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The Valley of the Dordogne seems like a good place for an Englishman
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to think about France.
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A country I've loved since I first came here as a teenager
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to learn the language.
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This is the very heart of la France profonde...
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..and how profoundly peaceful it seems, with its fat rivers,
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stately chateaux, neat vineyards.
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On a sunny day it's easy to believe that this place, this nation,
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has been and always will be an earthly paradise.
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But elsewhere, things are not so peaceful.
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Beneath the placid surface lies a republic in the throes of violent change.
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Dogged by economic stagnation and unemployment.
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Assailed by terrorism.
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Failing the brave promise of liberty, equality,
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fraternity for all its citizens.
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MUSIC PLAYS
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In the suburb of St Denis, on the northern outskirts of Paris,
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you can see the truly varied faces of this modern nation.
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But it's a reality many in France refused to accept.
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There are people who say that this place doesn't even deserve to be
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considered as part of France.
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But of course they're wrong.
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The truth is that France has never been just one thing.
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Proof of that lies at the heart of this ancient marketplace,
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in a building that's nothing less than the French equivalent of
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Westminster Abbey.
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The Basilica of St Denis.
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Final resting place of every French king and queen, bar three,
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stretching back over 1500 years.
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Don't be fooled by the tranquillity of this Gothic crypt into thinking
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that the history laid out here is one of serene continuity,
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or some ideal of pure Frenchness.
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Just like the market traders outside,
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these long dead rulers were a mixed bunch.
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Flemish, German, Italian, even English lie alongside the French.
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Like every great country, France has always been a mongrel nation...
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..and also a nation shaped by violence.
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There's no better example of than poor Marie Antoinette.
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Born in Austria, she became queen to Louis XVI,
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then lost her head to the French Revolution.
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Her remains, like his, were flung into an unmarked grave,
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only to be exhumed and given the dignity of royal burial some
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30 years later.
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This monument by the sculptor, Edme Gaulle, marks the spot,
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its sugar-coated surface applied to an end that was very bitter indeed.
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Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as they say here.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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And as the story of Gaulle's monument proves,
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French history has certainly been subject to violent change.
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And this, too, is the story of the art of France.
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A struggle between revolution and tradition, freedom and constraint,
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rulers and a people who didn't always want to be ruled.
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And out of that tension between the change and the meme chose would be
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born some of the greatest art the world has ever seen.
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Echoes of revolution linger in the Basilica of St Denis.
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And I don't mean the one that did for Marie Antoinette.
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Almost 1000 years ago, another revolution took place here.
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The first revolution in French art.
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The invention of Gothic architecture.
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CHOIR SINGS
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The Gothic style transformed the churches and cathedrals of the
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Western world and it all began here.
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St Denis was the world's very first Gothic cathedral.
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It was the brainchild of a man called Abbe Suger,
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who also wrote about it, describing the process by which the
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original church was transformed into this magnificent cathedral.
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Beginning in the year 1137, St Denis, already by then 500 years old,
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suddenly emerged from its Romanesque chrysalis.
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Spurred on by the visionary and ambitious Suger,
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St Denis' master masons borrowed from Islamic architecture,
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boldly synthesising Eastern ideas about structure, volume and form,
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with native innovations from Normandy and Burgundy.
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So, yes, Gothic was French, but spoken, you might say,
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with an Arab accent.
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And with what spectacular results.
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Round arches were replaced by pointed ribbed arches that sprang
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from clustered columns, drawing the eye up to vaulted ceilings high above.
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Massive walls, dark and defensive,
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were opened up to let the sacred light come flooding in.
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Suger also offered a beautiful justification for the whole project.
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A response to those who said he'd spent too much money.
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"The dull mind rises to truth through material things."
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The transformation of St Denis proved to be enormously influential.
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Within the space of a generation, the French style, as it was called,
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was sprouting up everywhere, in ever more complex, ambitious forms.
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And, for me, the most sublime expression of the Gothic spirit,
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ascending upwards perhaps to truth, certainly to beauty,
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is a jewel-like building in the heart of Paris.
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The Sainte-Chapelle.
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MUSIC PLAYS
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What a magical, beguiling space this is.
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It's the function of architecture in here to abolish itself,
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to efface itself, so you're unaware of structure.
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You experience the entire space in terms of light and colour.
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It's almost like a gigantic light box.
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In fact, it makes more sense to think of this place as a box
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than to think of it as a building because it was actually designed to
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house one particular thing.
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The most precious thing in the entire world.
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In 1238, King Louis IX of France, Saint Louis as he became known,
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acquired, at huge expense, nothing less than the crown of thorns.
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The holiest relic in all of Christendom.
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The Sainte-Chapelle was built in flamboyant Gothic style
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to house the precious relic.
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A decade later, in 1248, dressed as a penitent, barefoot,
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Louis himself carried the crown of thorns into the Sainte-Chapelle,
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and placed it on the altar.
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Now, for Louis it was a gesture of huge significance.
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Spiritual and also political.
