Original subtitles

[Music]

we see we've been ditching the box

betting what's your it's Elise very

Holland

so what it needs to finish its journey

mister get across here to England

[Music]

getting to England was no easy journey

for the Barack crossing the channel was

difficult enough but an even sterner

barrier was the innate English

resistance to emotional and flamboyant

art well the time the Barack reached

here in the 1620s also England was

artistically speaking the most backward

of the great European powers never mind

the Barack taking its time even there

are any songs haven't got here yet 17th

century England was still stuck in the

Middle Ages a half-timbered medieval

hotchpotch of higgledy-piggledy tudor

DIY

[Music]

and as always in these turbulent years

the forces holding back progress were

fiercely religious the events of the

Reformation had filled the English with

rabid suspicions not just of Polish

plots but a polka shart as well as

william prynne the Puritan agitator

would later put it there was no welcome

on these shores for the sinful the

idolatrous the abominable by which he

meant art its although the brach got

here all right indeed it did great

things here look at that one of the most

magnificent baroque sites anywhere in

the world but it wasn't an uncomplicated

arrival and it had tragic and momentous

consequences

[Music]

this stupendous Riverside Vista at

Greenwich consists of three baroque

firsts upon the hill that charming brick

building was the Royal Observatory begun

in 1675 the first purpose-built

scientific establishment in the world

the exciting Baroque Palace across the

front isn't a palace at all but the

first old people's home built to look

like a palace Christopher Wren's

Greenwich Hospital a retirement home for

wounded sailors so successfully posh

that the old Sea Dogs were soon kicked

out and their officers moved in but the

key building here is the one in the

middle the dinky little white one

Inigo Jones's Queen's House it was

designed for Anne of Denmark in 1617

take a good look at it because that is

possibly the most important little

building in the whole of British

architecture

[Music]

although technically it belongs to the

borough Kiera what the Queen's house

actually constitutes is the first

sophisticated bit of European building

to be attempted in England it's the

whole of the Renee sauce as well as the

Barack rolled into one and arriving in

England at last it's white it's angelic

and it's not half timbered hallelujah

but let's be honest it's not an exciting

building Inigo Jones was not an exciting

architect what made him special was the

fact that he'd been to Italy he'd seen

what architecture could do come back to

England and he'd opened the floodgates

[Music]

the Queen's house is the tiny crack

through which the Barack poured into

England but the man who enlarged that

crack and turned it into a giant opening

wasn't an artist or an architect but a

king the British monarchy has a patchy

record in matters of art aesthetic

concerns have hardly ever been a

priority

with one superb exception the only king

with taste and the only king whose head

we cut off

Charles the first was an unlikely

candidate to become an artistic savior a

tiny man just five feet three he was

born with a cluster of disadvantages he

couldn't walk properly or talk till he

was three and he always had a slight

stutter when he was young his tutors

would make him wear iron boots to

strengthen his legs but he became an

expert horseman who would have suspected

though that he would also turn into a

man of art in 1623 when he was 23

Charles was packed off to Spain to

fulfill the so called Spanish mission

the hope was that he would marry the

daughter of the spanish king philip ii

bring peace to europe and a huge spanish

dowry back to london the spanish

marriage plans eventually fell through

thank God if you remember from the last

film the one set in Spain the Spanish

Habsburgs had bred themselves into a

genetic mess cousins had married cousins

nieces had become wives and heaven knows

what genetic misfortunes would have been

visited upon the British monarchy if

Charles had married a Habsburg

the other problem was the hugely

discombobulating fact that the Spanish

princess was a Catholic after all the

religious turmoil that England had just

been through the dissolution of the

monasteries Henry the eighth's battles

with Rome the idea of Charles marrying a

Spanish Catholic was dismaying to say

the least but one splendid thing did

come out of the failed Spanish mission

in Madrid

Charles was shown around the royal

residences where he discovered Titian

Tintoretto Raphael and his eyes were

opened to the delights of art also in

Spain Charles came into contact with the

finest and most successful baroque

painter of these dramatic times Rubens

the king of flesh Saul though the

Spanish marriage didn't work out Charles

came back to England a changed man a man

who was mad about art and it was to

prove his downfall

[Music]

