All language subtitles for Renaissance.The.Blood.and.the.Beauty.S01E03.1080p.WEBRiP.x264-DARKFLiX[EZTVx.to]_Subtitles01.ENG

SHOUTING AND SCREAMING

Over three decades, Michelangelo
has won fame and prestige,

creating masterpieces for Italy's
most powerful rulers...

I've borne the whims of my patrons,

men who knew little of true art.

..but these are brutal,
dangerous times,

an age of almost constant war.

Italy becomes the battlefield
for all these conflicts,

and eventually the city states,
like Florence,

start to get overwhelmed.

When religious revolution
engulfs Italy,

Michelangelo's beloved Florence
will be laid to waste.

Michelangelo finds himself living
in a very, very dangerous world.

The path he chooses will be
a matter of life and death,

and leave him questioning what
his life's work has all been for.

He's reassessing everything -
reassessing his faith,

reassessing the kind of work
that he's done.

There's only one judge in the end.

He alone will know
if these mortal hands have...

..proved worthy of their promise.

The Renaissance is usually regarded
as this beautiful period

where everything is golden
and shiny,

but there is another side to it.

It's endlessly bloody
and conflicted and violent,

and that's what the art responds to.

The art feeds off that.

Art is propaganda
in the Renaissance.

Images are extraordinarily powerful.

In that respect, it's actually
very modern.

This is really the age where patrons
realise the power of art.

And once you start to mix
art and money,

then it's a lethal cocktail.

Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael.

They are really the first
superstar artists.

I am Michelangelo Buonarroti,
artist and an old fool.

He lived for his art,

but it was almost like
his vocation was a sentence.

I've had so many paymasters -
bankers and princes,

cardinals and popes.

But what I did was always
in the service of God

and in the pursuit of perfection.

Two things go hand in hand
in the Renaissance -

a ruthlessness in politics and
a true belief in the power of art.

But to really understand
the Renaissance,

you have to tell the whole story.

Michelangelo is working on the
biggest commission of his life

for the most powerful patron
in Italy, Pope Julius II.

He's painting an enormous fresco

on the vast ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel,

the most important church in Rome.

Here was a chance
for my work to adorn

the inner sanctum of God's house.

To fail would have been the end.

Working all but single-handed,

he's embarked on
an incredibly complex design.

Michelangelo was not a painter,

has not made frescoes.

It's totally insane

and he does raise the stakes
for himself.

He has the ambition to paint
hundreds of figures

on a curved ceiling, which is
a very irregularly curved ceiling.

The technical challenge is fresco.

You have to paint tiny sections
into wet plaster.

You also have to understand
how quickly the plaster dries

and what colour will the paint be
once it's dried?

It will not be the same colour
as you started out.

It is a challenge for Michelangelo.

To get a figure larger than life
to look in proper proportion

from far down below,

it's desperately difficult.

Julius trusts that Michelangelo
will create something amazing

in the Sistine Chapel.

It's where the Pope celebrates Mass
in front of ambassadors,

diplomats and the Papal Court.

It's essentially the stage
on which he performs

his most important
liturgical functions.

This project is, therefore, of the
utmost importance to the Pope.

But after months of work,

Michelangelo makes
a terrible discovery.

All of a sudden, having painted
a section of the ceiling,

it began to develop
a very, very serious mould problem.

My fingers were scarcely visible
behind the mould.

Everything I'd done, ruined.

I felt like throwing myself
off that scaffold.

The reason why the mould has set in

is that it's an incorrect mixture
of the actual plaster.

Mixing the plaster with the right
proportion of water is a skill,

a skill that Michelangelo
had not learned as a sculptor.

Fresco is all about how damp
the air is.

Michelangelo is from Florence,

and Florence is quite different
atmospherically than Rome.

He's actually got this wrong.

Michelangelo tries to
back out of the commission,

but the Pope won't let him go.

I told the Pope, "This is not
what God wanted on me."

"Painting was not my calling."

But it was fruitless.

He wouldn't let me leave the work.

I had to go on.

Michelangelo has to hack off
almost everything he's done,

remix the plaster with less water
and start all over again.

While he struggles on,
his greatest rivals thrive.