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Because, by acquiring the most holy object in the universe,
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he had, by implication, by placing it here in Paris, here in France,
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he had made France the very centre of the world.
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But what was daily life like in France in the Middle Ages?
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And why did the Gothic mind yearn to rise above the world of material things?
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In the Chateau of Chantilly, 30 miles north of Paris,
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is a medieval treasure of another kind,
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and it suggests some answers to those questions.
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The Tres Riches Heures is a prayer book,
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created in the early 15th century by Flemish artists,
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the Limbourg brothers, for a great French nobleman, the Duc de Berry.
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It begins with a celebrated sequence showing the months of the
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year, which, even in facsimile,
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reveal a breathtaking mastery of the medieval illuminator's art.
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One of the distinguishing features of these illustrations of the months
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is the sense that they gave one of a perfectly ordered world.
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Labour is depicted as a graceful, easeful, almost effortless activity.
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The peasants might be barefoot but they seem almost to dance as they
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scythe, as they rake, and as they gather the hay into these...
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..very neat little mounds.
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Here we are in September.
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It's one of my favourites.
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In the very middle of the scene, what do we see?
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This figure actually bares his arse inadvertently while picking grapes.
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And I think it's rather like some of the grotesques that you find in
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Gothic cathedrals. A little detail that's meant to raise a smile.
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The months end with this really extraordinary image of December.
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It's a boar hunt.
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It's a scene of quite considerable savagery.
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This pack of dogs tearing at the flesh of the boar.
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The dog handler can't actually tear the animal off the beast.
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I think it's an image that reminds us that throughout this period
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that death was, for most people, the most overwhelming reality of all.
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In this period, substantial chunks of what we now think of as France
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were claimed by others.
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The Burgundians, the Flemish and the Goddams, the foul-mouthed English,
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who fought a hundred-year war to stake their claim.
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And riding alongside war were death's other trusty allies,
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Pestilence and Famine.
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And so, while death triumphed, France remained a work in progress,
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politically fractured, culturally uncertain.
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One of the great French myths, repeated through the centuries,
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is the idea that France has somehow always been at the very centre of
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human civilisation.
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But when it comes to art, that's really not quite true,
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because between 1450 and the beginnings of the 17th century,
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France produced not one single painter of international fame.
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In fact, during the Renaissance, if the French were famous for anything,
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it was for destroying art rather than creating it.
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In the 1490s, the troops of Louis XII invaded Milan and with
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their bows and arrows, shot to pieces Leonardo da Vinci's great
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model for what was to have been the largest equestrian sculpture in the world.
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It's not quite true to say the French made no contribution to
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Renaissance art and architecture.
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This rare but beautifully elegant courtyard,
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with its bas-relief sculptures by John Goujon is proof of that.
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But its very rarity does tell a story.
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So, too, the fact that Francois premier, Francis I,
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the French king who did more than any other to bring the Renaissance
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to France, did so by importing Italian artists,
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notably Leonardo himself.
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Perhaps a form of consolation for having destroyed that great statue.
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The fact remains, that during the Renaissance,
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France was not the leader, it was the follower.
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But not every Renaissance man in France was labelled,
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"Made in Italy".
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- So have you got the keys?
- Yes.
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One of the greatest thinkers and writers of the era,
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indeed of all time, was born and lived for most of his life in a
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remote chateau in south-west France.
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He developed new ways of thinking and seeing that would transform the
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literature and art, not just of France, but of the Western world.
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His name was Michel de Montaigne,
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and he was born at the chateau of Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne in 1533.
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A true child of the Renaissance,
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he was brought up to speak Latin as his mother tongue.
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Trained in the law and active in the court rooms and Parliament of
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Bordeaux, he retired at 38, weary, he tells us,
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of the court and public duties.
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He retreated here, to a simple tower on his family estate,
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where he surrounded himself with the works of his beloved classical authors.
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Wow! Merci.
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Thank you.
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I've read about this sky with its stars.
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Montaigne's bedroom was just above here and he used to joke,
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I'm one of the few people in the world who actually sleeps above the sky!
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France at the time was racked by religious wars with thousands of
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Protestants massacred by Catholic mobs in Paris and elsewhere on
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Saint Bartholomew's day.
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Montaigne, himself a Catholic,
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practised a philosophy of tolerance and moderation.
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From his tower, he honoured the open mind and the right of every
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individual to challenge man-made authority.
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In a nutshell, he was France's first great freethinker.
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The French intellectual tradition is often all about order, rules,
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the system. But Montaigne, who's at the start of it all, well,
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he's the great exception to the rule.
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He's all about disorder, irregularity.
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You could even compare his thought to this uneven,
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winding stone staircase.
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He himself said,
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"I'm never quite sure where my thoughts are going to take me.
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"All I can do is follow them."
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BIRDS CAW
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This feels a bit like a bird's nest up here.
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And the ceiling's wonderful.
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Montaigne's study is a miraculous survival from a vanished world,
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its beams inscribed with his favourite sayings
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from the Bible but, above all, from the stoic writers of the classical age.
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Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto.
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I am a man and nothing human is alien to me.