that's the banqueting house in Whitehall

just up from Big Ben designed again but

Inigo Jones originally as the venue for

a huge party that was supposed to follow

the Spanish wedding the one that never

happened

banqueting house was part of a rambling

Palace that Charles built on the side of

the Thames in imitation of the Spanish

Royals most of it was destroyed in 1698

but the banqueting house survives but

inside it is the only painted ceiling by

Rubens that's still in place

it's been called the greatest painted

ceiling north of the Alps and it's right

under our noses in London

[Music]

Ruben's came here originally on a

diplomatic mission sent by the king of

Spain but Charles dug his exquisite

royal fingers into him he commissioned

this

[Music]

it tells of the union of the crowns of

Scotland and England under Charles's

father James the first and of the good

things that resulted

[Music]

in the central scene James is going up

to heaven see him there as peace crowns

him with Laurel over here bounty sits on

avarice and brings goodness to England

while greed shivers naked ly over there

good government tramples on rebellion

it was actually painted in Antwerp in

Rubens is studio and then shipped over

in bits

Charles liked it so much he knighted

Rubens and even gave him a hat worth 500

pounds as a thank-you and also the ring

from his own finger

[Music]

Charles himself appears on the ceiling

was a little boy brought before the king

to observe the union of the crowns

when Charles became King in 1625 he

would hold court down here so the union

of the crowns would be facing him the

right way up but for the general

audience who entered through that door

the first thing they would see would be

James the first ascending to heaven and

being crowned by the gods thereby

affirming the Divine Right of Kings who

are answerable only to God

although it tells the Protestant tale of

the making of Great Britain and the

union of the Crown's there's a polka

share to the banqueting house ceiling

Ruben's has turned king james into st.

james and many would have noticed that

[Music]

Ruben's is great ceiling would have been

the last art that Charles saw when a few

short years after it was finished

Parliament decided to punish the king

for his extravagances by beheading him

but a lot needed to happen before you

reach that tragic conclusion what

matters here is the key role played by

art in these events

[Music]

[Music]

Charles the first was an addict and his

addiction wasn't women or wine or even

power his addiction

was art he would send his agents out

into Europe looking for the best

pictures their instruction was to buy

buy buy

[Music]

there were masterpieces here by Mantinea

Raphael Leonardo Charles even bought

some Caravaggio's that's how progressive

he was

Caravaggio's death of the virgin that

magnificent display of Catholic mourning

that now hangs in the Louvre with its

fatally slumped Mary once hung here in

England

[Music]

it wasn't just as a collector that

Charles distinguished himself it was

also as a patron having convinced Rubens

the greatest ceiling painter north of

the Alps to work for him Charles then

turned his attention to Rubens is

greatest pupil the arrival in Britain of

Anthony Van Dyck changed everything here

but assured in the most dramatic years

there have been in English painting Van

Dyck opened the door and the Baroque

flooded in

[Music]

he was a handsome devil graceful

charming eloquent masterfully diplomatic

the perfect courtier ladies loved him

and so did Kings Charles pursued Van

Dyck furiously

for nearly a decade before he finally

persuaded this dashing Belgian to come

to England in 1632 and become the Kings

painter it was like the arrival of a

Ferrari at a bicycle race Van Dyck with

his fast hands and exhilarating

courtiers touch seemed to come not just

from another country but from another

planet suddenly poised elegance

excitement arrogance entered British art

and he made something so heroic out of

Charles the first

those who mistrust his work complain of

chronic flattery and I don't think you

can deny it in that stupendous

equestrian portrait that still hangs in

Buckingham Palace the little king where

the gammy legs has been turned into a

heroic knight in Armour riding out on

his white steed Sir Lancelot of

Whitehall and Ike worked an even greater

transformation on the French princess

whom Charles successfully married after

his Spanish adventurer fell through

queen henrietta maria a tiny bird-like

woman had teeth which according to a

passing venetian envoi stuck out of her

face like ships cannons though you'd

never know it from any of Van Dyke's

gorgeous re-imaginings of her

no wonder the Kings showered him with

favors gave him a house by the river in

Blackfriars knighted him and adored him

[Music]