Leonardo has rebuilt his reputation

and is enjoying creative freedom
in Milan...

..while his other great rival,
Raphael, is much closer,

just down the hall from
the Sistine Chapel.

He's painting a smaller fresco
in a state room,

where the Pope hosts important
visitors and foreign dignitaries.

I was caught in a vice,
in my mind and my body,

whilst Raphael,
a copier and sycophant,

was scheming for commissions

and turning the Pope against me.

Michelangelo must feel that
Raphael is making inroads.

Raphael is a very young age.

No-one could imagine him
having the impact that he has.

And all of a sudden,
there's your main rival,

working right next door to you.

I love the idea of them
so close to one another.

They are two personalities
who really are very, very different.

Michelangelo and Raphael are both
servants of Julius's ambition,

to glorify himself and Rome.

Julius, he's deeply aware of
the power of art

as a means of propaganda.

And the architecture of Rome,
the art of Rome,

is an opportunity to reflect

the power and authority
of his papacy.

Raphael, the consummate flatterer,

is ready to deliver for
his patron once again.

On one wall of the Pope's stateroom,

he's already glorified Julius
as a godly figure,

a direct descendant of Christ.

Now, on the opposite wall,

Raphael shows him
as an intellectual giant.

The School Of Athens is a picture
of all the great thinkers

of the ancient world.

It's amazingly good work.

How could Julius not be totally
blown away?

Raphael was a brilliant colourist.

His palette was clear and balanced
and quite beautiful.

The colours that he used added
a richness to his compositions.

Raphael is representing Julius
exactly as he'd wished to be seen.

Somebody who's a great patron
of thinkers, of poets,

and oversees a Rome where
intellectual arts can flourish.

Raphael puts Plato and Aristotle
in the middle

as the sort of culmination of

the philosophic tradition
of the ancient world.

It's telling us something
about Julius as the inheritor

and the upholder of all
of these great thoughts.

This is a balm for his ego.

And this is exactly what
Julius needs at a time

when he's being criticised for
being a bloodthirsty warrior.

Raphael hides details within
the painting to delight the Pope.

He gives the great philosopher
Plato the face of Leonardo,

and Raphael even puts himself
among the throng of leading lights.

But one figure,

the man in reality struggling
to paint the Sistine ceiling,

is cast as a lonely outsider.

That figure is the only one
who's on his own,

and not exactly dressed in
a particularly nice way, either.

It's a real slight
against Michelangelo.

I think if Michelangelo
even recognised

that this was his own portrait,
it's like,

"Well, you should pay tribute to me
because I'm the greater artist."

They all loved Raphael.

But let me tell you,
all he learnt of art,

he learnt from me.

Michelangelo is driven on
by Raphael's success.

But the Sistine ceiling
is a mammoth task.

Painting that ceiling,
it took its toll.

I even stopped writing letters.

My family thought I'd died.

HE CHUCKLES

I often felt that
the better choice, but...

HE SIGHS

..I couldn't surrender,
I could not lose.

Julius is proving himself
a great patron of the arts.

But the vast sums he's spending
to glorify himself and the papacy

are causing growing alarm.

In 1510,
a German monk called Martin Luther

makes his first pilgrimage to Rome

and is horrified by what he finds
in the holy city.

He's seeing sex work,

he's seeing a sort of opulence
and a luxury

that he's just devastated by.

He's appalled by all the conspicuous
consumption of the Church

amid so much poverty.

And he says that,
"If there is a hell,

"it's built under Rome."

And he says,
"It's a cesspit of sin."

Nobody's under any illusion
that the Catholic Church

is in some kind of trouble.

It is a corrupt institution.

It's corrupt financially
and it's corrupt sexually.

You know, many of the people
working in the Catholic Church

have mistresses
when they should be celibate,

and huge amounts of money
have been spent on art,

and they're going to need
even more money.

What offends Luther most is
how the Pope is paying for it all.

He's taxing the ordinary people
of Rome by selling them a lie,

that they can buy their place
in heaven.

And the main thing that he's
appalled by is papal indulgences.

People can buy a piece of paper
which says,

"All your sins wiped away."