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And it was from these sources that he would create a new kind of deeply
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personal writing, the essay, a joyful exploration of the self.
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Montaigne's fame rests on his essays.
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There are about 100 of them and, depending on the edition,
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they fill something like ten volumes with his wonderfully rambling
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diverse thoughts.
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He writes about friendship, he writes about loyalty,
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he writes an essay on thumbs, he writes about Siamese twins.
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But what runs throughout all of them, I think,
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is a tremendous levelling ambition.
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He wants us to recognise our common humanity but he also wants us to
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recognise how frail our humanity is.
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Whatever these futilities of mine may be, I have no intention of
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hiding them any more than I would a bald and grizzled
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portrait of myself.
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These are my humours, my opinions, things which I believe,
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not things to be believed.
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My aim is to reveal myself, which may well be different tomorrow.
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He proposed, I think, a new sense of identity for his period...
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..a profoundly uncertain sense of self.
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"Que sais-je?" he said.
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What do I know?
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It's a concept of self that has a huge influence on all of European
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civilisation. Shakespeare almost certainly read Montaigne.
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Hard to imagine Hamlet without Montaigne.
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Hard to imagine Rembrandt's self portraits in which he appears happy,
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glad, sad, old, young, bold, timid.
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Hard to imagine all that without Montaigne.
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But in France...
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..the response to him, I think, above all, is one of profound unease.
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It's as if Montaigne, with his que sais-je? What do I know?
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Lays down a huge challenge that...
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..those who rule France and those who would rule France,
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spend much of the next three centuries attempting to answer.
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MUSIC PLAYS
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Montaigne brandished his philosopher's sense of uncertainty
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with exuberance and wit, but he was followed by a pessimistic
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and melancholic generation for whom doubt was no laughing matter
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but a state of mind made permanent by the Wars of religion and dynastic
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rivalry that raged across France and Europe.
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The 30 Years War was documented by Jacques Callot in a searing
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portfolio of engravings entitled The Miseries And Misfortunes Of War,
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nearly three centuries before Goya and just as harrowing.
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Strange fruit dangled from the lynching tree,
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a snapshot vision of a single atrocity which Callot and his
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audience knew was just part of a far greater human catastrophe.
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Some 8 million dead by war's end, a quarter of Europe's total population.
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At times like these, stoicism and endurance seemed the only answer,
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exemplified in Louis Le Nain's painting of a peasant family.
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They're surrounded by shadows so deep it looks like darkness made visible.
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And what's in that darkness?
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Perhaps the memories of all those lost to war.
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But the master painter of these dark times was surely this man, Nicolas Poussin.
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Born to a family of impoverished nobility,
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he spent nearly all of his career away from France in Rome.
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He studied the Renaissance masters.
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He read the same classical authors that had beguiled Montaigne.
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And he struggled to make sense in pictures rather than words of a
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disordered world.
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Poussin was the first French painter fully to take
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possession of the language of the Italian Renaissance.
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In standing here in this room, surrounded by his works,
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I feel almost as if I am inside Poussin's brain.
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And here, you can feel what he has made of the Renaissance,
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how he's made that language almost like a language of dream so that he
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can use it to reflect on what's getting under his skin.
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He's thinking about Diogenes, the Stoics,
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the total renunciation of worldly possessions, a man who's decided
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that even a simple drinking bowl is too much to own.
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He's thinking about violence, the Romans abducting the Sabine women,
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about how every great civilisation is founded on a crime.
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I think it was Poussin's achievement, if you like,
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to turn painting into a form of essay, like the essays of Montaigne,
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a way of reflecting on the nature and meaning of life.
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And that's why I've chosen this picture...
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..as perhaps the ultimate expression of that impulse.
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This is Arcadia.
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A group of shepherds and a young lady in classical costume,
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almost a living statue, have gathered in this earthly paradise
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around a tomb on which it is inscribed the phrase,
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Et in Arcadia ego.
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I, too, am in Paradise.
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I, meaning death.
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This shepherd notes the inscription...
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..but he, the figure that punctuates the composition and gives it its
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emotional weight, he is plunged into deep, deep sadness.
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"Que sais-je?" Montaigne had asked. What do I know?
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And I think it's as if Poussin is asking himself the same question,
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and he says to himself, "Well, I only know one thing,
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"which is that we're all going to die."
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Death, wars, division.
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Thunderclouds gathering over France.
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But one man believed that he could dispel the clouds,
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banish doubt and uncertainty,
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bend history to his will and make France the centre of the world.
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Not symbolically, as Louis IX had done at Sainte-Chapelle,
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but in actual fact.
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His name, Louis XIV.
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The Sun King.
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And this is where he lived, in a palace fit for a Sun King,
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the largest palace ever created by a European monarch.
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Versailles.
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MUSIC PLAYS
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Versailles is the grandest grande projet ever conceived by the
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French state, whether Royal or Republican.
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A former hunting lodge, its transformation into this powerhouse
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of a Palace began in 1661 when the 23-year-old Louis,
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after years of dutiful submission to his councillors and advisers,
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suddenly and unexpectedly dismissed the lot of them and assumed direct
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personal command of France.