although the king was Van Dyke's main

employer the lesser members of the court

were soon fighting over his services as

well if you are a man who wouldn't wish

to be remembered as dashingly as this if

you are a woman who wouldn't envy this

kind of beauty but he was more than a

flatterer yes those dashing Cavaliers of

his were their nonchalant poses and was

perfectly delightful Carolingian

temptresses flashing their silks at you

they're easy on the eye but look into

their faces and there's something else

there a note of sadness a touch of worry

a fragility Van Dyck was as great a

painter as he was because he couldn't

keep the times he was living through out

of his art and I don't think he wanted

to

and it's this psychological magnetism of

his that makes him so Baroque

[Music]

Van Dyke's dashing and ringlets 'add

Cavaliers with their superb nonchalance

are the perfect pictorial inhabitants of

these thoroughly exciting times

[Music]

everything about Van Dyke was poised

measured successful except the manner of

his dying he was killed by a miserable

fever in 1641 and died in that house

that Charles gave him in Blackfriars

aged just 42 tragically young but he

changed British portraiture forever and

he put an unforgettable face to his era

to be a truly important artist you see

it's not enough to be talented you need

also to live through truly important

times and your work needs somehow to

embody those times

now the fates up there they know this

indeed they plan for it how else to

explain the extraordinary fact that as

soon as Van Dyck was dead being Miss

Civil War broke out everything changed

and out of nowhere it seems he appeared

on the scene have you read conventional

books about British art they'll tell you

that the first native genius born on

these shores was william Hogarth but

that's not true the first British born

genius the first truly dazzling English

painter was born a hundred years before

Hogarth he's that handsome fellow in the

middle whose name you probably won't

know even though it's a fine English

name William Dobson

fate dropped Dobson slap in the middle

of one of the most tumultuous dramatic

and tragic epochs in Britain's recorded

history the English Civil War and if

Dobson hadn't been there and put a face

to his era the truth about these

dramatic times would have gone

unrecorded fate gave Dobson this

magnificent moment all to himself

God made sure he was talented enough to

record it unforgettably and brilliantly

when the Civil War broke out in 1642

just a few short weeks after Van Dyke's

death the king and his court de camped

from London to Oxford and for the next

four years this was to be their home

All Souls became the royalist Arsenal

[Music]

maudling college was where the artillery

was parked the music school was taken

over by tailors making new uniforms for

the king's men the Queen lived here in

Merton College the king himself moved

into christ church college and the quad

was used as a cattle pen for the

soldiers later on Christopher Wren

designed the famous Tower

poor little Oxford didn't know what had

hit it the town was overrun with

courtiers soldiers freeloaders drunken

Cavaliers wandered the streets getting

into fights and their bravado in their

eyes their courageous excitement was

vividly captured by William Dobson

[Music]

the king who always prized his own

aesthetic comforts set up a traveling

court for himself here in Oxford and

this man Nicholas lania was master of

the Kings music now study his face well

because he also appears in that exciting

self-portrait we've just been looking at

by Dobson Dobson was made the King's

official painter and he kept himself

very busy painting the various notables

who popped up in Oxford

this is Dobson's rather shaky portrait

of Inigo Jones and here's his

magnificent Charles the second the boy

who would be king subduing the Furies

with a commanding royal gesture as the

Battle of Edgehill rages in the distance

it's a magnificent piece of royal

portraiture and it's so thoroughly

English Dobson must have worked about

the court before the Civil War started

but there's no record of it it's as if

he emerged from nowhere he obviously

knew the Van Dyke's work well and he was

just as obviously his own man who

brought a stubborn force square

beefiness to British portraiture those

who sat for him seemed often to put on a

stone and a half in his presence he made

them bulkier earthier he is in demean

Porter painted by Van Dyck and here he

is by Dobson

here's Nicholas lania as Van Dyck saw

him here's how he saw himself and here

is what dub sin made of him inside every

Englishman it seems there's a Henry the

eighth waiting to be discovered it's

such lively portraiture

I can't believe Dobson is so obscure we

should applaud him from every historical

rafter in England he was there in the

Civil War he gave it a face and history

thanked him by forgetting him completely

and by making sure he suffered the

grubby astir of deaths

[Music]