Cash for the Pope is
explicitly going in to art.

It's coming from the sale
of papal indulgences.

It's outrageous.

It's incredibly clever,
but it's outrageous.

Martin Luther returns to Germany
to campaign for reform of the Church,

intent on challenging all the evils
that Julius represents.

The Pope then faces another
grave threat to his authority.

France has long been
eyeing Italy's wealth

and, not for the first time, invades.

They seize the northern
Papal State of Bologna.

It's a defeat that reflects badly
on the Warrior Pope.

In his haste to conquer
and rebuild Rome,

Julius took on too many burdens.

He was a man of great energy,

but no man, not even he,
could quell the tide of discontent

that he brought upon himself.

The people grow angry with Julius,

aggrandising himself
with art they've paid for

while they're dying in his wars
and going hungry on the streets.

He needs to clean up
his public image,

so he commissions something different

from his loyal favourite, Raphael -

a new papal portrait.

This portrait will be on show
to everybody coming into Rome

in Santa Maria del Popolo,

the first church through one of the
main pilgrim gates of the city.

Thousands of people
will come and see Julius.

Raphael's portrait of Julius II
is remarkable.

Here we see Julius not as a warrior,
but as a thoughtful man,

a man who's determined.

He's gripping
the handle of the chair.

He's deep in thought, remote,
but he's also human.

He's wearing a beard in mourning
for the loss of Bologna.

That snowy white beard that
was painted so magnificently,

he said he was going
to grow that beard

until all the French forces
were out of Italy.

It can certainly be seen
as a piece of propaganda.

So many people travel to church
to see it

that it's described
as being like a jubilee.

It's an idea with which
we're quite familiar today

in terms of the concept of
artwashing,

so how multinational corporations
will commission art

really in their best interest
to make them look good.

You can look back and say,
where does this start?

Julius is your ultimate example.

Julius is delighted with Raphael.

Raphael might have been ready
to sell his soul,

but I would not.

Michelangelo isn't interested

in simply serving his patron's
political ambitions.

He wants to make art that reflects
the depth of his faith.

Michelangelo, at this point now,
is so committed to the Sistine,

labouring over this one grand
project that goes on and on and on.

Food was always
a necessary distraction.

I just ate dry bread while I worked,
and I slept in my clothes

and went so long without removing
my boots that when I did,

the skin of my feet came off
like a snake's.

This is such difficult labour.

His face looks like
the floor of the chapel

where the paint has been dripping.

His neck is cricked in
a permanent position.

I spent so long looking up

that my body was in a permanent
state of contortion.

I could no longer read looking down.

I had to hold letters up,
like that, to the light

so that I could read them.

To kind of push yourself
to those extremes,

it's like he put himself
through torture,

and maybe it's like his penance
somehow.

He's almost
like a very tormented soul.

You can see the pain and
the struggle that he was in.

Maybe that's what helped him
to feel it,

to realise it.

After four long years of
punishing work,

the ceiling is finally finished.

It's astonishing

that one man
with very little assistance

was able to do this,
is just astonishing.

It's approximately
600 square metres.

So that's, roughly speaking,
three tennis courts.

It's huge.

It's overwhelming.

The sheer scale of it
takes you back.

There's so much of it that you could
walk around in there for months,

years even,
and still not see everything.

It's hard to imagine how absolutely
delighted Julius must be.

Now he can celebrate Mass

underneath perhaps the greatest
work of art in all of Christendom.

And he, Julius II, commissioned it.

Michelangelo envisions
three different parts

of the Old Testament.

There's the creation sequence.

There's the creation of
Adam and Eve.

Then there's the story of Noah.

He wants the story to be about
the translation of power

through all of these generations
of biblical figures,

down to the Pope himself.

Michelangelo begins
by painting The Flood,

and that is why that is the
strangest of the panels.

It's crowded,
the figures are too small,

and it's really difficult to read.

But as he moves forward
into the space of the church,

his style starts to loosen up.

The figures become
much more simplified,

much more dynamic,
and much more sculptural.

Almost like if Michelangelo
were carving out of paint

rather than painting.

These figures, some of them are
12ft to 14ft high.

It's just an immense ability
at imagination and correct drawing.