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Now, Louis may never have said the words most famously attributed to him,
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L'etat c'est moi, I am the state,
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but then again, he didn't really need to.
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Versailles said them for him.
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MUSIC PLAYS
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There's something almost medieval about Versailles and its
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determination to express absolute truth through bricks and mortar.
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But, of course, there's a huge difference between this palace and
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the great cathedrals of the Gothic past.
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They existed to include everyone, to include the masses.
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But Louis XIV had contempt for the common people.
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It was even forbidden for an ordinary person, a servant,
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to die at Versailles.
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They had to be taken elsewhere to expire otherwise they might pollute
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the perfection of this royal realm.
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In 1682, Louis moved his court to Versailles and 2,000 aristocrats
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anxiously followed, knowing that opportunity and security depended on
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being constantly under the eye of the King.
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His courtiers were trapped like birds in a gilded cage.
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Even in the celebrated palace gardens,
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designed for Louis by Andre Le Notre,
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the themes of surveillance and control were hard to miss.
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The endless vistas radiating out from the palace were, in effect,
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sight lines for the eye of the King.
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Like God, Louis saw everything.
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Not everyone was impressed by Versailles.
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In 1698, an English diplomat called Matthew Prior came here
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and clearly hated the place.
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"The King's house at Versailles," he wrote,
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"is the foolishest in the world.
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"He's strutting in every panel,
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"galloping over one's head in every ceiling and, if he turns to spit,
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"he must see himself or his vice regent, the son."
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But it won't quite do to dismiss all this as folly and tyrannical vanity.
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The truth is that the great project of Versailles,
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which was itself part of the even greater project of rebuilding France
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itself, was always grounded in cool,
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hard logic and a firm grasp of political and economic realities.
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As the Galerie des Glaces, or hall of mirrors at Versailles shows,
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there's always more going on than meets the eye in the
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Palace of the Sun King.
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When this room was begun in 1668, mirrored glass was one of the most
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expensive man-made commodities in the world and could only be bought
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in Venice, which jealously guarded the secrets of its making.
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Louis and his finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, broke that monopoly.
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They lured a group of Venetian mirror makers to France to establish
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a new state financed venture, the Manufacture Royale Des Glaces.
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Venetian assassins were dispatched to kill the defectors but to no avail.
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Louis got his room of many reflections and France acquired a
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new lucrative state owned enterprise.
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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the canniest of them all?
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Swathed in silk and lace and acres of fleur de lis ermine,
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wearing shimmering hose tights and silver buckled shoes with their talon rouge,
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red heels reserved exclusively for the aristocracy.
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This is Louis XIV as realised by his court portraitist,
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Hyacinthe Rigaud.
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It's a painting that proclaims not merely Louis's magnificence but the
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sheer scale of his trade policies because every inch of these swirling,
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sumptuous fabrics was produced by one or other of the myriad new state
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enterprises Louis and his minister, Colbert, had set up.
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Protectionism, subsidies, loans, tax breaks,
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Colbert used them all to turn France into the world's leading producer of
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luxury goods.
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"Fashions were to France," he boasted, "what the mines of Peru were to Spain."
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So look again at Rigaud's portrait.
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A strutting peacock?
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Look into those eyes.
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This is a man in perfect control of himself and his world,
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a model king advertising brand France.
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Artists were an essential part of Louis' system.
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The Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, established in 1648,
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controlled commissions, policed production and enforced standards by
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the rigorous training of all would-be artists.
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This process, in which students are permitted to draw from the life,
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this was the final phase of an artist's education.
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Before this, the artist would spend perhaps a year drawing from drawings,
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then a year drawing from plaster casts and, only finally,
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only as the artist approached mastery,
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would they be allowed to draw the naked human form.
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All forms of creative activity was subject to rules during the reign of
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Louis XIV. Poets had to obey the rules of decorum.
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Playwrights had to obey the unities of time, place and action.
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But no-one had more rules to obey than the painter,
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who truly was the prisoner of a system.
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One of the principal designers of that system was Charles Le Brun,
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director of the academy, half artist, half bureaucrat.
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As artist, he designed Versailles' Hall of Mirrors.
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As bureaucrat, he set the standards at the academy,
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enforcing a strict hierarchy of genres, which placed his speciality,
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history painting, at the top.
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And he drilled into aspiring artists and colleagues alike,
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that when it came to art, the system ruled.
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But for Le Brun, the body was just the beginning.
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If you wanted to be able to create pictures that were absolutely,
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unambiguously clear in their statement of devotion to the ideals
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of king and state, you had to study the human face.
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And for Le Brun...
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..the secret was all in the eyebrows.
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Le Brun's theory, briefly stated, had to do with the pineal gland,
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which he believed, mistakenly, was placed directly between the eyes,
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as the focal point of all human emotions.
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The eyebrows, being closest to the gland, acted as a kind of seismograph.
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Their position indicating the degree and the type of emotion being felt.
