02,098
Man, with a body of unprecedented splendour,

317
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:08,380
is reclining on the ground in the pose of all those
river gods and wine gods of the ancient world,

318
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:12,019
who belonged to the earth
and did not aspire to leave it.

319
00:25:14,028 --> 00:25:15,980
He stretches out his hand

320
00:25:16,068 --> 00:25:18,740
so that it almost touches the hand of God

321
00:25:18,828 --> 00:25:22,368
and an electric charge
seems to pass between their fingers.

322
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,470
Out of this glorious physical specimen,

323
00:25:26,548 --> 00:25:29,108
God has created a human soul.

324
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:34,750
Behind the Almighty, in the crook of his arm,
is the figure of Eve,

325
00:25:34,828 --> 00:25:36,778
already in the Creator's thoughts

326
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:40,190
and already, one feels,
a potential source of trouble.

327
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:48,269
It's possible, I think,
to interpret the whole of the Sistine Ceiling

328
00:25:48,348 --> 00:25:50,500
as a poem on the subject of creation,

329
00:25:50,588 --> 00:25:54,980
that godlike gift, which so much occupied
the thoughts of Renaissance man.

330
00:25:55,068 --> 00:26:00,009
After God has brought Adam to life come those
scenes of the Almighty in the act of creation,

331
00:26:00,108 --> 00:26:04,380
which form a sort of crescendo, the movement
accelerates from one scene to the next.

332
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,348
First of all, God dividing the waters
from the earth.

333
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:13,028
"And the spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters."

334
00:26:13,108 --> 00:26:17,140
I don't know why these words give one
such a feeling of peace, but they do.

335
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,348
Michelangelo has conveyed it
by a tranquil movement

336
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:22,390
and a gesture of benediction.

337
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:26,000
In the next scene
the Creation of the Sun and Moon

338
00:26:26,068 --> 00:26:28,058
he doesn't bless or evoke, but commands

339
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:32,509
as if dealing with these fiery elements
required all his authority and speed,

340
00:26:32,588 --> 00:26:36,130
and, to the left, he swishes off the scene
to create the planets.

341
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:47,108
Finally, we're back at the separation
of light and darkness.

342
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:53,390
Of the rare attempts of finite man
to set down an image of infinite energy,

343
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:58,338
this seems to me the most convincing,
one might even say the most realistic,

344
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:01,828
because photographs of
the formation of stellar nuclei

345
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,670
show very much the same swirling movement.

346
00:27:07,269 --> 00:27:12,660
Michelangelo's power of prophetic insight gives
one the feeling that he belongs to every epoch,

347
00:27:12,750 --> 00:27:16,019
most of all, perhaps,
to the epoch of the great romantics,

348
00:27:16,108 --> 00:27:19,259
of which we are still the almost-bankrupt heirs.

349
00:27:21,588 --> 00:27:26,058
It's the quality that distinguishes him
most sharply from his brilliant rival,

350
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:28,588
the second hero of this programme, Raphael.

351
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,588
Raphael was, above all, a man of his age.

352
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:38,630
Even in his early work, still painted in the
clear, self-contained style of the 15th century,

353
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,390
he's begun to absorb and harmonise

354
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:45,588
all that was being felt or thought
by the finest spirits of his time.

355
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:47,828
He is the supreme harmoniser.

356
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,348
That's why he's out of favour today.

357
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:53,509
One couldn't write a bestseller about Raphael.

358
00:27:54,588 --> 00:28:02,618
I suppose one must allow that, as works of art,
Raphael's frescoes aren't all that easy to enjoy.

359
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:08,618
Even in the 18th century, when Raphael stood
at the summit of an established Olympus,

360
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:15,308
Sir Joshua Reynolds warned young artists not to
be disappointed by their first visit to the Stanze,

361
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,670
but to go on looking and looking,

362
00:28:17,750 --> 00:28:20,700
until, finally, they understood the restrained,

363
00:28:20,788 --> 00:28:24,740
but perfectly-balanced language
in which he expresses his ideas.

