All language subtitles for Rococo 3of3 Madness_Subtitles01.ENG

ANIMAL HOWLS

SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC

Argh!

Ooh-la-la!

Ah!

Urgh!

Argh!

Eek!

So far in this series,
we've concentrated on the good news

from the Rococo - travel, pleasure,

the pursuit of happiness.

Although it lasted
most of the 18th century,

the Rococo was art's happy hour

when much fun was had by many.

Unfortunately, there's a downside.

When you spend as much
energy as the Rococo did,

running away from reality,
there comes a time

when unreality becomes the norm,

when common sense gives way to
madness and the darkness sets in.

And that's what this film is about -
the madness of the Rococo,

the monsters that crawl out
of the dark when reason has had

too much to drink and the artistic
imagination goes on the prowl.

We're going to see some very queer
things in this film.

Goya, for instance. Was there ever
an artist who explored

the dark more energetically
than Goya?

Or Messerschmidt?

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt,
from Austria.

What kind of a sculptor in what kind
of an age produces art like this?

And then there's Longhi.
Ah, yes, Longhi,

observer in chief
of Venetian decadence,

who looked beneath the mask
and found another mask.

All that's coming up,
as we explore Rococo's dark side.

But first,
we're going to Britain,

where the madness flourished
particularly fiercely

and where some very strange people
made some very strange appearances

in some very strange art.

Allow me to introduce you to
Sir Francis Dashwood - Libertine,

fantasist and inveterate
Rococo dresser-up.

This, believe it or not,
is Dashwood too,

in his guise as a Turkish Sultan.

And here he is again as the Pope,

worshipping a topless goddess.

But the maddest of these mad Rococo
depictions of Sir Francis Dashwood

is surely this one,
painted by William Hogarth.

Dashwood as a monk, pretending
to be St Francis of Assisi.

In most countries,
a man like this would be arrested

and put into a mental home,
but in Rococo Britain,

he was encouraged to enter politics,
held several important

government posts, and eventually
became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Dashwood's career has
a familiar ring to it.

He went to Eton,
painted here by Canaletto,

where he made his important
political friendships.

He was a Tory
and in his younger days,

before he became Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Dashwood was

a keen member of various
drinking clubs,

including the most notorious
of them all,

including the most notorious
of them all,

the Hellfire Club.

The Hellfire Club
was a gentleman's club

with a religious bent.

Its members,
who included many of the leading

politicians of the time,
dressed up as monks.

They called themselves "Brother".

They met in these spooky caves
in West Wickham, where they managed

somehow to combine anti-Catholicism

with drinking too much

and wenching.

No-one knows for sure what
the Hellfire Club got up to

down here, it's all very mysterious,
but some information did seep out.

Dashwood, dressed as St Francis,
would lead the pretend monks through

a series of outrageous religious
ceremonies, mocking the Catholics.

Then, they'd all get immensely drunk

and turn their attention
to the prostitutes -

or nuns, as they called them -

they'd invited along
to their black mass.

So here we are, slap in the middle
of the so-called Enlightenment,

yet here is half the Government
dressed up as monks, drinking

themselves stupid and chasing
after pretend nuns in a cave.

That's why I love the Rococo.
It's completely potty.

According to rumours, Hogarth was
also a member of the Hellfire Club.

He was definitely associated with it
in some way.

And in this very strange

portrait of Dashwood
as St Francis, Hogarth shows

the Chancellor of the Exchequer
worshipping a crucified Venus.

Instead of a Bible,
he's reading a pornographic novel.

And the fruit at his feet
has taken a naughty form

and looks like a woman's buttocks.

Hogarth, who is usually thought of
as the first truly great

British painter, and who looked
more like his pug than his pug did,

was another Rococo frequenter
of drinking clubs.

In 1732, he became a founder member

of something called
the Sublime Order of Roast Beefs,

a patriotic
eating club and drinking club.

# When mighty roast beef
was the Englishman's food

# It ennobled our hearts
and enriched our blood

# Our soldiers were brave
and our cultures were good... #

They met in an upstairs room
at the old Covent Garden Theatre,

They met in an upstairs room
at the old Covent Garden Theatre,

where they drank too much beer

and sang nationalistic songs
about the potency of British beef.