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From wide-eyed admiration, to bug-eyed terror.
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The task of the artist was to master this repertoire of expressions.
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Thereby, creating works whose meaning could be read as easily as
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a piece of text.
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Here's a demonstration.
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Le Brun's gigantic picture of the family of the defeated Persian King
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Darius, prostrating themselves before the victorious Alexander the Great.
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For Alexander, read of course, Louis.
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And for the family of Darius, read the nation of France itself.
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From high to low, beholding the great conqueror, their leader,
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with a series of officially prescribed, precisely rendered expressions.
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Attention...
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..admiration with astonishment...
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..veneration.
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Because of their scale and intricacy,
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pictures like this became known as "grandes machines", great machines.
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But as Nicolas Milovanovic, Louvre curator and Le Brun expert explains,
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they're actually the result of a collaboration between Le Brun the
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painter, and Louis himself, the King.
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At that time, in the '60s,
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Louis XIV was fascinated by the figure of Alexander.
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Louis XIV wanted to be a new Alexander, and Le Brun understood that.
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So, that's the reason for...
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How did Le Brun go about inventing this idea of a painting?
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Because they're vast.
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You have to be in front of them to realise they are, you know,
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12 metres width, four metres high.
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So, you have to enter in the painting.
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You really are part of the battle, and that was the aim of Le Brun,
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to create a kind of, you know, cinema for us.
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That must have been a huge thrill, if one's trying to understand,
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from Louis XIV's perspective.
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Louis must have been bowled over by it.
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The moment when Le Brun was painting the first composition of the series,
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that's the family of Darius in front of Alexander,
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Louis XIV was coming to discuss it with Le Brun,
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and tell him what he will paint for tomorrow.
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So in a sense, Louis XIV is almost the director of the movie?
473
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:44,600
- Yeah, yeah.
- And Le Brun's the cinematographer.
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That's very right, what you say.
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The king was, you know, in the first place, the author, the subject,
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but also the author of the painting.
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Louis' systems, from art to manufacturing,
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transformed France into a European superpower.
479
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It had a population of 20 million, compared to England's eight.
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Government revenues were five times as large.
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It had a navy and an army that were the strongest in Europe.
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And it used them to project French power along its borders, and beyond.
483
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If Louis had an Achilles heel, it was his fondness for conquest.
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But even in matters of war, he planned everything meticulously.
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As you can see, in what may be the single most remarkable survival of
486
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:41,840
his rule, a collection of extraordinary but largely forgotten objects,
487
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:46,080
now to be found in the basement of the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lille.
488
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:54,720
They were all made for the king, these great tables.
489
00:38:54,720 --> 00:39:00,600
Each one is a town, a representation of a town, that he had fortified.
490
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,840
This is Ypres, this is Tournai.
491
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:09,800
There were originally 144 of these objects.
492
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:14,280
They occupied 8,000 square metres of the Louvre,
493
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:19,680
nearly a mile to walk past all of them.
494
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:21,880
And what they represented, I think, for Louis,
495
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:29,600
was a tangible demonstration of the extent to which he had expanded and
496
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:31,880
secured France's borders.
497
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:36,440
They also served a very practical purpose.
498
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:41,360
Because, when he came here, with his generals or his advisers,
499
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:42,960
he could plan strategy.
500
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:48,800
He could literally feel with his hand, the lie of the land.
501
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,240
And he could enjoy, as no-one else in the world could do,
502
00:39:52,240 --> 00:39:56,920
a bird's eye view of these strategically important cities.
503
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:02,640
I think the "plans-reliefs", as they are called, it's extraordinary,
504
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:06,080
goodness knows how many man-hours went into their creation.
505
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:11,600
I think what they represent is a making good of the promise that
506
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:15,760
Versailles, as it were, holds out.
507
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:21,400
That, yes, the king's eye stretches to the very end of the realm.
508
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:25,680
These plans-reliefs, they prove that that promise wasn't empty.
509
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:27,680
It was true.
510
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:29,760
Louis did see everything.
511
00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:37,960
Omniscient, and also immortal, or so it must have seemed.
512
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:41,880
For, while death carried off wives, mistresses, ministers, sons,
513
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:48,040
even grandsons, Louis lived on, indestructible as his bronze likeness.
514
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:52,720
But finally, in 1715, death caught up with him,
515
00:40:52,720 --> 00:40:55,440
after more than 70 years on the throne.
516
00:40:57,160 --> 00:40:59,480
He left a France politically powerful,
517
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:03,320
but virtually bankrupted by his appetite for war.
518
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:08,760
A society in which the ultra rich scorned the overtaxed poor,
519
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:12,360
whose stoicism, unlike Le Nain's peasant family,
520
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:14,000
couldn't be taken for granted.
521
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:20,080
So, what next?
522
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:23,600
In a fashionable Parisian picture shop,
523
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:28,600
the dead king's likeness is buried in the straw of a packing crate.
524
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:30,000
While on the other side,
525
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:34,240
an art lover genuflects before a very different style of painting.
