All language subtitles for BBC.The.Story.of.Women.and.Art.1of3.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

Right in the heart
of Florence there is

a place of pilgrimage for
any art historian.

Stretching across the Ponte Vecchio,

above the heads of the bustling
tourists, lies the Vasari Corridor.

Named after the Renaissance painter

and art critic Giorgio Vasari,
its plain, white-washed walls

house the greatest collection of
artists' self-portraits

in the world.

Dating from the early 16th century
until today,

this kilometre-long corridor charts
the journey of Western art history.

A rich and illustrious genealogy,

this is a who's who of
the great and the good in art,

a pantheon of masters.

But one thing you notice pretty
quickly

is there are
precious few mistresses.

There are 1,700 artists'
self-portraits

but only 7% - 7% - are by women...

..a situation that I've found
repeated on the walls of the world's

most important museums
and galleries.

Women are models and muses

but there is an absence
of female artists themselves.

Why is that? Do women lack talent?

Or does it speak to a more profound
truth about the history of women...

..confined as they often were to
domestic and subordinate roles,

starved of art education,

forbidden to even gaze on the
naked form?

In this series I want to
reveal that there were successful

female artists whose reputations
have simply faded into obscurity.

I'll retrieve dazzling
female artists from the shadows...

whose talent and tenacity overcame
almost insuperable obstacles...

..on a journey from the suffocation
of creativity in Renaissance Italy,

through the emerging opportunities

and continuing frustrations
of the 18th and 19th centuries,

to a modern pioneer who struck out
alone to define an entire landscape,

proving for all time that women
could be artists with a capital "A"!

This is the hidden story of how
women painted the soul

and crafted the fabric
of the world around us.

Florence...
cradle of the Renaissance,

where our notion of Western art
was born.

In the 15th and 16th centuries,
powered by the rich

and ruthless Medici dynasty,
this city

was at the frontier of innovation
in learning, architecture and art.

The word "renaissance" means
rebirth.

But was it only engendered by men?

If you look about the public spaces,
the piazzas, the monuments,

the palaces of Florence,
you'd certainly think so,

because there's a potent
sense of masculinity.

Male bodies everywhere.

Virility, male dominance.

Of course, you could see
images of women -

goddesses, nymphs, saints
and whores -

but these were the creations
of male artists -

flesh-and-blood women were all
but invisible.

500 years ago, no respectable
Italian woman would be

seen on these squares,
except en route to church.

Iron virtue, modesty, obedience -

these were the qualities demanded of
Renaissance ladies.

They had to keep their individuality
hidden behind a wall of decorum,

public life, street life
off-limits to chaste virgins

and discreet matrons.

Female creativity was confined to
tapestry and needlework,

crafts that were undervalued and
overlooked. Real artists were male!

This is the world in which
women lived,

and yet, in the early 16th century,
there was one Italian woman

determined to break that convention
and, in so doing,

she would become the first great
female artist of the Renaissance.

Properzia de' Rossi was
born in Bologna in 1490.

She possessed an absurd ambition -
to be an artist.

But not just any artist -
she wanted to be a sculptor!

The hammer and chisel are archetypal
male tools, wielded by artisans

and Renaissance sculptors,

both muscular and inspired.

Women were seen to lack both
the physical strength

and the intellectual
vigour for such a virile art.

Any artist or sculptor hoping to
make it needed an apprenticeship

and then years of training
in the workshop. For a woman,

every step on that path was blocked.

We don't know
whether de' Rossi railed at

her exclusion from the workshop -
she left no diary or letters.

But what we do have
are fragments of her early art,

and these are concrete proof of
her ingenuity in finding a way to

develop her skills and outflank
the obstacles ranged against her.

This extraordinary silver
filigree crest

is an object of wonder
and curiosity,

and it has inset in it
what look like

11 carved buttons.

But the magical thing about this
is that these buttons are, in fact,

plum stones,
or the stones of nectarines.

This is the Madonna of Mercy

and, to my amazement,
under the magnifying glass

you can see that the Madonna is
opening her cloak

to a sea of tiny, tiny little faces.

What really amazes me
is Rossi's skill.

Rossi might not have been able
to work in stone,

but she has taken something,
a piece of domestic waste,

and transformed it into magical
sculpture.

Necessity was
the mother of artistic invention.