And this is really Michelangelo
just showing his abilities

in the most remarkable way.

When I look at the fresco,

there's, like, this passion,
this wildness.

Everyone's got this expression,
the hair is blowing

and it's got so much drama going on.

It still brings tears to your eyes
and blows you away

in this day and age,
when we're bombarded with imagery.

It's incredible.

There is so much there,
such richness

that Michelangelo is really
suggesting God's ability

to create the richness of the world.

And most people finally end up
focusing on

little fingers
that meet one another.

The Creation Of Adam, it's so bold.

It's so graphic.

It's just reduced down
to the bare minimum.

It's become pop art, really.

You show it all over the world

and everyone knows
that's Michelangelo.

For Julius, this is an immensely
successful propagandistic move.

He has created at the centre
of Christendom

the most beautiful work of all time.

It was a triumph, of course.

As spectacular as it was,

it must have been an extremely

difficult and deflating moment
for Michelangelo.

The man must be absolutely
physically and emotionally drained.

You do not spend all of those years

trying to create
the creation of the world

without you coming out of it
feeling utterly shattered.

Spiritually shattered,
as well as physically shattered.

All I wanted to do was sculpt...

..to get back to the path
God had chosen for me.

Lay my cheek against cool stone.

Ha!

And feel the weight of a chisel
in my hand.

Michelangelo has delighted Julius,

but it's left a bitter taste.

Michelangelo does seem to go
through something

of a crisis of faith.

There's a concern around
papal indulgences,

and I think what Luther is saying
speaks to Michelangelo,

but he's too deep in.

Rome, really, has now defined
and shaped him.

His art is part of that story.

And I think, yeah,
he's worried about it.

When a master keeps a slave
in prison,

he grows so accustomed
to his anguish...

..that he would hardly ask
for freedom again.

Years of my life have been spent
pleasing my masters.

The Sistine ceiling guarantees

Julius II's name
will go down in history,

but his own mortality
is another thing.

Just three months later,
he succumbs to a fever and dies.

His successor is chosen,

and it's a Medici,

a family whose appetite for power
has not waned.

After decades in exile,
they've violently retaken Florence,

and now they have a Pope in Rome.

This is a massive turnaround
for the Medici

because having been out
in the wilderness,

they're suddenly completely in
charge of the papacy and Florence.

But this isn't necessarily
good news for Michelangelo,

because he's so disillusioned
by what's happened,

both within the papacy
and within Florence.

When the Medici returned to Florence
and spilled innocent blood,

the citizens held their tongue...

..as did I.

Where Julius had used art
to immortalise himself,

the new Medici Pope, Leo X,

wants to exploit it
to make political deals.

He plans to use his artists

to help him bring the hostile French
into line.

France had sort of a jealousy,
almost, about Italy.

It was producing much greater art,
much greater architecture.

And they're trying to import
the Italian Renaissance to France.

The Pope recruits Leonardo da Vinci

and sends him to the French court
as a gesture of goodwill.

Now 64, Leonardo enjoys
an artistic freedom

Michelangelo can only dream of.

Experimenting and working
obsessively on one painting

that's captivated his imagination
for more than 15 years.

One reason the Mona Lisa
is so famous

is because it's the greatest
painting ever made.

Leonardo had spent a lifetime
studying science,

studying mechanics, doing anatomy,

knowing how light goes
into the eyes.

It all culminates
with the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa is truly engaging
with us.

We have this feeling, of course,
that we can follow

her gaze as we move.

One of the things
that defines Leonardo

is that sense of mystery.

What's the Mona Lisa smiling about?

The shadows of the lips move upward,

but the details move downward
slightly.

So as you shift your eyes,

the smile goes on and off.

It's interactive.

And he does things
with the optics of the light

so that her hand is rather sharp,

but the background is very hazy

because he knows that's how
your eye sees perspective.

This fictive landscape
is dominated by water.

Light is filtered through
this misty environment,

so we have also a study of light.

It takes him 16 years

and even on his deathbed,
if you asked him,

he'd say, "No, no, there are a few
more brushstrokes I could do."

I sometimes wonder, for him,
how vital the completion is.