526
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:39,960
The message, from Jean-Antoine Watteau, couldn't be clearer.
527
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:41,800
The times, they are a-changing.
528
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:52,240
Watteau's one of the most mysterious of French painters, and this picture,
529
00:41:52,240 --> 00:41:58,320
Pierrot, is perhaps his most enigmatic masterpiece of all.
530
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:00,240
What does it show us?
531
00:42:00,240 --> 00:42:04,320
The figure of a clown, dressed in white,
532
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:09,240
is stranded in a piece of landscape that might almost be a stage set.
533
00:42:09,240 --> 00:42:12,800
But, no play is taking place.
534
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:18,560
An expression of ineffable pathos on his face,
535
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:21,880
there's something more than slightly absurd about him.
536
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:29,160
You'd have a hard job matching this enigmatic expression to anything in
537
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:30,760
Le Brun's neat little system.
538
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:37,760
Watteau signals a return to Montaigne's elusive sense of humanity,
539
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:40,280
as something you can't just put in a box.
540
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,160
So, what does the picture mean?
541
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,600
Nobody knows for sure, and I can't pretend to say.
542
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:52,160
But I do think it's significant that it was painted just three years
543
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,240
after the death of Louis XIV.
544
00:42:55,240 --> 00:43:01,720
It's as if the great director of life in all of France,
545
00:43:01,720 --> 00:43:06,280
the great dictator, the great puppet master, well, he's gone.
546
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:12,000
And now, it's as if all of France is in his position.
547
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:15,240
They don't know what to do next.
548
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,320
Watteau did have one suggestion to make.
549
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:27,360
Escape.
550
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:31,880
The Embarkation to the Island of Cythera was his invitation to an
551
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:37,360
aristocracy exhausted by the Alexander the Greatism of Louis XIV.
552
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:41,560
A private world of gallantry, flirtation, passion.
553
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:44,160
"Make love," says Watteau, "not war."
554
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:48,440
And so, a new artistic style appeared,
555
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:52,680
born on the wings of plump, playful cherubs.
556
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:53,720
Rococo.
557
00:43:55,440 --> 00:44:00,800
One of the principal inventors of rococo style in painting was the
558
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:02,400
great Francois Boucher.
559
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:05,840
And this relatively modest picture,
560
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:12,200
which shows Diana accompanied by her attendants after the hunt, takes us,
561
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:14,000
I think, to the heart of that style.
562
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:15,560
The scale itself is significant.
563
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:20,000
This is a picture intended for domestic contemplation.
564
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:24,760
It's not meant to inspire you with political or moral virtue.
565
00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:26,440
It's meant to please you.
566
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:30,440
And yet, it's still within the tradition of French painting,
567
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:35,240
as it had been established by Le Brun back in the great days of Louis XIV.
568
00:44:35,240 --> 00:44:38,000
Boucher had been to Le Brun's French Academy.
569
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,360
Like Poussin, he had studied in Rome.
570
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:45,160
And, like those artists, he's working with the grand, allegorical,
571
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:47,440
mythological tradition of French painting.
572
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:55,240
But what he's emptied it of is any sense of political seriousness or
573
00:44:55,240 --> 00:44:57,080
moral intent. This is, if you like,
574
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:02,880
the perfect picture for an age dedicated to luxury,
575
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:05,360
libertinage and love.
576
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:12,720
Boucher's Diana was painted in 1745,
577
00:45:12,720 --> 00:45:16,320
the same year that another goddess of love made a conquest.
578
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:22,240
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, installed as Louis XV's maitresse-en-titre,
579
00:45:22,240 --> 00:45:23,440
or official mistress.
580
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,600
It was a role for which she'd been groomed from the age of nine,
581
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:32,080
and as Madame de Pompadour, she played it with style,
582
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,320
emerging as an influential patron of the arts,
583
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:37,600
Boucher was a particular favourite,
584
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:40,160
and shaping the taste of the rococo world.
585
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:44,440
And what taste it was.
586
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:49,000
As if all the pomp and circumstance of the great Palace of Versailles
587
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,840
had been distilled down into the sort of delicious plaything you
588
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:54,800
could just slip into your pocket.
589
00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:04,480
Now, I've kindly been allowed to open this display case,
590
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:09,640
which is a rather rare and wonderful opportunity to
591
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:13,200
get close to all the knick-knackery,
592
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:18,840
the personal possessions of the gilded rich of the Ancien Regime.
593
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:24,400
One of my favourite objects of all is this tiny little gun,
594
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:28,840
decorated in enamel and cloisonne, which was designed...
595
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,120
..to fire a little jet of perfume,
596
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:36,280
perhaps into the bodice of an aristocratic lady.
597
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:38,440
You can almost smell the decadence.
598
00:46:39,720 --> 00:46:43,240
And talking of liaisons dangereuses, look what we've got here.
599
00:46:43,240 --> 00:46:44,480
It's an etude du message,
600
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:49,080
the 18th century precursor, if you like, of the text.
601
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:52,480
You'd roll up your message, put it in a cylinder, hand it to your footman,
602
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:55,280
and he would take it to the object of your affections.