364
00:28:24,828 --> 00:28:28,019
I've tried to follow his advice
over the last 40 years

365
00:28:28,108 --> 00:28:30,858
and, I promise you, it's been worth the effort.

366
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:35,390
Raphael came from Urbino,
where his father was court painter,

367
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:39,348
and it's reasonable to suppose
that he was introduced to the papal service

368
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,588
by his compatriot, Bramante, who was not only
the architect of the new St Peter's

369
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:47,150
but seems to have been on
relatively intimate terms with Julius II.

370
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,759
At the time, Raphael was 2?r.

371
00:28:50,828 --> 00:28:53,980
He had only once
tried his hand at mural painting.

372
00:28:54,068 --> 00:28:58,338
He'd shown no evidence at all
that he could cope pictorially with great ideas

373
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:00,788
and yet Julius had the insight

374
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:04,828
to commission this young man
to decorate the library and study,

375
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:07,348
which was to be the centre of the Pope's life,

376
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,670
where he was to meditate on theology
and decide on action.

377
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:16,470
The decorations must, in some sense
project and harmonise his thoughts.

378
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:22,470
No doubt, Raphael had passed much
of his boyhood in Urbino in the palace library,

379
00:29:22,548 --> 00:29:25,900
where paintings of poets and philosophers
and theologians

380
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:29,068
were placed above the shelves
containing their books.

381
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:33,710
And when he came to decorate
what, in effect, was a branch of the papal library,

382
00:29:33,788 --> 00:29:36,740
he determined to carry the same idea further.

383
00:29:36,828 --> 00:29:41,259
He would not only portray the figures
whose books were in the shelves below

384
00:29:41,348 --> 00:29:43,298
he would relate them to each other

385
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:47,230
and to the whole discipline
of which they formed a part.

386
00:29:48,308 --> 00:29:52,420
He must have had advice
from the learned, cultivated men

387
00:29:52,509 --> 00:29:55,460
who made up about a third of the papal curia,

388
00:29:55,548 --> 00:29:59,500
but that sublime company
wasn't assembled by a committee.

389
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:02,950
It represents Human Reason.

390
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:06,108
It's always known as the School Of Athens.

391
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:12,308
On the opposite wall is Divine Reason,
known, for some reason, as The Disputa.

392
00:30:13,348 --> 00:30:15,700
On the subsidiary wall, the window wall,

393
00:30:15,788 --> 00:30:20,538
is Poetic Inspiration, Apollo and the Muses,
known as the Parnassus.

394
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:22,990
Everything in the groups is thought out.

395
00:30:23,068 --> 00:30:26,608
For example, of the two central,figures
in the School Of Athens

396
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:28,670
Plato, the idealist, is on the left

397
00:30:28,750 --> 00:30:31,500
and he points upwards to Divine Inspiration.

398
00:30:31,588 --> 00:30:36,940
Beyond him, to the left, are the philosophers
who appealed to intuition and to the emotions.

399
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:39,950
We recognise Socrates.

400
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,028
But many of the others can't be identified.

401
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:48,150
We can be certain only

402
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:53,390
that these noble human beings
are passionately engaged in the search for truth.

403
00:30:59,269 --> 00:31:01,220
To the right is Aristotle,

404
00:31:01,308 --> 00:31:05,058
the man of good sense,
holding out a moderating hand,

405
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:09,108
and beside him are the representatives
of rational activities

406
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:11,348
logic, grammar and geometry.

407
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,348
Curiously enough, Raphael has put
his own portrait in this group,

408
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:24,588
next to a bearded philosopher,

409
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:28,028
who seems to be an ideal portrait
of Leonardo da Vinci

410
00:31:28,108 --> 00:31:31,058
perhaps intended to represent Pythagoras.

411
00:31:32,548 --> 00:31:35,298
Below them is a group of beautiful, young men,

412
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,828
looking over the shoulder
of a baldheaded geometrer.

413
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:40,868
Euclid, I suppose.

414
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:45,390
He is certainly a portrait of Bramante
and it's fitting that he should be there,

415
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:47,750
because the noble piece of architecture,

416
00:31:47,828 --> 00:31:51,368
in which these representatives
of Human Reason are assembled

417
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:56,420
must, I think, represent Bramante's dream
of the new St Peter's.