For Leonardo, there's something more
about the craft and the process,

which I think is why modern artists
are so beguiled by his work.

After three years
in the French court,

Leonardo dies aged 67.

There's a very haunting line
that he wrote in his notebooks,

and it was, "Tell me if anything
was ever accomplished.

"Tell me if anything was ever done."

And I think he's worried

that he really hasn't accomplished
what he could have.

When Michelangelo and Raphael
hear of the death,

I mean, he is the other contender -

they were the top three -
and I think they had

respect for him
and sadness at his death.

We all lost something
when Leonardo died.

He pleased himself...

HE CHUCKLES

..but left behind too little
for so great a talent.

What will MY legacy be?

What will I bequeath to the world?

Since finishing the Sistine ceiling,

Michelangelo has not won
any commissions from Pope Leo.

Leo X was not attracted
particularly to Michelangelo's

rather difficult character.

The Pope, without a doubt,
was attracted much more

to the very urbane
and sophisticated Raphael,

who was much easier to work with.

Leo chooses the reliable Raphael
to make ten lavish tapestries

for the walls of the Sistine Chapel
to eclipse his predecessor, Julius.

For Raphael, it's a chance
to outdo Michelangelo.

When people enter the chapel,

they won't look up
at Michelangelo's ceiling,

but be awed by Raphael's
eye-level masterpieces.

Tapestry had always been seen

as the ultimate in luxury items
to have,

so if you're producing tapestry,

you're really producing
a valuable piece of art.

Raphael makes preparatory sketches

before painting the full-scale
tapestry templates in colour.

He made them
as independent works of art,

and that's how important
the commission was to him.

Raphael's Cartoons tell the stories
of the Acts Of The Apostles,

and, of course,

the Pope is the direct successor
of Peter the Apostle,

so this has specific meaning
for the Pope.

The tapestries depict miracles
performed by Jesus,

such as The Healing Of The Lame Man,

The Miraculous Draught Of Fishes

and Jesus declaring Peter
his representative on Earth,

giving him the keys
to the gates of heaven.

He knew how to get the effects
he wanted with colour.

He privileged really rich,
sometimes elaborate colour schemes,

extremely effective
in their simplicity.

And he particularly strove to get
the best in colour,

because he knew that he could excel
over Michelangelo in that arena.

Raphael's Cartoons are sent
to Brussels,

where the tapestries are made.

Each one is three metres tall

and woven with wool, silk
and real gold thread.

The tapestries were worth five times

the amount paid to Michelangelo
for the Sistine ceiling.

So much more is being spent
by the Medici Pope

for this one cycle.

Because so much gold thread
was actually used in them,

these tapestries were actually
described as heavenly.

That was a most grievous insult.

No matter how much gold or silken
thread he might have had woven in,

they would not outshine my ceiling,

which required no gold
to radiate heaven's light.

Raphael is enjoying all the rewards
of being Pope Leo's golden boy.

Raphael is finding great favour
with Leo.

He's getting lots of important jobs.

His workshop is expanding.

He is seen as, really,
the prince of artists.

He lives in a lordly way.

Raphael is a charmer.

A bit of a playboy, really.

Raphael is out there, you know,

he's loving the limelight.

All great artists had workshops,

but it seems that Raphael's
was particularly notorious

for being a place where
young men would gather.

He would have all of his assistants
and apprentices there,

and they'd be working on his art,

and they would have
female models coming in,

which was quite radical
for the time.

It may be that we get
these indications of Raphael

being so enamoured of women,

because he made such beautiful
drawings of them.

The Renaissance starts to see
depictions of real women,

realistic bodies,
they're reclining over beds.

There's something sensual
about them.

And Raphael absolutely
pioneered that.

If anyone knew what a naked woman
looked like, it was Raphael.

I've always been abstemious
in my way of life.

I was never avaricious,

nor concerned to accumulate money.

Raphael was misled...

..by his own desires.

Raphael's reputation at the time
and ever since

has been caught up
with this love of women.

It's been read as a comment
on his super masculinity

and lads about town and, you know,
"You go get 'em, Raphael."

Whereas Michelangelo,
his love of beauty,

his love of men, is not given
the same permission.