603
00:46:55,280 --> 00:47:00,680
It is, in effect, a kind of machine for arranging a liaison dangereux.
604
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:02,520
It's a wonderful display,
605
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:06,480
but you can see why there were those in France who thought that this was
606
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:08,960
MUSIC PLAYS
607
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:36,360
The most vocal critic of French high society at the time was the writer
608
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:37,520
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
609
00:47:37,520 --> 00:47:42,520
who railed against what he saw as the over sophistication,
610
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:47,440
the attachment to things of the French leisured classes.
611
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,960
Rousseau preferred nature to cities.
612
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,480
He made a cult of the child.
613
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:57,840
Every adult, he argued, was a once-innocent child who'd been
614
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:02,480
corrupted by his education and by false principles of belief.
615
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:10,320
He even went so far as to argue that civilisation itself was a retrograde force.
616
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:15,160
The more mankind moved away from their original, good,
617
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,000
primitive state,
618
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:21,080
the more they were drawn into temptation and into decadence.
619
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:24,400
At the centre of his thought,
620
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:29,360
Rousseau placed the figure of the noble savage.
621
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,160
But that begged a question,
622
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:36,680
who was truly noble, and who was truly savage?
623
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,840
And, who was to tell the difference?
624
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:42,240
MUSIC PLAYS
625
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:51,400
For critics of the status quo,
626
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,480
savage, noble or somewhere in between,
627
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,800
this was their secret weapon.
628
00:48:56,800 --> 00:49:01,080
The multi-volume Encyclopedie, the Encyclopaedia,
629
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:06,560
published over a 20-year period between 1752 and 1772,
630
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:11,160
in spite of fierce opposition from censors, critics and the church.
631
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:16,800
Bruno Blasselle, director of the Arsenal Library in Paris,
632
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:18,840
is showing me a precious first edition.
633
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:25,760
Contributors to the Encyclopaedia included Rousseau, Voltaire,
634
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:28,000
and editor in chief, Denis Diderot.
635
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:35,280
Contentious, sometimes cantankerous voices, they were united in one thing.
636
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:38,160
Antagonism towards established authority.
637
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:43,560
This was the moment when Michel de Montaigne's
638
00:49:43,560 --> 00:49:46,000
big ideas came home to roost.
639
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:53,080
But now, it wasn't just one solitary freethinker in his birds nest study.
640
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:54,560
It was a whole flock of them.
641
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:59,520
So, the three essential faculties of the civilised man necessary for the
642
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:01,960
advancement of human knowledge are...
643
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:05,760
Memory, reason and imagination.
644
00:50:35,240 --> 00:50:39,920
Along with the mini essays of the written text came illustrations.
645
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,320
More than 4,000 in all.
646
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:46,840
The French Enlightenment's, Tres Riches.
647
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:49,840
This extraordinary image.
648
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:51,000
Goodness me.
649
00:50:59,960 --> 00:51:01,960
They're so beautiful. Beautiful.
650
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:25,160
After 20 years of what he called untiring labour on the Encyclopaedia,
651
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:27,520
Diderot was ready for a change.
652
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:32,000
He took the essay, Montaigne's invention, into new territory.
653
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:33,040
My territory.
654
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:35,080
Art criticism.
655
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,480
Here you are. Bonjour, Monsieur Diderot.
656
00:51:40,480 --> 00:51:43,240
This is one of my favourite paintings in the Louvre.
657
00:51:43,240 --> 00:51:45,960
It's by Louis-Michel van Loo,
658
00:51:45,960 --> 00:51:48,040
an otherwise undistinguished portrait painter.
659
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:53,040
But here, he has risen to heights far above his normal level.
660
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:57,840
I think stimulated by the personality of Denis Diderot.
661
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:00,480
Here he is, wonderfully informal.
662
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,000
His shirt's unbuttoned at the collar.
663
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:06,080
He's at his writing desk, in full flow.
664
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:10,760
The pen, you can almost hear it scratching away at the paper.
665
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,640
He's famous, world-famous, as the driving force behind the Encyclopaedia.
666
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:16,760
But as far as he was concerned,
667
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,840
his greatest achievement was his art criticism.
668
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:27,640
It was during the reign of Louis XV that art in France finally found a
669
00:52:27,640 --> 00:52:29,160
general public.
670
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:33,720
The Academy had been exhibiting the work of its members since 1667,
671
00:52:33,720 --> 00:52:38,960
but in 1737, the doors of the Salon held annually at the Louvre were
672
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:42,040
thrown open, and the crowds poured in.
673
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:46,800
Diderot was among them, reviewing the show for a philosophical and
674
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:48,040
cultural newsletter,
675
00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:52,680
in which he used art as a stick with which to beat the establishment.
676
00:52:52,680 --> 00:52:57,920
Daring to think the unthinkable, to question the very nature of society.
677
00:52:59,880 --> 00:53:02,720
In the course of writing these reviews,
678
00:53:02,720 --> 00:53:10,320
he turned art criticism very subtly into a form of social criticism.