By 1525, aged 35, de' Rossi had
honed her skills and audaciously

entered a competition against
her male contemporaries to become

one of a select team of sculptors
working here

in the Basilica of San Petronio,
the main church of Bologna.

And she won!

Though you'd never guess it today,
judging from where they've

placed one of her works.

In here, tucked away
in the corner of the church,

beside the postcards, is Properzia
de' Rossi's masterpiece in marble,

but the obscurity of the setting
diminishes none of its power.

This is a morality tale called
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife.

Here, Potiphar's wife -
she doesn't even have her own name -

is hanging onto this man,
who's trying to flee away.

We can tell that she's
a fallen woman

because her boobs are hanging out -
it's always a bit of a sign -

as she's rising off the bed to try
and claim him.

Look at it,
it has the power of Michelangelo.

Look at the strength of that
outstretched arm.

Look at the torsion
all across the piece.

She's the first female sculptor in
marble in 16th-century Italy.

She had mastered what lay at the
very heart of all Renaissance art -

the nude - but therein lay
a problem for de' Rossi.

It was unthinkable for
a modest woman

to study and recreate
the male form.

Why is Properzia not better known?

Well, I think some of the answer is
implicit in the marble itself.

She has shown a brilliant
understanding of anatomy,

even down to this bisected
calf muscle, and Properzia must

have known everything about
the male body in motion.

In short, she knew too much.

She damned herself in stone.

Properzia de' Rossi was
competing on male turf.

Backlash from the artistic
fraternity was inevitable.

First problem with all artists,
men or women,

is jealousy.

And in fact she had
a main opponent,

her personal enemy was
Amico Aspertini.

Amico Aspertini was another artist

and he was always gossiping
very, very badly about her.

So what did he say about her to
slur her reputation?

He said she was a bit of a bitch.

A bitch?

To do a man's work in a world
populated by men,

needed to be very determined,
to know what you want to do,

and especially to be very skilled.

She was determined
and she got what she wanted.

Well, not quite. Facing increasing
attacks on her character

and reputation, de' Rossi retreated
from public works -

and in 1530, just five years after
working on the church, she died

penniless and alone,
in a paupers' hospital.

A wretched end for a woman who
the great art critic Giorgio Vasari

included as the only female amongst
142 artists in his hallowed tome

Lives Of The Most Eminent Painters,
Sculptors and Architects.

As he lamented,

"If only she'd had as much luck and
support as she had natural talent,

"she, who now lies
buried in the shadows of obscurity,

"would have equalled in fame the
most celebrated workers in marble."

Properzia's fate epitomises
the risks female artists

faced in the Renaissance.

How many other women dared to make
a name for themselves in art?

There is a group of art historians
in Florence who are working

tirelessly to find those who did
take on the challenge, to prove

that women did play a significant
role in our art history.

You just need to know where
to look.

'There are scores of store rooms
in Florence alone where

'works of art remain
hidden from view.

'It's here Linda Falcone,

'director of the Advancing Women
Artist Foundation, and her team,

'have sifted through to discover
a lost world of female creativity.'

In these storage areas you'll find

approximately 2,000 works
by women artists.

We're talking about paintings,
about sculpture, about drawing,

and it really gives you an idea

of how many invisible works

are waiting to be rediscovered

and waiting to be restored
and presented to the general public.

Like seven-eighths
of the iceberg - hidden.

Right, we usually
talk about the tip of the iceberg,

this is the bottom part
of the iceberg.

With the female contribution
hidden away. Exactly.

People are too quick to say
women are no good at art.

Why are they no good at art?
You might assume that

women are not on the walls
because they just can't do it,

whereas, you know, if we don't see
the work, how can we decide?

But getting to see it is
precisely the problem.

Most female artists did not have the
stomach to fight it out in public,

choosing instead to practise
their art behind closed doors.

There was one sanctuary where female
creativity was protected,

nourished, even celebrated -
the Church.

For a glimpse of the possibilities,
Linda's diplomacy has got me

access to the monastery
of Santa Maria Novella.

So, behind the walls of monasteries

and ex-nunneries, there is
the hidden art of religious women?

Definitely, and it was actually
one of the easiest ways

in which a woman could produce art
was through convent life.

BUZZER

Buonasera!

While to us the convent might
suggest confinement and constraint,

for women in the Renaissance
it could be a place of liberation.