418
00:31:56,509 --> 00:32:00,940
Raphael, himself, was later to become
an architect, and a very fine architect,

419
00:32:01,028 --> 00:32:05,538
but, in 1510, he couldn't possibly
have conceived a building like this,

420
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,588
one of the most life-enhancing
effects of space in art.

421
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,990
It may have been designed by Bramante,

422
00:32:13,068 --> 00:32:15,019
but Raphael has made it his own.

423
00:32:15,108 --> 00:32:17,858
Like all great artists, he was a borrower,

424
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:21,108
but he absorbed his borrowings more than most.

425
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:23,150
One has a vague feeling

426
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,588
that these figures are inspired
by Hellenistic sculpture.

427
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:30,430
I suppose that's one of the things,
that makes him distasteful to us

428
00:32:30,509 --> 00:32:33,660
but every figure in this picture is pure Raphael

429
00:32:33,750 --> 00:32:35,700
or every figure but one.

430
00:32:36,750 --> 00:32:39,180
This morose philosopher

431
00:32:39,269 --> 00:32:42,019
does not occur in the drawing,

432
00:32:42,108 --> 00:32:46,460
the full-size drawing for the fresco,
which, by a miracle, has survived.

433
00:32:46,548 --> 00:32:49,500
We can see where he comes from.
The Sistine Ceiling.

434
00:32:49,588 --> 00:32:53,700
Michelangelo wouldn't let anyone in there
while he was at work

435
00:32:53,788 --> 00:32:55,740
but Bramante had the key

436
00:32:55,828 --> 00:32:58,778
and, one day, when Michelangelo was away,

437
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:00,828
he took Raphael in with him.

438
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:02,670
Who cares?

439
00:33:02,750 --> 00:33:05,618
The great artist takes what he needs.

440
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:08,788
(MUSIC) HEINRICH ISAAC: Proprium Missae
In Dominica Laetare

441
00:33:35,068 --> 00:33:37,630
While Human Reason is rooted to the earth

442
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:39,868
Divine Wisdom floats in the sky

443
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:43,910
above the heads of those philosophers,
theologians and church fathers

444
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:45,950
who have tried to interpret it.

445
00:33:46,028 --> 00:33:49,098
(MUSIC) HEINRICH ISAAC: Proprium Missae
In Dominica Laetare

446
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:12,820
For all these figures, Raphael made studies,

447
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:15,750
which are models
of the academic style of drawing.

448
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,030
He even made nude studies of whole groups

449
00:34:19,110 --> 00:34:22,179
to get the underlying structure
solid and real enough.

450
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:27,670
How Michelangelesque that left-hand figure is.

451
00:34:29,630 --> 00:34:33,170
Then other studies of the flow of drapery,

452
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,349
but when he came to the final design,

453
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:39,670
all these ideas are enriched and developed.

454
00:34:41,710 --> 00:34:43,659
The seekers after revealed truth

455
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,510
are arranged with the same regard
for their relations with each other

456
00:34:47,590 --> 00:34:52,099
and with the philosophic scheme of the whole
room, that exists in the School Of Athens.

457
00:34:52,190 --> 00:34:56,780
In so far as civilisation
consists in grasping imaginatively

458
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:59,309
all that's best of the thought of a time,

459
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:02,510
these walls represent a summit of civilisation.

460
00:35:02,590 --> 00:35:05,659
(MUSIC) HEINRICH ISAAC: Proprium Missae
In Dominica Laetare

461
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:50,469
If only, we feel, Raphael had more often
allowed himselfthis vein of sensuous poetry,

462
00:35:50,550 --> 00:35:55,570
which, in its way, is quite as civilising
as his intellectual abstractions.

463
00:35:55,670 --> 00:35:58,130
Michelangelo took no interest
in the opposite sex,

464
00:35:58,230 --> 00:36:02,179
Leonardo thought of women
solely as reproductive mechanisms,

465
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,349
but Raphael loved the girls
as much as any Venetian.