679
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:14,440
The state of art, he equated with the state of France.
680
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:18,720
So, for example, when he writes about his bete noire Boucher,
681
00:53:18,720 --> 00:53:24,960
with his unbridled eroticism, the vast expanses of powdered flesh,
682
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:30,880
so lewdly displayed on his canvases, Diderot is in effect criticising,
683
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:34,960
lashing out at the decadence of the entire Ancien Regime.
684
00:53:36,440 --> 00:53:42,320
Who does he hold up, by contrast, with Boucher?
685
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:44,120
Who's the hero, if Boucher's the villain?
686
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:48,400
Well, surprisingly enough, and totally at variance with the
687
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:51,560
established academic hierarchy of genres,
688
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:55,520
which placed history painting at the top and still life at the bottom,
689
00:53:55,520 --> 00:54:01,520
Diderot chose as his hero a painter of eggs, glasses of water,
690
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:05,200
copper pots, pans,
691
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:10,200
uneasily poised knives on table tops.
692
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:12,280
He chose a painter called Chardin.
693
00:54:14,320 --> 00:54:16,520
MUSIC PLAYS
694
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:44,120
Chardin was a modest servant of the academy, he was its treasurer.
695
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:46,560
He was in charge of hanging the annual Salon,
696
00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:51,680
all the while working in what were considered to be the lower reaches
697
00:54:51,680 --> 00:54:55,040
of art, genre painting and still life.
698
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:59,040
Yet, for my money, he's one of the greatest, one of the most significant,
699
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:02,920
one of the most influential French painters who ever lived.
700
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:09,920
He established one of the great templates of French art,
701
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:15,160
the things that we see in a room and on the table, we paint these things,
702
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:20,000
and in so doing, we tell you what we think the world means.
703
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,320
Cezanne would follow Chardin in this respect.
704
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:24,520
All of Cubism, you could say,
705
00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:30,080
with its table top concatenations of objects, derives from Chardin.
706
00:55:30,080 --> 00:55:32,960
And he himself, I think,
707
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:38,600
knew very well that he wasn't just painting what things looked like.
708
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:43,240
He was trying to paint what the world meant to him.
709
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:48,120
This is his presentation piece.
710
00:55:48,120 --> 00:55:52,960
The work he submitted so that he might be accepted into the academy.
711
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:58,960
It's called La Raie, The Ray, and it's his weirdest,
712
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:01,600
most disturbing painting.
713
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:06,640
Is it just a picture of still life objects?
714
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:11,880
I don't think so. Look at that great bloody central form,
715
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,080
the ray of the title.
716
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:21,400
A flatfish, grey, pink, red, blue for the liver and kidneys,
717
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:25,560
hung from a hook in a dungeon kitchen.
718
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:28,640
And to the left, look at that cat!
719
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:33,360
That cat, so alive with energy, it almost might be moving.
720
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:35,480
It seems blurred.
721
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:37,600
It's feral in its energies.
722
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:41,120
There wouldn't be another cat like it until
723
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:45,000
Manet painted Olympia, the prostitute,
724
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:48,480
the Parisian prostitute with her attendant cat.
725
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:53,200
When the great French novelist Marcel Proust saw The Ray,
726
00:56:53,200 --> 00:56:57,080
he likened it to the nave of a polychromatic cathedral.
727
00:56:57,080 --> 00:57:02,480
A comparison that takes us right back to Abbe Suger's resonant credo.
728
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:06,280
"A dull mind rises to truth through material things."
729
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:11,800
But to what truth does Chardin's paintings lead us?
730
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:22,920
For Diderot, Chardin's work stood with the idea that the simple life,
731
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:27,400
lived well and truthfully, is far more sacred than a rich life,
732
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:29,400
lived in decadence.
733
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:34,600
From that contrast, it is only a small step to more radical thoughts
734
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:39,520
about the instability of the whole system.
735
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:46,800
A profoundly sensitive and humane man, Chardin was no revolutionary.
736
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:50,960
But I can't help wondering if the unconscious mind that guided his
737
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:55,000
hand knew that the forces unleashed during his lifetime
738
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:57,640
might one day spin out of control.
739
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:01,880
Chardin said almost nothing about painting in his lifetime,
740
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:05,240
but one thing he did say, he reproved a younger painter,
741
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:08,640
who said, "I paint with colours."
742
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:12,400
And Chardin said, "You paint with colours? No, no.
743
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:16,920
"You use colours, but you paint with feeling."
744
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:20,040
What's the feeling here?
745
00:58:24,880 --> 00:58:25,920
It's ominous.
746
00:58:27,360 --> 00:58:30,320
There's death in the air.
747
00:58:30,320 --> 00:58:33,960
There's decadence in the air.
748
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:37,400
And there's a sense of palpable threat.
749
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:41,440
Look at that knife on the table.
750
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:46,200
It's almost an invitation.
751
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:51,560
Take up that knife, do something.
752
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:52,800
You can change the world.
753
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:58,880
Which, of course, is precisely what happened next.
63979
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