Relieved of the demands of family,
and living apart from society,

with its rules and expectations,
entire communities of women

could devote themselves to learning,
literature, music, textiles and art.

'In this monastery lies a work
by a nun, Sister Plautilla Nelli.

'It has remained hidden from public
view for over 500 years

'and now can be found in
the monks' dining hall.'

Wow, it's immense!

I think that's the biggest painting

by a female artist I've ever seen.

It's seven metres long.

It's the only Last Supper by
a woman artist that we know of.

The courage that a woman would
need to face a theme like this,

and we are talking
about a masculine theme... Yes.

It's the highest sort of honour that
a painter can bestow

upon themselves,
let's put it that way.

So, for Nelli to
face this theme is

significant in its own right.

But look closely at the male
figures.

They are noticeably feminine -

a stark reminder that Nelli had no
access to male models.

Naturally, she relied upon the world
around her, a world of women.

Think about the scale and spiritual
importance of this painting.

You can see that, separated from
the strictures of society,

a female artist could have
the same artistic ambition

as a Leonardo da Vinci.

The privacy of the convent
protected female artists,

but it limited what they could paint
and who was able to see their work.

There was, however, another haven
for female artistry,

one that offered protection

whilst holding the keys
to untold privilege and prestige.

After the Church,
THE most influential

patron of art in the Western world
was the court,

and no 16th-century court
was more powerful

than that of King Philip II
of Spain.

But success as a court artist
required both talent

and political nous to navigate
a glittering but cut-throat world.

Sofonisba Anguissola was to
prove a cool tactician.

She was born into minor,
impoverished nobility

in northern Italy

but she made it from there to
the very heart of the Spanish court.

Sofonisba Anguissola was born
in 1532, the eldest of six sisters.

With no money for dowries,
her father trained them all

to be exceptionally
accomplished instead.

He proudly boasted of Sofonisba's
skill to Michelangelo himself,

sending her sketch of a laughing
child as proof.

But the master wrote back -

could the teenager tackle a
trickier subject, the crying child?

And this is the magnificent result.

It showed her talent for capturing
the life of her subject

and she would go on to be
a pioneer of an entirely

new genre of informal intimacy
known as the conversation piece.

I'm looking at
Sofonisba Anguissola's masterpiece,

the chess game.

It's a group portrait of
her three sisters,

and the individual personalities
shine out of this painting.

My absolute favourite is cheeky
little Europa in the middle.

They're playing the great game of
strategy and tactics - chess.

Here, Lucia has taken the queen

and, interestingly, it's only
in the Renaissance that the queen

becomes the most powerful
piece on the board.

Surely Sofonisba is telling us that
women can be the queens of strategy.

Her new style of portraiture swiftly
won over an influential clientele,

and none more useful than the
Duke of Alba, who would offer her

a golden opportunity - an
introduction to the Spanish court.

So, in 1559, Anguissola, aged 27,
left her home

and sisters behind to come to Spain
as a guest at the state wedding

of King Philip II to
Isabel de Valois.

Here in the Palacio del Infantado,

she faced the biggest
test of her mettle.

The wedding was
the culmination of

delicate peace negotiations
between Spain and France.

Imagine the tension.

It would daunt even the most
experienced courtier.

But Sofonisba Anguissola had more
than enough poise

to meet the challenge.

That evening, there was
a torch dance,

whereby a man passes the torch to
the woman he'd like to dance with,

and then the woman has
the power to invite a man to dance.

And then, with unimaginable
self-command,

Sofonisba passed the torch to
Philip II, the King.

With the eyes of the court upon her,

she took to the floor,
and he danced with her.

She was a palpable hit.

Sheer finesse secured
Anguissola's entre to court,

but as a woman,

she could not be officially
recognised as a court painter

on the same terms as men -
her title was lady-in-waiting.

And there was a price to
pay for her art, too.

In the 16th century,

state portraits
were vital diplomatic tools

amongst the courts of Europe -
they were less about art

and more about politics.

Would Anguissola's playfulness serve
the art of statecraft?

This is a highly, highly formal
portrait of Isabel de Valois.

It subscribes to all the stringent
rules of Spanish court portraiture.

The great stiffness of pose.

She's not just a woman,
she is a queen,

and queen of
the richest nation on Earth.

