All language subtitles for BBC.The.Renaissance.Unchained.2of4.Whips.Deaths.and.Madonnas.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

BELL TOLLS

It says here that the Renaissance

was a tremendously important
period in European culture

that produced the beginnings
of modern thought.

And this period, it says here,

was marked by the revival
of the spirit of Greece and Rome,

and by an increasing preoccupation
with secular life.

And, I suppose, some of the time
that's what it was.

In some bits of
the Italian Renaissance,

the Greeks and the Romans
are definitely being remembered,

and modern thought is,
perhaps, being invented.

And it's certainly
getting more secular.

But that's only in some bits.

Over the years,
I've been all around Italy

and I've seen an awful lot
of Renaissance art.

And wonderful work,
no arguments there,

but, you know, very few bits of it,

very few indeed, are actually trying
to do what it says in the books.

I mean, this is a forgotten
master of the Italian Renaissance,

Niccolo dell'Arca.

Have you heard of him? No.

Why? Because he doesn't fit this.

Yet this was made in around 1460,

so in the pioneering, early days
of the Italian Renaissance.

Yet, are the Greeks and the Romans
being revived here?

Is modern thought being invented?

Has this got secular ambitions?

I don't think so.

The fact is, a lot of
what we've been told

about Italian Renaissance art

is thoroughly misleading.

It's just not what was going on.

Most of the time Italian art
wasn't reviving the Greeks,

it wasn't inventing modern thought.

It was doing something
far more important than that.

It was telling stories
to people who couldn't read,

imagining the unimaginable,

and getting in touch with
religious feelings

that were deep and Catholic.

I mean, come on.

This is Italy.

BELL TOLLS

Ah, here it is.

Zechariah 3:8.

Ecce enim ego adducam
servum meum orientem.

"Behold, I will bring forth
my servant, the Orient."

HE SIGHS

See that town up there on the hill?
That's Assisi.

A town filled with Renaissance art.

But also with
Renaissance complications.

Because that's where
Francis of Assisi was born.

Francis was the founder
of the Franciscan Order of monks,

the Greyfriars, as they were
known in Robin Hood times.

And in Italy he pops up
in more Renaissance art

than anyone except Jesus Christ
and the Virgin Mary.

Now, why would the founder
of an order of monks

get this much attention?

There it goes.
The sun coming up over Assisi.

How beautiful is that?

Now, if you ever find yourself
without a compass in Italy

and you want to know
which way you're pointing,

the thing to do is to find
the nearest Catholic church.

Because they all point to the east,

to the rising sun.

Interestingly,
in the Tuscan dialect,

Assisi, or Assesi,
actually means "rising up".

Like the sun rising in the east.

Or as we used to call it,
the Orient.

So it's Zechariah again, 6:12.

HE READS IN LATIN

"Behold the man
whose name is Orient.

"He shall build
the Temple of the Lord."

Because Francis's story
keeps appearing

in all this Renaissance art,

we know it really well.

We know that he was very rich,

but then he saw the light

and gave away all his possessions.

We know that one day Francis was
coming down from Assisi

when he came across a ruined chapel
here at San Damiano

at the bottom of the hill.

And he went in.

Inside was a crucifix
and, miracle of miracles,

it spoke to him.

"Francis," said
the talking crucifix,

"my house is crumbling.

"Go and restore it."

So that's what he did.

Carrying the stones on his own back,

Francis of Assisi rebuilt
the chapel here at San Damiano

and fulfilled
the prophecy of Zechariah.

"Hang on a minute, Waldemar,"

you might be thinking.

"You're sounding
like Dan Brown here.

"What are you implying?"

What I'm implying

is that Francis of Assisi
was a messianic figure

who thought he'd been instructed
to act by the Bible.

Zechariah 6:12,

"My servant the Orient will rebuild
the Temple of the Lord."

Francis of Assisi
thought he was the Orient.

BELL TOLLS

His followers thought it too.

Up on the balcony of the
Franciscan headquarters in Assisi,

looking out across the world,

they've put the words of
the great Tuscan poet Dante,

which make the connection
with the Orient explicit.