he died in London in 1646 an alcoholic

they say penniless in debt dumped into

an arms house aged just 36 the only

paintings we know by him were all done

in those few short years in Oxford

before the war was lost that was his

moment and how vigorously he seized it

after Dobson's death the king plotted on

for a few more years but the fates were

determined to punish him for his

aesthetic extravagances and arranged an

outrageously dramatic finale for him

[Music]

it all came to a terrible end on January

the 30th 1649

the king was executed outside the very

banqueting house that had ushered in his

Baroque age they put up a special

scaffold up there it was an unusually

cold day so the King wore an extra shirt

so that no one would mistake his

shivering for fear by all accounts he

went to his scaffold with great dignity

a king ruined in part at least by his

baroque obsession with art

Cromwell and the Puritans quickly set

about selling off the Royal Collection

the Royal plumber was given a painting

of Noah's Flood by Bassano some sort of

week Cromwellian joke I suppose and the

hated French and Spanish courts bought

up all the Tisch ins and the

Caravaggio's and they're now found in

the Louvre and the Prado

so the story of painting in England more

or less ground to a halt and it was time

for another of the great baroque arts to

step up and be counted it was time for

architecture with a little unexpected

help from the hand of God the Great Fire

of London in the devil's year of 1666 is

one of the mythic turning points in the

story of the Baroque the fire started in

a baker's shop here in pudding Lane run

by the King's personal Baker and this

Baker's shop was situated here far away

from the King's palaces as a deliberate

safety measure to make sure that no

fires were started in Whitehall so

instead the royal bakery ended up

setting fire to the whole of London for

three whole days it raged two thirds of

the metropolis was destroyed for

Londoners it was a colossal tragedy for

the Baroque it was a godsend

what the great fire accidentally

achieved was the purging of Tudor London

Street after Street of highly

inflammable half-timbered housing was

torched creating a golden building

opportunity for the English Barack and

sometimes happens in Britain in times of

deep national need a great hero stepped

forward to save the day Christopher Wren

didn't look like an architectural

warrior but then in these ornate baroque

times

everyone's seriousness was compromised

by absurd restoration wigs and powdery

facial get-ups the fascinating thing

about Wren is that he already had a big

career behind him as a scientist before

he turned to architecture he was

professor of astronomy at Oxford where

he made important discoveries in

telescope techniques and motion studies

and Wren was the first man successfully

to introduce a foreign substance into

the bloodstream of a dog thereby

inventing the injection

[Music]

inside that huge Barack brain of his Ren

was constantly making amazing scientific

connections but how these led him to

architecture

god only knows

[Music]

the fire had destroyed 87 London

churches 87 no wonder it must have

seemed like an act of God and when Wren

stepped forward to rebuild 51 of them

yes

51 he was driven by something more than

mere dutifulness because beneath that

powdery restoration disguise of his so

Christopher Wren saw himself so broccoli

as an instrument of God this square mile

of the City of London contains the

finest concentration the Baroque

architecture outside Rome 51 baroque

gems nestling among the money-making

skyscrapers now obviously I can't show

all of those to you at once but let's

see how many a fat lump like me can get

round to see in 15 minutes

[Music]

his finest creative energy went into the

steeples the English likes their

steeples Wren knew that but rather than

giving them pointy bits of gothic that

they were used to Ren came up with

things like that

st. bride's you know the modern wedding

cake with all the different layers that

was inspired by this steeple get it st.

bride's st. Marie LeBeau to be a proper

cockney you need to have been born

within earshot of that fantastical

people

[Music]