There's the part of me
that can't help

but regret the transition
from the intimacy, informality,

mischief and laughter of her
earlier paintings, back in Italy.

But that's really to miss the point,

because what a portrait like this
shows is Anguissola's capacity

to live by the stringent rules
of court portraiture.

Sofonisba Anguissola has
proved that she can play the game.

Anguissola never put
a graceful foot wrong.

She enriched her family, and pulled
off two advantageous marriages.

Even in advanced old age,
her reputation was still undimmed.

Not only did she impress and
surprise Michelangelo in her youth,

in her 90s, she won the homage
of Van Dyck.

In 1624, Van Dyck, aged just 25,
himself a celebrated artist in

the courts of Europe, made a special
pilgrimage to Anguissola's home,

and here at the British Museum,
his notes and sketchbooks survive.

And here is a charming, vivacious,
quick sketch

of an old, old lady,

Portrait of Sofonisba,
the painter,

done from life in Palermo in July
1624, her age then 96,

still with her memory
and her senses "prontissimo" -

so speedy, quick,
she's still got all her faculties.

How can it be that Michelangelo
and Van Dyck

found Sofonisba so compelling
as an artist

and yet her reputation
is almost unknown today?

I think the answer must
lie in the court context.

The court made her art possible,
nurtured her, sheltered her.

But it guaranteed that her art
would never be bought

and sold on the open marketplace
and ensured that her art remained

an acquired taste
of the privileged few.

So, could a woman in the Renaissance
ever become an independent

professional artist,

heading her own workshop,
earning her own money

and battling it out with
men for commissions?

There was one place in Italy where
it was possible - Bologna,

home to the first university
in the world,

a city with more liberal attitudes
to female learning,

and greater legal freedoms.

Lavinia Fontana wasn't born to
the Bolognese nobility,

she was the daughter
of a struggling artist.

But that is key - she had access to
oils, to pigments,

to the brushes,

to the canvases, but above all,

she had an entre

into the mysteries of artistic
production - she had training.

Commercial art in the 16th century
was in the grip of powerful guilds

who governed access to that
essential training, barring women.

Family provided the only
alternative for them.

But in a corner of a store room I've
discovered proof

that Fontana realised her
true value.

This is a self-portrait
of Lavinia Fontana. It's exquisite.

But this is not just your ordinary
representation of female virtue.

It's actually a very canny
piece of marketing.

She sent this painting to
her putative father-in-law.

In the background there's a cassone,
which is an Italian marriage chest,

which symbolises dowry.

But the Fontanas had very
little in the way of dowry to offer.

Next to the cassone, however,
spot lit, there's an easel,

a direct reference to Lavinia
Fontana's professional skill.

What's she's saying there is,
"My marriage chest might be empty

"but I am rich in talent."

And when she got married in 1577
and became a mother,

Fontana was determined to keep
her workshop open for business,

as her family manuscripts reveal.

The documents that we
have here tell us

so much about what it takes

to become
a successful female painter

and at the same time
a successful wife and mother.

I mean, this is a woman who turned
out hundreds of paintings,

perhaps 200-300 paintings
in her lifetime

and yet was pregnant 11 times.
It's unthinkable.

We've got a document, in fact,
that's amazing

in so many ways, poignant,
remarkable.

It's the list that Juan Paulo,
her husband, writes of the births

and, sadly, so many of the deaths
of their children.

It's a document that also
attests to the way that she rises

through society.

Because any couple will always
choose as godparents

at this point in time
the people they think they know

that can do the most for their
children. Yeah, the most good.

Exactly.

So they start out with,
as godparents,

the Bolognese bourgeoisie.

As we move on,
1587, she's got Laudomia Gozzadini

as the godmother
to one of her children.

And the Gozzadini are THE powerful
family, are they not?

They are one of THE most important
families in Bologna,

and, of course, Lavinia has
an incredibly close relationship

with Laudomia Gozzadini.

I've come to see a painting
commissioned by Laudomia Gozzadini

herself, a work which attests to
Fontana's intimate understanding

of her female clients, the ladies
of the Bolognese nobility.

On the face of it,

it looks to be a simple celebration
of the wealth

and dignity of a prominent
noble family.

But look behind the surface wealth,

and, in fact, there are all sorts

of secret messages just
waiting to be decoded,

which are the surviving record
of a torrid and toxic family drama.