He can't celebrate that openly.

He can't have that caught up
in his reputation.

Everything seems to be going
brilliantly for Raphael.

He's incredibly successful,
you know, he's talented.

And then he suddenly gets sick.

He catches a fever.

He's bled.

That, of course, makes things worse
because it weakens him.

And he dies. He's 37.

It's utterly shocking.

The accounts suggest
that it's sexual excess, perhaps,

that his exertions lead
to his death.

I wonder how much we want
to buy into that notion

that he is the
proto-Italian playboy.

But his death is a shock
to everybody,

no more so than Michelangelo,

because the rivalry between them,
like with Leonardo,

he's lost the thing
that he's rubbing against.

So he's devastated.

Michelangelo's motivation
is all about trying to outdo

whoever's come along next.

This is his fuel.
This is what keeps him going.

Now they're all dying.

Leonardo, 1519.

Raphael, 1520.

So, yes, it does affect
Michelangelo's drive and motivation.

Raphael's excesses
caught up with him.

This is no victory for me.

Pope Leo's favourite artist is gone,

but he has much more to worry him

than who'll make him
beautiful tapestries.

Over the past decade, Martin Luther's
horror at papal extravagance

has ignited a movement
that's starting to look unstoppable.

Initially, it's a protest
against Catholic papal indulgences

that snowballed
into a complete rejection

of the key tenets of Catholicism.

And he says, "It's really about
a relationship between yourself

"and the Word of God in the Bible.

"You don't need popes and bishops as
the mediators between you and God."

He says, "Why do we need
these people?

"Because the results are all
this opulence, all this luxury,

"all this decadence,
which is just hateful."

Suddenly the Catholic Church
has a huge fight on its hands.

Luther's sermons find a big audience

and then the printing press
takes them up.

Printing of Protestant pamphlets
and Lutheran material,

including his own translation
of the Bible, goes... It's viral.

It just sweeps across Europe.

That is the spark
that sets off the Reformation,

and its impact is going to be
absolutely incalculable.

Michelangelo is deeply disillusioned.

He's lost his greatest rivals,

and Luther's ideas shake his own
faith to its foundations.

There is a deep-held
spiritual belief that he has,

and I think it's bedrocked
on Catholic principles.

It's a time, obviously,
of deep religious turmoil

and soul-searching.

There is a sense of a real despair

that we get through his poetry
at this time.

"Since I was captured,
my soul has been searching

"for a thousand remedies to get
back on its earlier road.

"But beauty is like bait,

"taking me from heaven."

With no work for him in Rome,

Michelangelo returns home
to Florence,

where he appears
to abandon abstention

and throw caution to the wind.

There's a letter from someone
he's very, very close to who

warns Michelangelo that
there was word out

that he seems to be out at night
and maybe doing things

that are going to be compromising
to his reputation.

Maybe there was a part of him
that thought,

"Do you know what? Sod it. Sod it."

If that is what he's doing,
I'm not surprised he got that letter

because it was really risky.

If you were caught by
the Office of the Night,

they could parade you
through the streets naked.

And if you were caught on
your fifth offence,

you could be burnt to death.

Danger is everywhere.

And the certainties Michelangelo
seeks evade him.

In Rome, Pope Leo suddenly dies
of pneumonia.

From then on,
the papacy is in crisis.

By 1523, another Medici
is given the impossible task

of re-establishing papal control.

Clement VII has no chance, really.

He's really up against it
on every front.

There's money running out.

The playbook is raise taxes,

papal indulgences,
get more money into the coffers.

But all that's doing is fanning
a new kind of fire,

because there's then resentment,
even within your Catholic base.

SHOUTING

SCREAMING

There are attacks on clergy.

Things are building
to some great explosion.

The controlling forces of the Church

and powerful families like the Medici
are faltering.

Radical forces are sweeping
across Italy,

heralding a seismic shift.

The ramifications of Luther's ideas

lead to the splintering
of Christendom.

Leaders of particular states
realise this is their chance

to throw off papal authority

and get control of the Church
in their own lands.

The Habsburgs, who rule a vast
swathe of Western Europe,

sense an opportunity to seize powers
from Pope Clement.