Francis wasn't just living a life,

he was fulfilling
a huge biblical prophecy.

You don't have to
take my word for it.

Take the word of Renaissance art,

and particularly
of the marvellous Giotto.

This is the great Basilica
in Assisi,

built in memory of St Francis
in the 13th century.

And in around 1300,

Giotto was commissioned
to paint Francis' story.

Now, 1300 - that's early.

And this is one of
the defining frescoes

at the very beginning
of the Renaissance.

It's all up there.

There's Francis
giving away all his clothes

and renouncing his inheritance.

There he is talking to the animals

in a famous miracle
of divine communication.

And there he is
holding up the church,

rebuilding it exactly
as Zechariah predicted.

It's all here, laid out with
the clarity of a comic book,

in this vivid explosion

of imaginative
Renaissance storytelling.

When people go on about
the pioneering art of Giotto,

they talk about the new
solidity of his figures,

the classical influences
at work on his anatomies,

this new naturalism
of his landscapes.

And all that is true,

but it misses the point.

What's really remarkable here -

astonishing, amazing -

is that Giotto has found a way

to imagine the unimaginable.

I mean, look at this stigmata scene.

Christ as an angel

sending lines of pain from heaven.

Transferring his wounds to Francis.

What a strange storyline that is.

In the real world,
none of this could happen.

Francis couldn't hoist
the church up on his back,

or talk to the pigeons,

or receive the wounds of Christ.

In the real world, it can't happen.

But in art, it can.

That's what's
so telling and exciting

about the art of the Renaissance.

It's not about regaining
the civilisation of the Greeks

or quoting the classical world.

It's about making the impossible
feel vivid and real.

And if you can do that,

that's an enormous power.

It's the power of Renaissance art.

BELL TOLLS

Now, I don't know how familiar you
are with the concept of purgatory.

These are godless times,

so the chances are you don't know
as much about it as people used to.

Purgatory is somewhere
between earth and heaven.

It's where you go if you haven't
been bad enough to go to hell

but you haven't been good enough
to go to heaven either.

Not straightaway at least.

In purgatory your penance continues.

And your soul gets scrubbed up

until it's clean enough
to enter paradise.

That's Dante, the great Tuscan poet,

who's quoted so pointedly
on that balcony in Assisi

with that line about the Orient.

In this inventive fresco
by Domenico di Michelino,

painted in 1465,

the giant Dante looms over Florence.

Surrounded by
the scary and painful future

that all we sinners must face.

On the left of him that's hell,

with all those poor sinners
being stung by bees...

..and burned by the eternal fires.

Behind him, see that mountain?

That's purgatory,

where the world's lesser sinners
run off their sins,

like naughty schoolboys
running round the football pitch.

When I was at school
and I was naughty,

which happened a lot I'm afraid,

I was given lines to write.

The same thing over and over again -

"I will not flick ink
at my geography teacher,"

that kind of thing.

But in Renaissance Italy,

if you wanted to atone for your sins

and spend less time in purgatory,

you had to pray for forgiveness.

And the best person to pray to
was the Virgin Mary.

Why are there so many beautiful
Madonnas in Renaissance art?

Because so many Renaissance sinners

had so much praying to do.

These fascinating battles
to imagine the Virgin Mary

and capture her perfection

resulted in some of the
Renaissance's greatest pictures.

When I say great, I mean GREAT.

Look at the size of that.

The enthroned Virgin Mary.

Painted in the very early days
of the Renaissance,

in around 1315, by Simone Martini.

Now, that's what you call
an enthroned Madonna.

I don't know about you,

but when I look
at Renaissance pictures

I need to know what I'm looking at.

Otherwise even
the best Renaissance art

can blur into an impenetrable
wall of religiosity.

And that's particularly true
of all these Renaissance Madonnas.

There's so many of them,

and they can all feel the same.

So in this film
I'm going to guide you

through the main types of Madonna

that you find in Renaissance art.

So when you go into a museum,

you'll know exactly
what you're looking at.

This big one, the enthroned Madonna,

sits above us, surrounded by saints.