Fontana begins the tale with
this man, Gozzadini, the father.

He promised to leave his entire
fortune to whichever daughter

gave him a male heir first,
setting off a cruel fertility race.

And it was not Laudomia,
but Genevra who would be the victor.

And you can see this by the fact

that her father is touching
her hand.

But Laudomia has her revenge.

Look at Genevra, look at her face,

she is palpably
and demonstrably ugly.

Her husband blamed Laudomia
herself for his inability to

get his hands on the great fortune.

Laudomia will have none of it.

If you look at Genevra's medallion,
on it you can just about see

the figure of a man with a proud,
rampant, erect penis,

whereas, on Laudomia,
there's another naked man

but his penis is flaccid.

She is saying the fault is not mine,
fella, the fault is yours.

Her version of the story is
here for all time,

she will not be marginalised,
in her family or in art.

This is the world that women made.

Fontana owed her career to the women
who commissioned her works,

securing her position as the first

professional female artist
of the age.

But for me,
her paintings are so powerful

because they provide
a precious window upon

the lives of daughters, brides,
wives and widows.

Yet perhaps it is this very family
focus that has enabled her work

to be overlooked in history.

In the hierarchy of art, such
intimate family portraits

were not as highly valued
as historical and biblical epics.

For a female artist to secure
her place in history,

she would need to live and paint
on a far grander scale.

Rome.

At the turn of the 17th century,
the city of Caravaggio,

a place of light and dark,
the sacred and profane.

The home of Artemisia Gentileschi.

Born in 1593,

Gentileschi, like Fontana,

was the daughter of an artist.

From the outset
she tackled the epic.

Her first subject, at the age of 17,

was a favourite of male artists,

Susanna and the Elders,

typically presented by men as
a beautiful naked woman

luxuriating in the attention
of older men.

In fact, the biblical story
is very ugly.

Those elders want Susanna to
sleep with them

and when she says she won't
they say they'll betray her

to her husband as an adulterer,
and she will be executed.

In her depiction, Susanna

doesn't enjoy anything about
these men.

They're dirty old men,
leering over the wall at her,

trying to touch her,

and she is writhing away in horror.

At the tender age of 17,

Artemisia Gentileschi is trying to
give expression to something

which doesn't even have a name,
the violence of the male gaze.

This stark judgment upon men was to
prove depressingly accurate.

Just two years later,
Gentileschi's father brought

charges against the painter Agostino
Tassi for his daughter's rape.

Tassi was her teacher
and had exploited her.

The subsequent seven-month trial

dragged Gentileschi's
reputation through the mud.

Tassi counterclaimed Artemisia was
no virgin, an easy lay,

so how could it be rape?

But Gentileschi refused to
withdraw her testimony.

In fact, she offered to submit
to the thumbscrews

to prove her version of events.

Think about it, she's an artist.

What a risk -
she needed those hands.

This demonstrates her
dauntless courage, but also

the fierceness of her commitment to
her own truth about women and men.

The shadow of this trauma has
coloured the way

Gentileschi's work has been viewed,

as a shriek of rage and revenge
against male oppression.

But that's not what strikes me.

I see female strength in adversity,
and the triumph of art over ordeal.

This, for me, is one of the most
stirring paintings in the pantheon

of female art -
it's Judith and her maidservant.

They've just committed
a political assassination,

creeping into the tents of
the Assyrian enemy,

where they have decapitated
the general Holofernes.

There is his head, in the bundle.

This was painted probably about
a year after Gentileschi's trial,

when she was still around 20.

But actually I don't read
female violence against men,

or revenge against patriarchy
in this painting.

Just look at those women -

they're shoulder to shoulder,
their bodies echo each other.

For me, this painting is all about
female unity of purpose and bravery.

It says, in the strongest way
possible,

men don't have the monopoly
of courage...

..as Gentileschi proved
when she left Rome behind

and headed to Florence, determined
to reinvent herself.

Here among the tens of thousands
of volumes of city records,

there are legal papers that have
just been unearthed which

illuminate exactly how
she went about it.

These are books that are records
of some of the debts she accrued.

In this case,

she's purchased something from a
very, very prestigious silk merchant

who could become a potential patron.

If she hasn't paid off her debt
in time,

perhaps she can offer him
a painting.

She first is seeking out
minor patrons.