466
00:36:08,670 --> 00:36:12,340
Soon after this portrait was painted, Julius II died

467
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:16,110
and his successor, Leo X
doesn't look at all like a hero.

468
00:36:16,190 --> 00:36:20,739
I suppose Raphael tried to make this portrait
as flattering as possible,

469
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,400
but what a contrast to the old warrior.

470
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:26,710
Raphael remained on in the papal service

471
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:30,309
and was asked to do everything,
from the rebuilding of St Peter's

472
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:33,940
to the decoration of a very pagan bathroom
for Cardinal Bibbiena.

473
00:36:34,030 --> 00:36:36,179
Of course, he couldn't do it all himself.

474
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:38,739
For such a project as the Loggia of the Vatican,

475
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:41,829
one must imagine him
making dozens of slight sketches,

476
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,429
handing them out, right and left,
to his brilliant young pupils.

477
00:36:45,510 --> 00:36:47,460
Giulo Romano was only 16.

478
00:36:47,550 --> 00:36:52,179
Someone said of Courbet that he produced
pictures as an apple tree produces apples.

479
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,230
The same is true of Raphael,

480
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:57,349
except that his apples
were fruits of the imagination

481
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,268
and, sometimes
achieved such grace and finality

482
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,980
that they stamped themselves
on the European mind for 300 years.

483
00:37:05,630 --> 00:37:10,900
However, one of the commissions of this period
had a more questionable influence.

484
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:16,750
This was a series of designs for the tapestries
which were to be hung in the Sistine Chapel.

485
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,909
With the thought of Michealangelo's Ceiling
above them

486
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:24,590
Raphael took a lot of trouble about them
and, of course, they are masterpieces.

487
00:37:24,670 --> 00:37:28,900
Masterpieces of composition
in the tradition of the early Florentines.

488
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:31,670
Masterpieces of elevated imagination.

489
00:37:32,710 --> 00:37:35,659
But their very nobility was dangerous.

490
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:39,300
They're concerned for the lives of the apostles,
Peter and Paul.

491
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:41,349
Well, St Peter was a poor fisherman.

492
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:46,380
Raphael has made him and all his companions
uniformly handsome and noble.

493
00:37:47,630 --> 00:37:51,059
Where can one find
more impressive human types

494
00:37:51,150 --> 00:37:56,500
than in the group of apostles
who listen to Christ's charge, "Feed my sheep"?

495
00:38:03,510 --> 00:38:06,780
It may be good for us to leave our daily chores

496
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:09,869
and move in high company for a short time,

497
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:14,230
but this convention, by which the events
in biblical or secular history

498
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,829
could be enacted only
by magnificent physical specimens,

499
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:19,869
handsome and well-groomed,

500
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,579
went on for too long,
till the middle of the 19th century, in fact.

501
00:38:23,670 --> 00:38:28,900
Only a very few artists, perhaps only Caravaggio
and Rembrandt, in the first rank

502
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:31,750
were independent enough to stand against it.

503
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:37,739
I think that the convention, which was
an element in the so-called "grand manner",

504
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:41,510
became a deadening influence
on the European mind.

505
00:38:42,550 --> 00:38:47,059
It deadened our sense of truth
even our sense of moral responsibility

506
00:38:47,150 --> 00:38:49,900
and led, as we see in modern art

507
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:51,949
to a hideous reaction.

508
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,750
In the autumn of 1513
soon after the death of Julius

509
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,380
there arrived in the Belvedere
almost exactly where I am now,

510
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:03,429
one more giant.

511
00:39:03,510 --> 00:39:05,460
Leonardo da Vinci.

512
00:39:06,510 --> 00:39:09,940
Historians used to speak of him
as a typical Renaissance man,

513
00:39:10,030 --> 00:39:11,980
a kind of successor to Alberti.

514
00:39:12,070 --> 00:39:14,018
Well, that's a mistake.

515
00:39:14,110 --> 00:39:17,059
In fact, he belongs to no epoch,

516
00:39:17,150 --> 00:39:19,099
he fits into no category

517
00:39:19,190 --> 00:39:24,130
and the more you know about him,
the more utterly mysterious he becomes.

518
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:28,949
Of course, he had certain
Renaissance characteristics.