How do we know they're saints?

Because they've all got halos.

That is St Peter,
Jesus' trusty apostle.

You can always spot him in art

because he's always
carrying a big key...

..the key to heaven.

And there is St John the Baptist.

He's always wearing an animal skin,

because he lived in the wilderness.

So, John the Baptist is here,
St Peter is here,

the Virgin Mary is here.

And where is the only place

where they could all
be together like this?

That's right, heaven.

They're all in heaven.

That Simone Martini has done here

in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena

is to imagine that this wall

is an opening
in the side of the building...

..that looks out onto heaven...

..where the Madonna
and her saints have gathered

so that we, over here
in the corporeal world...

..can see her and worship her.

The enthroned Madonna
is particularly popular.

But there are many other
Renaissance Madonnas to pray to.

And a man could go mad
deciding which to pick.

So, to narrow them down,

I've done what any sensible admirer
of Renaissance art should do.

I'm focusing on the Madonnas
painted by Piero della Francesca.

Between 1445 and 1474,

along this stretch of road on the
borders between Tuscany and Umbria,

right at the heart
of the Italian Renaissance,

Piero painted a cluster of Madonnas

that can all be visited in a day.

And the one to start with
is up there,

in the little Tuscan
hill town of Monterchi.

It was painted for the town church

but an earthquake knocked it down.

So it's now got its own museum.

She's called the Madonna del Parto,

that's in Italian.

In English, she's
the Madonna of Parturition.

So if you know
what parturition means

you'll know why she's so special.

Parturition is childbirth.

So what this is
is an image of the Holy Madonna...

pregnant with baby Jesus.

It's very rare in art
to see Mary pregnant.

Not just in the Renaissance,
but any time.

It's as if pregnancy
is just too real, too biological,

to fit with the image
of the Virgin Mary.

But Piero pulls it off here
with such grace.

The next Piero Madonna is here,

in his hometown of Sansepolcro
in the town museum,

where you will find her

at the centre of
a complex religious arrangement.

It's a polyptych -

an altarpiece made of many parts.

Piero was originally commissioned
to paint it in 1445,

so that's right at
the start of his career.

But he dillied and he dallied

and he did all these
side panels first.

And the Madonna herself,

she was only finished in 1462

when, as you can see,
he was at his peak.

She is what they call
the Madonna Misericordia -

the Virgin of Mercy,

who is always shown
with her cloak outstretched,

offering mercy and protection
to those who shelter under it.

These giant Madonnas of Mercy

are a kind of stand-in
for the church itself -

a human building in which
the congregation can gather.

All these kneeling figures
at the front, these are the donors,

the people who actually
paid for the picture.

Because that's the other way
you earned time off from purgatory

in the Renaissance -

by commissioning
works of art for the church.

Why is there is so much
great Renaissance art?

Because so many
great Renaissance sinners

were trying to get
into God's good books.

WHIPPING

This is the Ducal Palace in Urbino,

and that is Piero's Flagellation.

Such a mysterious little picture.

And, very unusually, he signed it
with the name of his hometown.

But this is what
we've come here to look at -

Piero's Madonna of Senigallia.

She's so tranquil,

so still, so lovely.

And as with all these Madonnas,

Piero is faced here with
the fiendishly difficult task

of painting a Madonna
who is both a mother and a virgin.

That is the big challenge facing
the Renaissance imagination.

So up on the shelf,

he has painted a basket
of crisp, white linen -

a deliberate echo
of the Madonna's purity.

But this is Piero della Francesca,

the master of light.

So he doesn't just do it with linen,

he does it with sunbeams as well.

Look here - how the light coming
in so gently through the window

makes a beeline for Christ.

In the subtle symbolism
of this wonderful picture,

Jesus is the product
of a magic penetration...

..a penetration by light.

Now I think we're all agreed

that Piero's Madonnas
are serenely beautiful,

but I think we can also all agree
that his baby Jesuses,

to put it charitably,

are a touch unconvincing.

No, let's go further than that.

They're pretty ugly.

And the same can be said

of a lot of Renaissance babies.