These patrons of music
in the circle of the Medici.

Ultimately, though, we know that
she's casting her line,

looking for the big fish.

And does she land her big carp?

Oh, she succeeded
at the highest level.

She obtained her ultimate goal,

which was the patronage of
the Medici grand duke himself.

What I adore about your
archival finds is that I think

they absolutely refute the popular
impression of Artemisia as a victim.

We don't see a victim of
male violence here.

What we see is a woman who is
capable of doing business with men,

doing business like a man, and yet
she never ceases to be a woman.

As you might say in Italian,
she's a tremenda.

Gentileschi refused to be
defined by her gender.

As she promised one
sceptical patron,

"You will find the spirit of
Caesar in this soul of a woman."

She strode into the male arena,
tackling historical epics

and ambitious public works
all over Italy and beyond,

her reputation reaching even
Charles I in faraway England.

In 1638, Gentileschi came to join
her father, who had been

painting at the English Court
for 12 years,

on the grand public works that
secured a male artist's reputation.

Now Gentileschi came to
the rescue of her ageing father

on his most prestigious
royal commission,

found here today
at Marlborough House in London,

the crowning glory of
the main salon.

And this is it - an allegory of
peace and the arts

under the English Crown.

She was more than a match for
her male contemporaries.

The epic theme and commanding scale
epitomise Artemisia Gentileschi's

supreme belief in
her own proficiency and power.

The woman who had found herself
a man's plaything,

tortured and dishonoured while still
in her teens,

had forged an international career,

and this in an era when most Italian
women barely left the house.

What a feat, armed only with
her fearlessness and her talent.

So, despite the stifling constraints
of Renaissance Italy

and Catholic Spain,
a handful of dauntless women

had demonstrated just what it took

to scale the heights of artistic
endeavour and gain public acclaim.

But the days of Catholic artistic
dominance in Europe were numbered.

There was a new empire growing
in the north,

where the next great artistic
flowering would take place.

Welcome to the Dutch Republic,
a different world.

Unsurprisingly, in the 17th century,
the Dutch had their own ideas

about the proper role
of women in life and art.

Women had greater freedoms
than in Italy.

They bustled about the streets
and marketplaces,

and even ran businesses.

English visitors were shocked
at their bossiness.

Here, the Reformation had
rejected the opulence

and excess of Catholicism,

and art was no longer preoccupied
with the nude and the epic.

The Dutch liked their paintings
on a domestic scale, in a minor key.

No blood and guts, no smells and
bells, the aesthetics of restraint.

All of this was encapsulated
in a newly emerging genre,

the still life,

a subject at which ambitious
female artists could excel.

This is a still life
by Clara Peeters.

She is a pioneer

of this form, which is called the
breakfast piece.

Clara Peeters was born a year after
Artemisia Gentileschi,

but you couldn't have
a greater contrast of art,

of world view
and, I think, of femininity.

You might think, well,
it's all muted monochromes

and it's just the mere makings
of a meal - so, big deal.

But, in fact, it's peace
and prosperity in miniature.

What she's saying here is, look,
these are the concentrated

ideals of our new Dutch Republic.

Plenty, stillness,
all within a context of moderation

and religious discipline.

If you look close, you can see,
in the shiny pewter lid

of this wine jug, there is
a little face.

So there is Clara Peeters,
and she's looking back at us.

There she is at the very centre
of domestic ritual,

and at the very heart
of domestic life.

Ironically, we know little
of the life of Clara Peeters herself

but she has left her mark
on her work.

She deftly tapped into the
Dutch Republic's

most obsessive preoccupation -
the home.

A well-run household
stood for a well-run republic.

The spotlight on the home raised
the status of traditional female

creative occupations
such as lace-making and embroidery,

celebrating the talents
of the amateur.

300 years ago,
Amsterdam was abuzz with it.

The toast of the town was not
Rembrandt

but a now long-forgotten woman
called Joanna Koerten.

In fact, amazingly, at the time,

one of her works sold for three
times that

of Rembrandt's masterpiece,
The Night Watch.

And she achieved it all without
a paintbrush or a needle.

Isn't paper-cutting
seen as a dainty craft?

Yes, it is. Not an art.

Yes, it is, and it's very annoying.
People say, "Oh, what do you do?"