I like this one st. Vedas the way it

curves and bulges broccoli in and out

[Music]

Renne had to invent a new kind of church

an Anglican Church before the Church of

England had been happy to convert

Catholic churches but he had to come up

with something new from scratch

[Music]

the interiors also needed complete

reinvention this is st. Margaret's loft

Berea the best surviving Wren interior

bold rectangle with these big wide

windows and an air of elegant simplicity

the Protestant interior

[Music]

five churches 15 minutes it's a man and

me we probably have got around ten and

of course all the time that Ren was

building the London churches his

greatest achievement st. Paul's

Cathedral was rising up out of the ashes

of the great fire simples took 35 years

to finish and while we're waiting for

that to happen we should get out of

London expand our horizons because the

Baroque was much too powerful an

epidemic to confine itself to the city

the English stately home was one of the

most distinctive and delightful

inventions of the Baroque age of course

other nations dotted their countryside

with big houses too but no one else was

quite as keen as the British to position

excellent

architecture in an excellent stretch of

landscape when you look at somewhere

magnificently english-like Blenheim

Palace you're looking at an outdoor

composition in which everything has been

placed just so it's a duet if you like

between the house and its landscape and

that sense you get here of the whole

thing being one entity no one else did

that that is a fine invention of the

English Baroque

but the closer you get to Blenheim

Palace the less rural and relaxed it

begins to seem because Blenheim is the

greatest and grandest creation of the

full-blown English baroque the house

itself is the handiwork of that

fascinating and busy baroque be Sir John

Vanbrugh when you look at portraits of

Van bura is difficult to take the man

seriously he had the biggest of big

hairdos and a puffy pouty look to him

with his Velvets and his lace but

underneath this powdered and billowing

baroque exterior lurked one of the most

interesting creative minds that these

times produced

van bura looked like a Toth and he built

but the Toth but he actually had fierce

Democratic leanings so much so that in

1688 he was imprisoned in the Bastille

for seditious and revolutionary behavior

and espionage he spent four and a half

years in that French jail and when he

came out he became a playwright and he

wrote that marvelous Restoration comedy

the provoked wife

which is probably playing at an am dram

somewhere near you right now he wrote

poems pamphlets plays and managed

somehow to become an architect too and a

very quirky one Blenheim is the largest

and most bombastic of Britain's country

houses the only one allowed to call

itself a palace

[Music]

it was built to celebrate the Duke of

Marlboros famous victory over the French

at the Battle of Blenheim

soplease was the British monarchy with

the Dukes great victory that they gave

him this land and told him to build

something suitable on it

so it was always meant to be more of a

war memorial than a home and that's why

there is this heavyweight grandeur and

seriousness to it other English country

houses settled gently on the landscape

like a butterfly but Blenheim needed to

land heavily like a great big ceremonial

cake and you have to admit it does that

impeccably Barbara's ambition here is to

find a baroque architecture that

resounds with power and might go round

the back and it all gets a little more

relaxed and playful a nice backdrop for

the occasional game of cricket but

that's the back at the front this is a

building that demands your obedience and

respect

the era's finest sculptor grin ling

Gibbons was employed to carve these

giant English lions chewing up the

pathetic French and at the top of

the house where no one could miss him

van bura placed the giant captured bust

of the defeated son king louis xiv so

that visitors could mock him as they

entered the house while the outside of

Blenheim puffs out its chest and demands

your obedience the inside pops out its

chest and demands that you dress

properly for dinner

[Music]

that great English warrior Sir Winston

Churchill was born at Blenheim of course

and some of its military mood was his

inheritance

[Music]

visitors entered into here where they'd

be overwhelmed by all this mighty

Baroque architecture with its

militaristic air then they'd be led

through here underneath the minstrel

gallery into plenums great saloon it's

most surprising sight an illusion istic

courtyard that turns the inside of

Blenheim into an outside it was painted

by the aptly named Louis Legare a French

painter whose name means in translation

Louis the war there he is up there too

prim and powdered you would have thought

to be much of a painter Legare came up

with an illusion mystic ring of

balconies on which has gathered a

pretend audience of international

visitors to Blenheim from the four

corners of the earth from France from

Spain and China and from wherever that

is

[Music]