How can an era that
gets the Madonna so right...

get the baby Jesus so wrong?

Well, actually,
it doesn't get him wrong.

At least, not on its own terms,

because you have to remember

what they're trying to paint here
isn't just a baby,

this is a God who's
come down to Earth as a man.

When the painted the baby Jesus,

the artists of the Renaissance

were trying to imagine a baby
who is also a God.

A newborn who has been there
since the beginning of time.

Two very different concepts

are trying to squeeze themselves
into one tiny body.

No wonder so many of them
are so ugly.

Because Piero's Madonnas
are so noble and lovely,

I worry that I may be painting
too sunny a picture for you here

of the essential drives
of the Italian Renaissance.

Yes, Italy, a land of mama's boys,

was especially fond of Madonnas.

But it was also a land full
of sinners who needed purging.

This is the convent
of San Marco in Florence.

And as you can see...

it's full of wonders.

It was taken over in 1435

by a religious order
called the Dominicans.

The Dominicans were founded
by St Dominic of Guzman

at the beginning
of the 13th century.

And the self-appointed task
of this fierce religious order

was to rid the church of heretics.

You can always spot
the Dominicans in art.

They're the ones wearing the
white robes with the black cowls.

And that's why they came
to be called the Black Friars.

The other nickname of the Dominicans

was the Hounds of the Lord.

It was based on a pun.

Dominican sounds a little
like "Domini canes",

which is Latin for "God's dogs".

This terrifying nickname,

the Hounds of the Lord,

seemed to suit their spirit.

The Dominicans were notoriously
keen on flagellation.

They had a relationship to pain.

And when the Pope in Rome
set up the Inquisition in 1229

to rid the church of its heretics,

the Dominicans were
entrusted to lead it.

So the Dominicans where the
dogs of God, religiously fierce,

taking on the heretics,

but you wouldn't know it from
the art they made.

Not here, at least, in San Marco,

where the entire convent
is filled with the paintings

of a Dominican genius they called
Fra Giovanni Angelico -

the Angelic Brother John.

Fra Angelico was a friar
here at San Marco.

And in each of
the cells in the convent,

he painted the story of Christ,

so the friars could
contemplate it 24/7.

There is nothing else like this
in the world.

As a feat of stamina,

it's a mind-boggling achievement.

But it's also extraordinary

because Fra Angelico
fully deserved his name.

He really was such
a sweet and gentle painter.

All the frantic flagellation
that went on here

seems so far away from the
delicate moods of Fra Angelico.

Here is his Annunciation -

the Angel Gabriel telling Mary

she is going to
give birth to Jesus.

And here's another Annunciation,

also in San Marco.

A painting of such
sparse and simple beauty.

Apparently he would always pray
before he began a painting,

and once he started a picture

he would never retouch it
or change it

because he believed that
his art was divinely inspired.

And if the word of God
flows through you,

you're not allowed to alter it.

The sweetness of Fra Angelico drifts
through the monastery of San Marco

like a beautiful scent.

But at the end of the corridor,
darkness lurks.

This is the cell
occupied by a Dominican

whose name still strikes terror

in the hearts of us unworthy types -

Savonarola.

It isn't time yet to deal with him,

but I need to warn you,
he's coming up.

See that snow on
the top of that mountain?

That's not snow at all.

It's gleaming white marble.

Which means I'm in Carrara,

whose famous quarries
supplied the stone

for one of the giants
of the Renaissance.

So far in this series,
we've talked mostly about paintings.

But, of course, it was also
a tremendous era for sculpture.

When you talk about sculpture
in the Renaissance,

you come here to Carrara

and you talk about Michelangelo.

Michelangelo's battles with
the white marble of Carrara

have come to define
Renaissance sculpture.

And the way he carved that marble

has come to be seen as
the Renaissance way of carving.

You know the stories,

they've gone down
in the folklore of art -

how Michelangelo saw
the figures hidden inside

the huge blocks of Carrara marble,

how he struggled with the stone
to set them free.

But it wasn't just
the stones of Carrara

that Michelangelo was taking on

in these famous
sculptural struggles of his.