# Oh, the roast beef of old England

# And old English roast beef

# Our fathers of old
were robust and strong

# And kept open house
with good cheer all day long... #

That boozy, burpy, rude tone
you get in Hogarth's art,

it's the tone of the tavern.

In the modern world, you still
get it at football matches.

In the modern world, you still
get it at football matches.

All that swearing, mocking
of the opposition, the jingoism.

# Who sully those honours
which once shone in fame... #

Hogarth's noisy nationalism

is usually brushed over
by his defenders.

It's all good fun, they say.
He was just being boisterous.

# And old English roast beef. #

I'm not sure about that.

With Hogarth, the devil is always
in the details, and in Calais Gate -

his most famous picture - there's a
lot going on that's very unpleasant.

Calais Gate,
or The Roast Beef Of Old England,

as it's properly called,
shows a busy French street,

with Hogarth himself lurking
in the crowd.

You can actually see him there
in the picture,

about to be arrested, and all this
is based on a real event.

In 1748, Hogarth went over to Calais

and while sketching the city gates,

he was detained as a spy
by the French police.

This infuriated him immensely and
as soon as he got back to London,

he got his revenge
by painting this picture.

Now, the city walls were
part of Calais's defences

and the British had only just
finished their war with the French,

so drawing the city defences
at such a time was very foolish.

Of course he was going to get
arrested.

But what's really unpleasant here
is the religious nastiness of this

picture, the dark anti-Catholic
ideas that are being expressed here.

Hogarth has set his scene
in the build-up to Easter,

Lent, when French Catholics were
not supposed to eat any meat.

So the British taverns in Calais,
hungry for the roast beef

of old England, had to import it
specially from home.

And this great slab of British beef
has just arrived at the port.

And this great slab of British beef
has just arrived at the port.

This fat French friar here,
fingering the side of beef,

he's quite funny.

And these hungry French soldiers
having to make do with

a thin gruel,
they're pretty funny too.

But what isn't so funny is what's
going on in the rest of the picture.

Here at the front, on the left,

there are three hideous nuns
worshipping a dried-out fish.

The fish, remember,
was a traditional symbol of Christ.

So this comic fish's face is
a giggling and perverse reference

to the true face of Christ
that was said to have been left

on Veronica's veil
when she wiped his dying face.

In a Catholic Mass,
at the climax of the Mass,

the moment of Communion,
the holy wafer

and the goblet of wine become
the body and blood of Jesus.

It's the centre of Catholic belief,
this idea of transubstantiation.

And that is what Hogarth is mocking
here.

At the back of the picture,
a Catholic priest outside

a tavern was handing out
the Communion to his congregation.

While the English eat
good old English beef,

the French get Jesus as a wafer.

And right at the top,
the most unpleasant detail of all,

a crow has landed on a cross,
and its hungry beak has begun

pecking uselessly
at Jesus' symbolic body.

In France, at Lent, even the crows
are hungry for a bit of flesh.

# Oh, the roast beef of old England

# And old English roast beef. #

Wahey!

So beneath the Rococo's jollity,
there was darkness.

And beneath its beauty,
there was darkness too.

Have you ever wondered why women
try to make their faces

whiter by using makeup?

It's a status thing.
Goes back long before the Rococo.

If you were poor,
you worked outdoors, right?

So you got suntanned.

And the moment somebody saw you,
they knew you were poor.

With paleness,
the opposite was true.

If you were pale, you stayed
indoors, enjoying your leisure.

So your skin was white,

a condition that found
particular favour in the Rococo.

It wasn't just the women either.

There were plenty of
Michael Jacksons out there as well,

trying desperately
to look less dark than they were.

But it was the women
who really suffered,

and among whom the fiercest
tragedies were enacted.

See this mirror,
a beautiful Georgian mirror,

made by William Linnell in 1759.

This mirror used to belong
to a famous Rococo beauty called

Maria Gunning.

Maria Gunning came from Ireland.

Her family was poor, so she became
an actress and wowed them

with her looks.

First in Dublin,
and then in London.

She arrived in London in 1751.

She was 18 and quickly became
the Angelina Jolie of her times,

a celebrity actress,
famed for her beauty.

When Maria went by in her carriage,

crowds would line the streets,
in the hope of glimpsing her.