they're here to watch the room central

scene in which the mighty Duke of

Marlborough rushes across the sky in his

chariot like a Marvel comic hero while

the embodiment of piece stays his

militaristic arm and persuades him to

stop fighting it's a decent bit of

baroque hack work and it does its job

well enough faking up some grand ear and

illusionism for these stately rooms and

throwing him some handy propaganda for

peace but at this point in the Barack's

story and we very near the tail end

these illusionistic ambitions are

outweighing the meaningful content and

the brach has grown slightly silly

that's inside the fake interior of

Blenheim and it's not something you

could ever say of the palaces exterior

Blenheim on the outside is a masterclass

of baroque invention these weird towers

for instance how strange and unexpected

are they for this peculiar cluster of

bold architectural sculpture who on

earth came up with this

Umbra came late to architecture

he was basically an amateur so he needed

some professional help to achieve all

this

and while the grand ear and the bomb

bass that you see here is definitely van

Burris handiwork much of the

architectural brilliance is due to

someone else

van burrows number two at blenheim the

designer of many of the best bits was

this lopsided bore emini of Blenheim

Nicholas Hawksmoor was the most

inventive and madcap architect these

shores have produced the things look

excitingly strange in British Baroque

architecture the chances are Hawksmoor

did it and according to some scattering

bits of eccentric barak around London

wasn't all that Hawksmoor did Hawksmoor

a time-traveling murder mystery by Peter

Ackroyd Lud heat a collection of weird

existential poems about Hawksmoor by Ian

Sinclair and from Hell an extra large

gothic horror comic set in Hawkes

Moore's London and all about the Ripper

murders by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

[Music]

all of these excessively fruity tomes

accused Britain's most mysterious

baroque builder of being the architect

not just of buildings but also of evil

mind you wandering around the churchyard

of a Hawksmoor building at twilight in

the autumn is a distinctly spooky

experience his buildings definitely have

a psychological presence

if the Baroque getting inside your head

again

in 1711 the British Parliament passed

some new legislation providing tax money

to build 50 new london churches in the

end only a dozen of them were finished

six of them by Hawksmoor he also

designed the towers of two of the other

ones and these London churches are

Hawke's Moore's most important baroque

achievements now I've marked out their

positions on this London map so over

here is st. George Bloomsbury that's the

one with the strange ziggurat for a

steeple and the statue of George the

first on the top very peculiar building

and over here is Christ Church

Spitalfields now it's around this church

that all the Ripper murders are supposed

to have taken place it's the one with

the pointy gothic steeple now out here

is st. Anne's Limehouse this one here

with the strange obelisk in front of it

in the centre of the city right in the

centre st. Mary Warner very peculiar

looking building and over here st.

George in the east the one with a

Spanish look to it

now Hawks were also designed these two

towers not the whole church but the two

towers for other people's churches

there's st. Luke's old Street which is

over here and st. John's Horsley down

that was down here south of the river

now according to this book here blood

heat Ian's Sinclair if you join up these

Hawksmoor churches with their positions

here what you get

is a diagram that bears an uncanny

resemblance to an ancient Egyptian

hieroglyph down here last of the

Hawksmoor churches st. Alpha CH

Greenwich the one with the huge key

stones and that's the final bit of the

jigsaw which makes this mysterious

symbol the Eye of Horus protector of all

deities safeguard earth of the deepest

secrets

[Music]