519
00:39:29,030 --> 00:39:31,780
He loved beauty and graceful movement.

520
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:36,429
He shared or even anticipated
the megalomania of the early-16th century.

521
00:39:36,510 --> 00:39:41,860
The horse that he modelled as a memorial
to Francesco Sforza was to be 26 feet high.

522
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:44,909
He made schemes for diverting the River Arno,

523
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,869
that even modern technology
couldn't accomplish.

524
00:39:50,230 --> 00:39:52,789
Then, of course, he had, to a supreme degree,

525
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:56,829
the gift of his time for recording and condensing
whatever took his eye.

526
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:01,670
But all these gifts
were dominated by one ruling passion,

527
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,219
which was not a Renaissance characteristic.

528
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:05,869
Curiosity.

529
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:08,909
He was the most relentlessly curious man
in history.

530
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,389
Everything he saw made him ask why and how,
particularly how,

531
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:17,420
and he's left his answers in thousands of sheets
of paper and scores of notebooks.

532
00:40:17,510 --> 00:40:22,099
I've got in my hands
the facsimile of one of these, Manuscript B.

533
00:40:22,190 --> 00:40:24,940
It deals with practical problems.

534
00:40:25,030 --> 00:40:28,099
Millwheels, toothed wheels, ratchets.

535
00:40:28,190 --> 00:40:30,139
Architecture.

536
00:40:30,230 --> 00:40:31,980
A tower.

537
00:40:32,070 --> 00:40:36,018
For the Ducal Palace in Milan
the Castello Sforzesco.

538
00:40:36,110 --> 00:40:39,460
A church, in the style of his friend, Bramante.

539
00:40:39,550 --> 00:40:44,699
Leonardo was obsessed with the idea
of putting a round dome onto a square base.

540
00:40:46,590 --> 00:40:48,340
And a stable

541
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,190
for the Duke of Milan's famous horses.

542
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:53,230
A very grand stable.

543
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:55,469
The hayloft above,

544
00:40:55,550 --> 00:40:58,219
the feeding bars on either side

545
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:00,989
and a drainage system down the middle.

546
00:41:06,190 --> 00:41:09,940
And then, the other aspect of Leonardo's mind,

547
00:41:10,030 --> 00:41:13,980
his interest in theoretical
and mathematical problems.

548
00:41:14,070 --> 00:41:17,460
This you see in a manuscript
called Manuscript A,

549
00:41:17,550 --> 00:41:20,619
where he's studying the light falling,

550
00:41:20,710 --> 00:41:23,460
the action of light falling on a sphere,

551
00:41:23,550 --> 00:41:28,139
and the interruption of light
forming this continuous modelling.

552
00:41:29,190 --> 00:41:31,340
It looks abstract enough,

553
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:33,389
but, in fact

554
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:37,989
it was the theoretical study
of light falling on a sphere

555
00:41:38,070 --> 00:41:40,340
that enabled Leonardo

556
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:45,380
to achieve the incredibly precise,

557
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:47,429
scientifically precise,

558
00:41:47,510 --> 00:41:51,460
continuous modelling
of the head of the Mona Lisa.

559
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:55,590
You can see from these manuscripts

560
00:41:55,670 --> 00:42:00,099
that Leonardo's curiosity
was matched by an indefatigable energy.

561
00:42:00,190 --> 00:42:02,860
He's never satisfied with a single answer.

562
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,500
He goes on asking the same question
again and again,

563
00:42:06,590 --> 00:42:08,739
worrying it, restating it,

564
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:13,349
countering imaginary antagonists,
till the reader is absolutely worn-out.

565
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:19,110
Fortunately, he also left answers
in the form of drawings,

566
00:42:19,190 --> 00:42:22,940
which are, or appear to be, easier to take in.

567
00:42:24,190 --> 00:42:29,539
One can enjoy them for the way in which
his eye grasps each form

568
00:42:29,630 --> 00:42:33,460
and his hands set it down with a unifying rhythm.

569
00:42:34,510 --> 00:42:36,460
But one mustn't forget

570
00:42:36,550 --> 00:42:41,380
that they are all, or nearly all,
answers to questions.