She got so famous,

her shoemaker began charging people
sixpence just to see her shoes.

So it didn't take her long to find
herself an Earl, and in 1752,

she married the Earl of Coventry

and settled down
to a life of being beautiful.

This is the actual mirror
he bought for her.

It used to hang above the
mantelpiece in her dressing room.

Every day, Maria Gunning would
spend hours painting her face,

getting ready to appear
before her doting public.

getting ready to appear
before her doting public.

And soon enough,
that's what killed her.

The whitener she used was made
of lead white,

which achieves excellent coverage.

But the lead began combining
with the moisture in her skin

to form an acid that began
eating away at her face.

To cover up these patches
where her skin had fallen off,

Maria Gunning would apply
even more whitener.

The rouge on her cheeks,
a fashion imported from France,

where the country-girl look
became briefly popular,

was made from lead paste
and cinnabar -

a waste product of mercury mining.

So, rouge gave you lead poisoning
and mercury poisoning.

As for her lipstick, Maria Gunning
liked to use mercuric fucus -

a seaweed extract

with a particularly high
concentration of mercury.

So the acid ate away at her skin,
the lead poisoned her

the mercury seeped into her veins

and as the sores grew ever
more visible,

so more and more makeup was needed
to cover them.

She died at the age of 27

and spent her final year
in a darkened room

and spent her final year
in a darkened room

where no-one could see her.

This lovely George II giltwood
overmantle mirror,

given to her by her husband,

with its exuberant acanthus scrolls

and its brimming basket of flowers,

would have seen all this.

And the poor mirror
must have thought to itself,

"Human beings,
you couldn't make them up!"

Back in Venice,

history clearly had it in
for the city of masks.

And the good times
were now numbered.

The pesky Dutch and English

had stolen the most important
trade routes.

Venice was no longer the gateway
to the East.

Its naval power had crumbled,
so, as we saw in film one,

the one about travel,

Rococo Venice needed
to reinvent itself...

..as a tourist trap.

To attract the louche, but
increasingly crucial Grand Tourists,

the Serenissima had turned itself
into the international centre

of European naughtiness.

If drinking was your vice,
or gambling,

or chasing after women and men,

or chasing after women and men,

then Venice was the place for you.

The best time to go was,
of course, carnival time,

when you could wear a mask
and be as decadent as you wanted.

No-one knew who you were.

Fortunately for us, to record
this immense social naughtiness,

Venice managed to produce
one more great painter.

He was born Pierre Antonio Falca,

but we know him better
by his Rococo stage name -

Pietro Longhi.

Longhi was the Venetian Hogarth,

a satirical, nosy-parker,

keeping his eye on his fellow
citizens.

But, because he was a Venetian,

Longhi could never be as burpy

and beery as Hogarth.

Longhi's tactic was to charm
the truth out of you.

He'd giggle and he'd sweet-talk

until he was close enough
to peep behind the mask.

You could wear a mask in Venice
from St Stephen's Day,

that's 26th December,

till Shrove Tuesday -
so that's three months or so.

And also, from 5th October
until Christmas.

So that's another three months.

So for near as damn
six months of the year,

the Venetians could go about
pretending

they weren't who they were.

The Venetian mask had various
purposes.

In the cramped streets of Venice,

it was a way of hiding
in full view of your fellows.

And it was particularly useful
in the gambling dens,

where no-one knew who you were

or how much you owed them!

Women wore a mask called a moretta,

Women wore a mask called a moretta,

which means "the dark lady".

They were oval and you kept them
in place with your teeth,

biting on to a little button inside.

So, a woman in a moretta couldn't
speak without her mask falling off,

giving away her identity.

Venetian women evolved a subtle
language of silent flirtation.

An inclination of the head,

a flutter of the eyelashes,

a nod, a wink.

WOMAN GIGGLES

The men, meanwhile,
wore a white mask called a bauta,

shaped like a face,
except for the bottom.

It stuck out like a projecting chin,

so you could eat and drink
and gossip while wearing it.

The Venetian bauta wasn't just
worn at Carnival time.

It had a political role too.

Venetian nobles wore them
at important decision-making events

so they could cast their votes
anonymously.

But the chief role of the mask was
to hide the darkness within.