On the 6th of May 1527,

the Habsburg Army
marches towards Rome

with orders to surround the city.

But the soldiers are mostly
radicalised followers

of Martin Luther.

They defy orders
to hold the city walls,

and brutally attack.

What then happens
is absolutely appalling.

It's what's called the Sack of Rome.

One onlooker said that it was like
hell had come to Earth.

The people who lived in Rome never
thought it would happen to them,

because they were God's holy city.

Nuns are raped.

An orphanage is just massacred,
they kill children.

40,000 to 50,000 people
are massacred.

Bodies are dumped into the Tiber.

People say that the river
literally runs red.

The soldiers themselves said they
were going to take Rome by storm.

And they were there not only
to loot and to pillage,

but also to humiliate the Church.

Artwork is decimated.

So the Lutherans, of course,
see this as

iconic art which needs
to be destroyed.

This seems to be an attack
on the very idea of Rome

and a condemnation of everything
that the Church has become.

In the wake of the Sack of Rome,

Florentines seized their chance
to reclaim independence

from their Medici overlords.

A lot of Florentines feel like

the city is really serving
the Vatican,

and that their interests
are not taken care of.

They see it as an opportunity
to oust the Medici

and build a real republic.

And this is another one of these
extremely difficult moments

for Michelangelo, who does not want
to get involved in politics,

but everybody has to choose a side.

When news reached Florence
of the Sack of Rome...

..we did not mourn.

Instead...

HE CHUCKLES

..we imagined ourselves
to be released

from the yoke of the papacy.

Perhaps as Florentines...

..we could be free at last.

Michelangelo turns against
the very family

who originally took him in
and nurtured his talents.

He is getting uneasy
about the politics

and the warmongering
of his patrons,

and he sees this as an opportunity
to support the homeland.

We chased the Medici out of the city
and announced that

only God would rule in Florence.

The Florentines announce a republic,
the David against the Goliath

of the rest of the political
world of Italy.

Michelangelo decides to side
with his own Florentine state.

He becomes a military engineer.

The Florentine state comes to him
to design the fortifications

that would help protect the city
from the inevitable siege

that is going to come.

Soon, these defences are put
to the test.

Following the Sack of Rome,

the Habsburgs make peace with
Pope Clement,

who enlists their army to retake
Florence for his Medici family.

HE CHUCKLES

How naive we were.

To think that David's Florence
could match

the Goliaths of the mighty Habsburgs
and the Pope.

My fortifications,
they slowed them down, but...

..there was no saving the city.

SHOUTING

Michelangelo's beloved Florence
is overrun

and his life is suddenly in danger.

Clement's men round up
the anti-Medici supporters

and either imprison them
or execute them.

And Michelangelo's name shows up
on these lists.

He is chased by people
that want to kill him.

It is an utterly terrifying moment.

Probably the most dangerous moment
in Michelangelo's life.

His friends and associates are
being executed, and Michelangelo,

of course, thinks that he's probably
next on the list.

In a bitter irony,
he finds sanctuary in a room

beneath a chapel built by the Medici,

the very family
who are hunting him down.

He stays in hiding for two months.

He's seen so much
by this point in life.

He's been through so many different
theological crises,

he's seen the Reformation.

And I think
because of his religious beliefs,

he must be thinking
of his own death...

..and what he leaves behind.

But it's not his executioner
who comes.

Clement VII, recognising
the value of Michelangelo,

actually writes a letter
to secure his safety.

Despite the ravages
of the Reformation,

Clement still believes in the power
of art to shore up his papacy.

He pardons Michelangelo
and invites him to Rome.

So once again, art saves his life.

I looked death in the face
and survived.

HE CHUCKLES

I knew that I must use what art
was left in me to serve him.

He had decided
my time was not yet done.

When he arrived in Rome
for the first time,

more than 30 years before,

Michelangelo was a lowly craftsman,

utterly beholden to his patrons.

Artists now are of such importance

that they deserve the attention
and respect of the powerful.

Michelangelo has risen to a level
equal almost to the Pope.

But the return to Rome leaves him
a different man, I think.

He's much older now.

He's been through
so many different patrons.