571
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:44,429
How does one stream of water deflect another?

572
00:42:44,510 --> 00:42:46,860
What is the cause of whirlpools?

573
00:42:48,150 --> 00:42:51,820
How are rocks formed?
What is the reason for stratification?

574
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:54,380
How do storm clouds build up?

575
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:56,429
How do trees mass together?

576
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:01,630
How does a twig support its load of acorns?

577
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:05,230
How do blackberries mass on a branch?

578
00:43:08,230 --> 00:43:12,260
Why do the leaves of a star-of-Bethlehem
resemble the movement of water?

579
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:22,550
What is the structure of a bird's wing?
How does a bird fly?

580
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:26,389
Of all these questions,

581
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,670
the ones he asks most insistently
concern man.

582
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:36,510
Not the man of Alberti's invocation, "with wit
reason and memory, like an immortal god,"

583
00:43:36,590 --> 00:43:38,739
but man as a mechanism.

584
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:43,349
How does he digest?

585
00:43:52,590 --> 00:43:54,889
How does the heart pump blood?

586
00:43:59,230 --> 00:44:01,179
How does a child live in the womb?

587
00:44:13,230 --> 00:44:15,260
How does he speak?

588
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:17,920
ls it by using his throat muscles or his tongue?

589
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:22,190
And, finally, why does he die of old age?

590
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:32,909
Leonardo discovered a centenarian
in a hospital in Florence

591
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:37,268
and waited gleefully for his demise,
in order to examine his veins.

592
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:39,710
Every question demanded dissection

593
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:43,150
and every dissection was drawn
with marvellous precision.

594
00:44:50,710 --> 00:44:52,659
And at the end, what does he find?

595
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,909
That man, although rem,arkable
as a mechanism

596
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,300
is not at all like an immortal god.

597
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:02,349
He's not only cruel and superstitious, but feeble.

598
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:06,349
If Michelangelo's defiance of fate was heroic,

599
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:10,829
there is something almost more magnificent
in the way that Leonardo,

600
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:13,070
that great hero of the intellect,

601
00:45:13,150 --> 00:45:17,340
confronts the inexplicable,
ungovernable forces of nature.

602
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:24,389
It was in Rome, in the very year that Raphael
was celebrating the godlike human intellect,

603
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:29,190
that Leonardo used his scientific knowledge
of the movement of water

604
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:32,630
to express his feelings of human insignificance.

605
00:45:33,670 --> 00:45:37,210
The painstaking way
in which he depicts these disasters

606
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,949
shows a strange mixture of relish

607
00:45:40,030 --> 00:45:42,179
and tragic indignation.

608
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:45,980
On the one hand, he is the patient observer
of hydrodynamics.

609
00:45:46,070 --> 00:45:50,018
On the other hand
he is King Lear defying the deluge.

610
00:45:51,550 --> 00:45:54,059
"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

611
00:45:54,150 --> 00:45:55,579
Rage! Blow!

612
00:45:55,670 --> 00:45:57,940
You cataracts and hurricanes sprout

613
00:45:58,030 --> 00:46:01,179
till you have drencht our steeples,
drown'd the cocks."

614
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:05,949
We are used to catastrophes.

615
00:46:06,030 --> 00:46:08,980
We see them every day on film and television.

616
00:46:09,070 --> 00:46:11,340
They contribute to our pessimism.

617
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,869
But coming from a perfectly-end, owed man
of the Renaissance

618
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:19,230
these extraordinary drawings of the world
destroyed by flood are prophetic.

619
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:54,909
The golden moment was almost over.

620
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:57,909
But, while it lasted

621
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:03,230
man achieved a stature
that he's hardly ever achieved before or since,

622
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:06,670
because to the humanist virtues of intelligence

623
00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:09,469
was added the quality of heroic will.

624
00:47:10,510 --> 00:47:13,460
For a few years,
it seemed that there was nothing

625
00:47:13,550 --> 00:47:17,300
which the human mind couldn't master
and harmonise.

626
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:21,309
(MUSIC) TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA:
Responsories For Tenebrae