Venetian society had grown decadent
and rotten.

It did not want everyone to know.

This interesting Longhi painting,
called The Charlatan

shows a phony doctor
flogging his wares at carnival time

in the dark arcades
of the Doge's palace.

But the real charlatan here

is the anonymous nobleman
in the foreground...

MAN LAUGHS

..who makes a crude grab
for a passing woman's skirt.

We'll never know exactly
what's going on in Longhi's art.

His symbolism is too twisted
and Venetian.

We've lost touch with too many
of its secret meanings.

But one thing we can be sure of

is there are no heroes
in his pictures,

no-one we should look up to.

So, what have you got?

HE LAUGHS

In Longhi's art,
the corrupt, the flighty,

the ridiculous, have elbowed out
the gods and the heroes

and grabbed the leading roles.

In Rococo Venice,

it wasn't the meek
who inherited the earth

but the schemers,

the mountebanks, the charlatans.

WAVES LAP

So, the pleasure capital of Europe
was awash with naughtiness.

Whatever your vice,
Venice catered for it.

But vices cost money.

And if you didn't have any,
and got into debt,

then they sent you somewhere
very Rococo -

prison.

The prison island of Santo Stefano,

a busy Rococo location
with a hellish history.

The Italians have been sending
people to Santa Stefano

since Roman times.

Nero's wife, Octavia,
was exiled here.

A couple of thousand years later,

this is where Mussolini sent
his political prisoners.

But it got really interesting
in Rococo times,

when Santo Stefano led the way
in prison architecture.

Prisons played a huge part
in the Rococo.

They were crucial in literature,
for instance -

Casanova, that archetypal Rococo
seducer, was in and out of prison.

And his life story is full
of prison escapades.

The Marquis de Sade was another one.

An archetypal Rococo rogue,

who did all his best work locked up.

So the Rococo
specialised in prisons,

and here at Santo Stefano
there's a unique survival

of the Rococo's
biggest and darkest prison idea.

You must've heard of
Jeremy Bentham -

he's one of the Rococo's weirdest
presences,

and he's still with us.

Or, at least, bits of him are.

Bentham left his corpse
to University College, London,

and every day his Rococo skeleton
goes on display

encased in a pretend-body
stuffed with horsehair.

As for his head,
well, they keep that in a box.

And it only gets taken out
on special occasions.

Bentham was a social philosopher,

constantly thinking up better ways
for us to live.

And he invented a new way
of thinking called utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism's big idea was that
usefulness brought happiness,

so everything should be really,
really useful -

especially a prison.

According to Bentham,

the greatest happiness
for the greatest number

was the measure
of right and wrong.

So whatever made a prison work best,
that's what you need to do.

So he invented a new type of prison

called a panopticon...

..and he persuaded the English
government to help him develop it.

His plan was to build
one of these in London,

exactly where Tate Britain is today.

And it would've looked
much like this.

The panopticon was round,

and its big idea was that the
prisoners on the perimeter

could be spied on constantly

by the guards watching them
from the centre.

It was all about surveillance.

How could a few people
keep track of lots of people?

In a panopticon,
the cells went all the way round,

and in the middle was an observation
tower patrolled by the guards.

And this observation tower
had blinds in it -

venetian blinds, as it happens -

so the guards could watch
the prisoners,

but the prisoners could never be
sure

if they were being watched or not.

It's a very sinister idea.

What Bentham was trying to engineer
with his Rococo panopticon

was a situation in which
the prisoners controlled themselves.

In their imaginations, they always
believed they were being watched,

so they could never feel...

unwatched.

And, of course, Bentham was right,

the modern world is being invented
here,

and its sophisticated
surveillance.

With the CCTV camera, the building
doesn't have to be round any more.

But the panopticon's big idea,

that the few can spy on the many,
has survived.

that the few can spy on the many,
has survived.

Once he'd invented his panopticon,

Bentham wanted to expand its use.

Hospitals could be based
on this model, he said,

mad houses,

and even schools.

So, as the Rococo slipped
ever deeper

into the blackness
of its own ending,

the craziness of Jeremy Bentham's
daft ideas

ceased slowly to appear so crazy...

..and began to look more and more
like the norm.