So what does he want to do in these
latter stages, really, of his life?

Maybe there's
a larger purpose to art.

Now he wants to devote himself
entirely

to things that really matter.
And what matters most?

The salvation of your soul,
the forgiveness of your sins

in the hope for a good death.

As he describes himself,
"I work for God."

And where better to serve God
than in the Sistine Chapel?

Clement sets Michelangelo a task
that will push him to confront

the deepest questions of his faith.

I was back once more in Rome,

gazing up at what I'd done,

and I saw I needed to do
something greater.

With the gifts that God himself
had granted me,

I had to say what I felt.

I've been to the Sistine Chapel,
I think, 55 times.

And just like everybody
who comes in that door,

I'm struck by the awesome,
overwhelming power and scale

and magnificence
of The Last Judgement.

When you walk into the Sistine
Chapel, it steals your breath.

Imagine what it was like for someone
who had never seen imagery before,

especially on that level.

What is so shocking
is the sheer size.

He paints over 300 figures
into this wall.

The Last Judgement was
a traditional subject -

Christ's decision to save some of
the souls after the end of times,

and to condemn other souls
to an eternal life of suffering.

The only person who is immediately
recognisable is Christ,

who is the centre of the
entire composition.

He is said to have two hands -
a blessing hand

and a punishing hand.

Heaven is up and hell is down.

The figures that tend to go up
seem to be full of energy.

The figures that go down that,
of course, are damned

seem to get progressively
compressed.

They are in pain.

Their faces demonstrate
their terror of what's to come.

I think that Michelangelo,
rather like me,

had terrible dreams
about the condition of his soul.

Terrible, terrible premonitions
about

whether at the Last Judgment,
he was going to be found wanting.

Michelangelo paints himself
into the scene

in the flayed skin of St Bartholomew.

This is an acknowledgement that

the surface of things
doesn't matter.

It's the internal condition
that matters.

And it's very, very clear
that Michelangelo knows

that he is going to be judged.

That painting is not
about "the Church".

It's about the moment between God
and all of the people who have died.

And they are Lutheran ideas,

which suggests you don't need
the Church to intercede from you.

In the end, it is
you and God together.

But I think it sums up artistically

the shock of what has happened
to the Catholic Church.

He depicts saints and
holy figures naked.

That's pretty shocking
in and of itself.

And they look scared.

Even though they've dedicated
their entire lives

to following the teachings of God,

they don't know
if they're going to get in.

The saints and the big players
in the Church are being shown

to be exactly the same
as everybody else.

He's saying,
"You are not more powerful here.

"You are fragile,
you are vulnerable,

"you are frightened, you are naked,

"as is everybody else."

"Only God's going to judge you.

"And we will all be naked and equal
before him when that time comes."

It must have been so cathartic
for him to paint.

In some ways,
we can see The Last Judgement

as a kind of grand summary

not only of Michelangelo's
life and his art,

but maybe even of his times.

Michelangelo puts everything
in there -

the good and the bad,

the beautiful and the horrible.

This is a moment of unprecedented
freedom on the part of the artist,

and that is
what a modern artist does.

So The Last Judgement is one
of these culmination moments.

One of the greatest works of art
of all time.

Who have I served?

I've had so many paymasters,

difficult patrons, petty rivals...
HE CHUCKLES

..all seeking immortality
through my art.

Will they be remembered?

Michelangelo transforms
the whole notion

of the role of art
and an artist in society.

Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael,

they've moved from being
nameless artisans,

when he's really a kid
in the Medici household,

to being these superstars that have

kings and popes demanding, you know,
their work.

Ironically, we don't remember
the politics, the patrons

and the warmongering,
but the art lives on.

That's what survives.

We're attracted to the idea
that humanity can accomplish things

of such beauty and grandeur

in a time of war,
devastation and mayhem.

We all have a debt, I think,

to Michelangelo and to the artists
of the Renaissance,

because they showed us
what we can do

beyond the complexities of the world
and the mess of politics.

They showed us what is possible.

HE STRAINS

I am so old now.

Death is tugging at the cape

to go along with him...

..but there's still so much to do.

So I shall keep him waiting...

..for a while longer.