"I'm doing paper-cutting."
And they say, "Oh, yeah that's what

"children do in elementary school,"
but it can be so much more.

My word!

My word. It's like a hologram.

It's far too easy today to overlook
the dexterity required

to make art with a knife,

but Joanna Keorten was determined
her work could not be dismissed.

She was cunning. She would cut
portraits instead of landscapes,

and the portraits she cut from famous
people like emperors and kings.

It was very rare what she did.
She was well-known internationally

because travellers came
especially to Holland, to Amsterdam,

to see her and to see
her work and to buy it.

It's amazing that, to think of this
kind of European celebrity

and now she's kind of, you know,
vanished into the smog of history.

Yeah, she did.

Paper is fragile
and vulnerable to the elements,

so I'm not surprised to find that
so much of Koerten's fine work

has vanished or disintegrated.

But one of her most ambitious works

has survived, and can be found here
at the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden.

I can't help but notice, though,
as I walk the distinguished halls,

I'm not being led to a gallery.

Non-descript storage.
Where is she, then?

Ah, number three here,
this one.

There it is, in a frame.

Oh, so here she is, the woman that
once outsold Rembrandt,

and you keep her in storage.

Do you think you
could get it out

and we can restore it to pride
of place and have a good look at it?

Yeah, sure. OK.

And here it is.
Joanna Koerten's paper-cut

is a depiction of a king,
William III, William of Orange.

At first glance, you never would
imagine that this is a paper-cut.

It looks for all the world
like a pen-and-ink sketch,

or even a print
taken from an engraving.

But, nevertheless, it's
a work of stunning artistry,

and by having a king,
and by resembling a print,

what Koerten is doing is very
cleverly asserting the high status

of her art, she's claiming for this
domestic practice

the power and the prestige of a much
more public and formal type of art.

So, I think it's rather fitting
that at last she's reinstalled

amongst all these other old masters
in the Lakenhal.

I think this is where she would
imagine her art belonged.

Joanna Koerten, like Clara Peeters,

secured her reputation by evoking
the feminine ideals

of the Protestant north - chastity,
quiet diligence, domesticity -

but there was quite another side
to Dutch life.

The Republic presided over
the richest

and most rapacious trading
empire of the age.

Prosperity gave birth to a new,
broadly based market for art,

and here everyone from a farmer up
purchased paintings.

Today's Haarlem is
picture-postcard perfect,

but in the 17th century, it was
a great hub of the textile trade.

This is not a town that really wants
lots of glorious history paintings,

they want small pieces
on a domestic scale

and that's what Judith Leyster
excelled at -

smaller genre pieces, just the thing
for the bourgeois front room.

Judith Leyster's work was
more than a match

for her male contemporary
Frans Hals.

She excelled at paintings brimming
with laughter and the everyday,

but she could also represent
the darker side of Dutch life.

Today, we see Dutch femininity -
all calmness and serenity -

through the eyes of Vermeer,

but Leyster exposes what it was
really like to be

a woman in the Dutch Republic.

For me, this little painting tucked
away in the corner

of a museum in the Hague is
one of the most compelling paintings

ever produced by a female artist.

It's come to be
known as The Proposition.

Here in the centre, we have a
lovely young girl

determinedly doing her sewing
by candlelight.

A woman sewing is an archetypal
expression of feminine duty

and virtue.

And then over her shoulder
leers a man.

He's touching her
and he's offering her money.

He seems to want her to
sleep with him.

This painting oddly reminds me
of Artemisia Gentileschi.

This is a Protestant, northern
version of Susanna and the Elders.

This bent face is like Susanna's
twisting body.

So, although these women, divided by
religion and hundreds of miles

and climate,

they're both interested
in thinking about what it is

to be a woman who's endlessly
looked at by men.

Leyster faced the familiar choice
between an independent career

and family life.

Leyster achieved extraordinary
technical success

at a very young age.

And then, aged 26,
in 1636, she gave it all up.

She married another painter
and put down her own paintbrush.

Leyster's husband was half
the painter she was,

but the sacrifice had been made.

We know of only two further works
she painted after her marriage,

a still life and a tulip.

But not every woman was prepared to
limit their horizons to home, hearth

and husband. After all, this was
an age of exploration.

Men were venturing from
these shores

to the very edge of the known world.

These were waters no woman could
hope to cross.