When the Rococo uncorked
the inner man

and pushed him out
onto art's stage,

it made public bits of the mind

that had previously remained
private.

This is Vienna,

where Sigmund Freud
would later tunnel so invasively

into the human psyche.

What, I wonder,
would Freud have made

of the Rococo mindset
that produced these?

These were made by the Viennese
sculptor

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

And I know this is the Rococo

and that all sorts of private fears
and desires

came bubbling up from the inner man,

but still...they're particularly
creepy, aren't they?

Born in the German Alps in 1736,

Messerschmidt began his career

as a conventional sculptor
working for the Viennese court.

Here's his portrait
of the Emperor Francis I.

And here's the Empress,
Maria Theresa.

Competent?

Yes.

Special?

No.

So, it was all going swimmingly,

he had a prestigious position
at the court...

when suddenly something went wrong.

In about 1770, Messerschmidt began
having hallucinations

and bouts of paranoia,

and for no discernible reason,

he began making these.

In 1774, he applied for
a professor's job

at the Vienna Academy Of Art

and was turned down.

Messerschmidt, they said,

was suffering from confusion
in the head.

So he left for Pressburg -

nowadays called Bratislava -

and for the final ten years
of his life,

these were all he did.

He called them his Character Heads.

Some were sculpted from marble,

others cast from lead.

They are basically self-portraits,

each one featuring
a different grimace,

in what Messerschmidt claimed
was a full catalogue

of the canonical grimaces
of the human face.

In 1781, a German writer
called Friedrich Nicolai

visited Messerschmidt
in his studio.

It's the only eyewitness account
of him there is.

And Messerschmidt explained
to Nicolai

that he was suffering
from intense pains in his abdomen.

The illness has since been
diagnosed as Crohn's disease.

And to relieve these sharp pains,

Messerschmidt would pinch himself
hard in the stomach,

and then he'd record the expression
on his face

in these extraordinary heads.

There was more.

Scattered about the studio
were bits and pieces

of occult imagery
and books on magic.

Messerschmidt told Nicolai
he was a follower

of Hermes Trismegistus,
the ancient occult god,

whose name has given us
the modern adjective "hermetic".

According to Hermes Trismegistus,

our duty on earth is to pursue
a universal balance.

"As above, so below"
was his doctrine.

Unfortunately,
Messerschmidt's sculptures

had angered
the Spirit of Proportion,

an ancient being
who protected these occult secrets,

and so angry was the Spirit
of Proportion with Messerschmidt

for making these
that he began visiting him at night

and subjecting him
to terrible tortures.

This particular head -
The Beak, it's called -

is a record of
one of these ghastly nights

and of what happened in the mind
of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt,

when the Spirit of Proportion
commenced his torture.

Only the Rococo
could have come up with

an artistic storyline like this one.

That craze for wearing masks
and costumes

that we saw in Longhi's paintings -

swapping identities,
pretending you're someone else -

that wasn't just a Venetian craze.

It caught on all over the Rococo
world,

particularly in France.

You'll remember in the last film

how we admired the art
of Antoine Watteau

and his dreamy "fete galante".

All those mysterious couples

flirting,

strolling,

searching for love.

Who are they?

And why are they dressed like that?

You should recognise him -
he's Harlequin -

and he appears
in lots of Watteau paintings.

And so does he - Pierrot.

And they are all characters
from the commedia dell'arte.

The commedia dell'arte
was a type of travelling theatre

originally from Italy,

which toured Rococo Europe

mounting spontaneous,
on-the-spot entertainments.

They'd turn up at your village
and put on a show.

Like fairs today. Or the circus.

And the main characters were always
the same - Harlequin, Pierrot -

but the stories were constantly
changing,

improvised specially for the day.

The usual explanation for the
presence

of these commedia dell'arte
characters in Watteau's art

is that they're part of the Rococo's
escape from reality,

a symbolic blurring

of the divide between real life
and the theatre.

There's definitely some of that
going on.

Watteau's art raises
intriguing questions

about the nature of reality
and all that.

But I think the reason
why the people in his pictures

are wearing all these mixed-up
costumes is much simpler -

they're attending
a fancy-dress ball.

Masquerades were all the rage
in Rococo France.

They were notoriously decadent,

full of the flirtation and intrigue.