he this mad idea that Hawksmoor

deliberately planned the position of his

churches so that they formed this

mysterious ancient diagram reaches its

crescendo in this great big comic book

where Jack the Ripper's murders and the

secrets of the Freemasons and the

position of hawks wars churches in all

manner of weird hocus-pocus that I can't

begin to understand is mixed together in

a mysterious baroque suit of course it's

all nonsense really silly but what isn't

nonsense is the atmosphere of Hawkes

Moore's work which is take it from me do

me and unsettling someone once wrote

that you can imagine funerals taking

place in a Hawksmoor church but not

weddings how true that is

these looming oversized and madly

inventive slabs of architectural

sampling are some of the strangest

concoctions the Barack ever came up with

what is that on top of st. George's

Bloomsbury and who ever saw a ziggurat

ik pyramid atop an Anglican Church in

Hawke's more the English Baroque grows

very eccentric his architecture mixes

things that have never been mixed before

Mexican gothic Greek Egyptian and it's

the very unexpectedness of this mix that

makes it unmistakably

baroque do I like it hmm not always do I

recognize genius in here of course is it

the greatest achievement of the English

barak no but that's only because this is

[Music]

you know how many great cathedrals there

are in the world that were actually

built in the lifetimes of their

architect one this one st. Paul's wren

designed it

he watched the first stone going down he

watched the last stone going down from

1675 to 1710 35 years what an

achievement

there was a biblical heir to the great

fire that destroyed the old st. Paul's

the sense that God had played a

deliberate part in the purging of London

must have seemed inescapable

[Music]

from the start rent wanted to build an

imposing domed cathedral here a great

church roundel to rank alongside st.

Peter's in Rome and he achieved that of

course but it took a momentous piece of

deception

this is the giant model Wren made of st.

Paul's as he dreamt of building it this

is what he really wanted to do here but

the English clergy found wrens domed

Basilica to Catholic and Pope ish and

rejected his splendid design he was

forced to come up with something else

something more English more traditional

so he proposed instead this grim

compromise a bit of a steeple a bit of a

nave a bit of a mess and when the

scaffolds went up in 1675 for the new

st. Paul's this is what people were

expecting to be built 35 years later

however when the scaffolds finally came

down look what the English Baroque had

actually come up with

[Music]

Wren had lied through his teeth about

what he was going to build

he promised us this and all the time he

was building this

st. Paul's was never what it seems to be

these high palatial walls for instance

rising grandly above the city are

actually false and unnecessary they're

just there for effect

to get to building from the front took

off the facade would be shaped like this

for the nave two aisles down either side

but what wrens done is he's put up these

false walls they're just there for show

to make the building look much career

from the side so in between here there

are empty spaces and the dome that too

is illusionistic it's actually not one

dome but three out here you have the big

dome that everybody sees inside

there's another tone that you only see

on the inside and where's one that you

don't see at all which is a kind of

conical dome that those at the middle

and that supports the lantern so what

you see on the outside is completely

different from what you see on the

inside

so Ren got his Pope ish Cathedral in the

end he promised us an ugly English

compromise instead he connived to bring

us a soaring ecclesiastical masterpiece

that wouldn't look too out of place in

Rome itself and that's the thing about

the English baroque on paper it's

thoroughly Protestant in the flesh it's

not so sure

[Music]

we began this series in Rome in front of

st. Peters and I told you that would

follow the Baroque from Rome to London

from st. Peters to st. Paul's now here

we are at the end of the journey and

with what the Baroque squiggling its way

through the entire 17th century always

pushing expanding changing we've seen

the Baroque growth thunderous and huge

as it sought to batter us into

submission and we watched it go

plaintive and sad as it tried to get

inside our minds and our hearts we

watched it rope in all the other arts

for support sculpture architecture this

way in that it billowed through enormous

spaces and tiny ones if you remember I

told you that the actual word baroque

comes from this a Miss shapen pearl

Baraka in Portuguese and if you were

expecting this series to follow a

straight line you'll be disappointed

because the Baroque didn't do straight

lines

but there is something that unites all

these magnificent sites and spectacles

and makes them typically Baroque

something powerful that brings

everything together it's the need to be

noticed the Baroque built big because

big things have a big impact it dazzled

you with its illusions and caught you up

in its psychology because it wanted your

time and your attention it was the first

art movement to realize that being good

wasn't enough you needed also to make an

impact it's a lesson the arts have never

forgotten if you want an audience get

out there and grab it

you