And yet, towards the end of the
17th century, Maria Sibylla Merian

would do just that
in bold pursuit of her art.

The first 40 years of the life
of Maria Sibylla Merian

were pretty conventional.

She was a dutiful daughter
and then step-daughter.

She married appropriately enough.

But all the while in
her home town of Frankfurt,

she harboured
a passion for painting nature.

As she wrote,

"I collected all the caterpillars
I could find

"in order to study their
metamorphosis."

She had two daughters
and raised them

just as she was raising her
caterpillars to be butterflies,

but as she got older you get
a stronger and stronger sense

that conventional family
life in Frankfurt was a brake on

her artistic ambition,
her spirituality

and her scientific reach.

So, in 1685,
she did the unthinkable.

She left her home and her husband.

Merian packed her bags,
and with her two daughters

and her mother in tow,
escaped to the Netherlands

and a religious community
in the bleak and empty north.

Protestants believed that nature
study combined the ideals

of religious devotion and education,
capturing God's wonders on Earth.

Merian set herself the task
of revealing

the interconnectedness of life
itself.

She was the first who
combined in a very

delicate and beautiful manner

all the life cycle...

In one image. ..in one image
with the host plants. Yes.

And that, she invented that. Yes.

This is the pupae, you see,

so there are different metamorphoses.
Yes.

It takes extraordinary nerve,
I think, in the 17th century,

to leave a living husband.

She knew, "I have to be
without my husband

"to do the things I want to do."

And one of her missions was to
educate her daughters.

To pursue this she had no choice
but to leave

the wilderness behind and remove to
cosmopolitan Amsterdam.

But it would be here that Merian
would encounter the remarkable

specimens brought back by mariners
and merchants

which would intoxicate her.

She loved cabinets of curiosity,

stuffed with the treasures
of the East and West Indies,

but over time,
she became frustrated with them.

As she wrote, she realised that they
were not looking at the habitat

and propagation
of the insects that she adored.

It was as if you were
looking at a book

and the first two-thirds
of the story were torn out,

or, instead of a film of the life of
an insect, you just get a snapshot.

So, in 1699, a woman who had already
fled home and husband

undertook her most dramatic
journey yet,

to voyage for over two months
and 5,000 miles across the Atlantic,

to reach the tropical jungle
of the Dutch colony of Suriname...

..an inhospitable and uncharted
territory

on the coast of South America.

It's hard to recreate now
the sheer nerve

of a 52-year-old woman setting off
across the Atlantic -

a perilous journey -
with her 21-year-old daughter.

She set off into the interior,
in a canoe, with her daughter,

four days' rowing.

Finally there,
deep in the tropical rainforest,

she saw, teeming in the canopy,

the life that she came to encounter.

The paintings from Merian's
expedition were

published in 1705
and greeted with awe and wonder.

Prized in the eminent
collections of Europe,

and few more illustrious than the
one held here at Windsor Castle.

I've come to see a rare set
of Merian's watercolours,

purchased by the future
King George III in 1755.

Look what Suriname did to
Sibylla Merian's art.

There's nothing miniature,
polite or domestic about this.

The whole thing is alive,
it's like a freeze-frame in a drama.

It's exploding off the paper with my
least favourite of God's creatures.

Spiders.

To me, it has elements
of a monstrous, horrific cartoon.

This is nature as imagined
by Tarantino, not by Walt Disney.

Maria Sibylla Merian had
revolutionised scientific study,

showing the cycle of life
for species never seen before.

Finally, people understood
the intricate whole.

And yet, over time, as the world of
science and art parted company,

deemed neither
a scientist nor an artist,

Merian slipped into obscurity.

But I'm impressed to find a woman
who refused to be

constrained by conventions of gender
or by rules of art.

When I began my journey
two centuries before,

a female artist was
so desperate to be a sculptor

she practised on plum stones,

yet here is a woman trekking to
the deepest reaches of the tropics

to fulfil her artistic ambitions.

Recovering that lineage has not been
easy because posterity has

not been kind, so much is hidden,
unhonoured and unsung.

But by digging away in stores
and dark corners of houses,

churches and museums, you can
find a different perspective

on our world that female artists
fought so ingeniously to bequeath.

In the next programme,
I'm heading for Britain and France,

to discover if the industrial
and social transformation

of the 18th century would finally

see women vault the obstacles
in the path to becoming artists.