And the most popular costumes
to wear at a masquerade,

the ones you could rent most easily
off the shelf,

were the commedia dell'arte costumes

which everyone knew and recognised.

If you were going to a fancy-dress
ball in the Rococo era,

you hired a commedia dell'arte
costume.

And they were still popular
a few centuries later.

As Bertie Wooster puts it in
Right Ho, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse,

"For costume parties,

"every well-bred Englishman
dresses as Pierrot."

"every well-bred Englishman
dresses as Pierrot."

One Watteau painting in particular -
his masterpiece, I think -

pokes about so interestingly

in the deeper meanings
of this Rococo identity swapping.

A gangly young man
in a Pierrot costume

stands before us looking nervous.

The costume doesn't fit properly.

It's too big for him,

like an off-the-peg morning suit

hired cheaply for a wedding.

In commedia dell'arte shows,
Pierrot, the sad clown,

is always chasing
after the beautiful Columbine,

but she prefers
the dashing Harlequin.

You know how women always
go for the bad boys.

So she rejects poor Pierrot,

over and over and over again.

Unlucky in love,

unlucky in everything,

Watteau's Pierrot is so palpably
human and vulnerable.

Yes, he's had a go at being someone
else in his ill-fitting costume,

but he's not very good at it,
is he?

This isn't humanity disguised,

it's humanity revealed.

What we've got here - and this is
so brilliant - is a painter

who's using costumes
not to escape reality,

but to confront it.

These days, the sad clown

has become a bit of a cliche,

but the Rococo invented him,

and Watteau's Pierrot
was the first and greatest of them.

OWL HOOTS

So it was all getting darker.

All over Europe,
the naysayers were taking over art,

dredging up the black stuff
from their imaginations.

ANIMAL HOWLS

And the loudest noes
could be heard in Spain,

when the incomparable Goya turned up

on the front line of art.

Every now and then
an artist comes along

who doesn't just do things
differently

but actually tears up the rulebook,

reinvents what art can
and should do.

Goya was one of those.

His first notable successes in art,

were the Rococo tapestries
he designed

for the royal court in Madrid.

They are supposed to be jolly
and sweet

in a typical Rococo fashion,

and some of them are,

but others...aren't.

The tapestry designs brought
Goya to the attention

The tapestry designs brought
Goya to the attention

of the Spanish royal family

and, as with most royal families,

they were hungry
for artistic immortality.

And so, foolishly - very foolishly -

they invited Goya
to paint their portraits.

The result was a display
of royal mockery

on a scale unimaginable
in any other epoch.

Only at the tail-end of the Rococo

could Goya have got away

with this damning portrayal
of Charles IV and his family

with its startling determination
to tell it like it is.

And just look what he made
of the next king in the line,

Ferdinand VII -
the ugliest king in art.

The Desperate Dan chin,

the half-formed mouth,

the wolverine sideburns...

If this were YOUR king,
you'd want a republic, wouldn't you?

Goya was born
without the flattery gene.

He was incapable of diplomacy,

and when he looked
at the world around him

and saw stupidity, evil, darkness,

he just couldn't help himself -

he had to point it out to us.

In his private paintings,

In his private paintings,

the ones he made for himself,

it all comes tumbling out.

Here is the Casa De Locos -
The Madhouse -

a terrifying stone jail
where the crazies have taken over,

and all manner
of unmentionable acts

are performed in the dark.

Here's the Inquisition.

Come to church to judge the dunces

and then to torture them.

And here's a procession of
penitents in Holy Week

who don't need the Inquisition
to torture them

because they're so keen
to torture themselves.

That's Goya there, asleep.

Slumped over his desk with all these
monsters pouring out of his head.

"The sleep of reason
produces monsters"

is written on the desk.

This was going to be the title plate

of the Rococo's most inventive
and brilliant torrent of darkness -

the great suite of etchings
known as Goya's Caprichos.

The original copper plates
from which these etchings were made

are now are found in the Academy
of San Fernando in Madrid.

If you get a chance to see them,
take it,

because they bring you
so close to Goya.

The Caprichos are always exciting,

but they're particularly exciting

when you press your nose
against them

and savour the beautiful scratchings
of Goya's burin.

This is graphic art
of spectacular freedom and wildness.

In this dark cascade
of 80 scabrous images,

describing the horrors of the world
around him,

Goya poured out
all his disappointment,

his hatred,

his fear.

Who invented the graphic novel?

Goya.

Who invented Frankenstein's monster?

Goya.

Who invented zombies?

Goya.

Who invented scarecrows?

Horror movies?

And even Harry Potter?

Goya!

Pretty much every contemporary
darkness you can name

is prefigured in the Caprichos.

They're astonishingly prescient,

and Goya knew all this
about the monsters

produced by the sleep of reason

because they were his monsters, too.

Under the strain
of all this brilliant invention,

his remarkable mind began to buckle.

First, he started going deaf,

then the panic attacks began.

Soon his own private horror

climaxed in a nervous breakdown.

On the walls of his house
outside Madrid

he began painting
his famous black paintings

and surrounding himself
with their horror.

The witches and monsters
were no longer a dream.

They were there -

moved into his house
and living on his walls.

In Venice as well, events have
now lurched into blackness.

In 1796, Napoleon invaded Italy

and quickly conquered
the Serenissima.

The Venetian Republic which had
lasted for 1,000 years

was abruptly terminated.

Napoleon carted off some of Venice's
greatest art treasures to Paris

as war booty.

1,000 years of history snuffed out
just like that.

So, for politics,
these were terrible times.

But for art,

they were really interesting!

This is the Ca Rezzonico,

Venice's official museum
of the 18th century.

And those are
the only two Canalettos in Venice.

Grim ones from his early days.

But that's not what we're here for.

But that's not what we're here for.

We're here...for this!

Now, that is a strange fresco,
right?

It was painted by Domenico Tiepolo

son of the great Giambattista.

If you remember in film one,

there was that magnificent staircase
in Wurzburg,

painted by Tiepolo Senior.

And remember the two portraits
in the corner?

Giambattista Tiepolo on the left,

and on the right, his son Domenico,
who assisted him.

and on the right, his son Domenico,
who assisted him.

Tiepolo Junior - Domenico Tiepolo -

was a really interesting painter
too.

But while his father was alive,

no-one was going to notice him.

Poor Domenico was fated
to spend most of his career

in his father's shadow.

It was only when Tiepolo Senior
died, in 1770,

that Domenico came into his own.

These strange frescoes were painted
for the Tiepolo family house,

the Villa Zianigo, on the mainland.

And they were done
for his own amusement, privately.

And that's what makes them
so telling.

This one here
was in the entrance hall.

Imagine, you walk
into the Tiepolo family house

and all these people turn
their back on you.

Why?

Because they'd prefer to look
at the magic lantern show

taking place in the background.

In Napoleon's Venice, amusement
was what the crowd craved,

not art.

So that was the entrance hall.

But look what Tiepolo Junior painted
at the back of the house.

A room full of Pulcinella.

Pulcinella was another character
in the commedia dell'arte.

A hunchback with a big nose,
whose deceitfulness was legendary.

This has to be one of the most
inventive and outrageous

fresco cycles
in the whole of Italian art.

All these Pulchinellas
haven't just visited the room,

they've overrun it.

They're like a troop of monkeys
in a zoo.

And I think that's what
they're actually meant to be -

human monkeys clambering
all over the modern world.

Ugly, itchy and ridiculous.

Pulcinella,
the lecherous Venetian scoundrel,

has taken over the fresco spaces

formerly occupied
by gods and heroes.

Where once this ceiling would have
shown Apollo riding his chariot,

or Jesus ascending to Heaven,

there's now a circus show.

With a bunch of Pulcinellas
clambering along a tightrope.

Welcome, says Domenico Tiepolo,
to the modern world.

You know, Pulcinella here,
the ugly Rococo hunchback,

was the model for Punch
in the Punch and Judy shows

you still see at the seaside.

And he's always hitting Judy
over the head.

Just like that.

And that's the thing
about the Rococo,

it never really went away.

It's us in our early form.

In film one, we saw a society
that was always going on holiday.

In film two, celebrity and pleasure
became the order of the day.

And now, in film three,
the clowns have taken over

and nothing's serious any more.

The Rococo wasn't just
a great creative era,

it was a great creative prediction.