He was also taking on the past.

Buried beneath Renaissance Italy

was the ancient world
of the Romans and the Greeks,

which was now being dug up again,

inspiring the Renaissance
to compete with it and match it.

The trouble is, all these
wonderful ancient marbles

that were being dug out of
the ground in Renaissance times,

inspiring Michelangelo and co,
were fundamentally misleading.

When they came out of the ground
they were pure and white,

but that wasn't how
they went into the ground.

We now know that the sculptures
of the ancients were never white.

They were always
highly coloured and gaudy.

But paint doesn't last
as long as stone,

so when these ancient sculptures
were dug up again...

they came out white

and misled an entire civilisation.

Poor old Michelangelo.

There he was, competing
with a mythic white past

that never actually existed.

But in this film, we're not
going to make the same mistake,

because what we're going to do

is to follow another
Renaissance storyline -

not the myth but the truth.

So the first thing we need to do

is to find out who broke
Michelangelo's nose.

The Brancacci Chapel in Florence.

A Renaissance hotspot

that's on every art-lover's
bucket list.

Two things of note happened in here.

The first was that in around 1425

Masaccio painted
these famous frescoes,

telling the story of how we
were expelled from Paradise and why.

But there's another reason
to come here -

because it was in here,
in the Brancacci Chapel,

that Michelangelo's nose was broken

by a rival sculptor
called Pietro Torrigiano.

Michelangelo had been taking
the mickey out of Torrigiano,

and Torrigiano snapped
and punched him in the nose.

"I felt bone and cartilage
go down like biscuit,"

he later remembered.

So this Torrigiano was obviously
violent and arrogant,

but he was also highly gifted.

And while Michelangelo,
with his broken nose,

went on to dominate
Renaissance sculpture,

Torrigiano had to
flee from Florence

and he found himself written out
of the story of the Renaissance.

He spent the rest of his career
floating around Europe,

making weirdly vivid sculpture

that's been largely forgotten.

This is also by him.

It's actually Henry VII,
King of England,

because, amazingly,
Torrigiano came to London too,

where he worked for the Tudor Court.

But England didn't
work out for him either,

and he ended up in Spain,

where he died in prison,
destitute and forgotten.

But look what he left behind -

a thoroughly different
sculptural tradition.

Just as Renaissance as the gleaming
white marbles of Michelangelo,

but thrillingly realistic and alive.

Just look at
the details of the anatomy.

This wonderfully stringy
and wiry body

of the old St Jerome

as he beats himself
penitentially with a rock.

This is the Renaissance
that history forgot -

intense, neurotic, realistic.

And the reason Torrigiano
can be as convincing as this

is because this
isn't made out of marble,

it is made out of terracotta, clay,

which you can mould
and shape and paint

with so much more detail.

Yes, it's less macho
than stone carving,

but that doesn't make it
less Renaissance.

And it's a tradition that
doesn't deserve to be forgotten.

This is what they call
a compianto,

a lamentation over the dead Christ,

by an artist from Bologna
called Niccolo dell'Arca.

This was made in around 1460.

That's right, 1460.

It's way ahead of its time.

One of the most dynamic
and exciting masterpieces

of Renaissance sculpture.

Even Michelangelo,
when he came here to Bologna,

admired Niccolo dell'Arca.

But since then, he's been written
out of the story of the Renaissance.

You just don't hear
about Niccolo dell'Arca.

Why?

Because terracotta - burnt clay -

is such unglamorous stuff.

You don't have to go
to Carrara to find it,

you just look down
at the ground under your feet,

and there it is.

And the Lord rained upon
Sodom and Gomorrah

brimstone and fire
from out of heaven.

You remember earlier in the film

how I mentioned Girolamo Savonarola

and how we'd be coming back to him?

Well, now's that time.

That's him, painted by
Fra Bartolomeo,

another of the artistic Dominicans
working here at San Marco.

Savonarola was not the kind of monk

you'd like to meet down
a dark Florentine alley.

Swarthy, hook-nosed, intense -

he entered the Dominican Order
in 1475.

Apparently, he just
knocked on the door

of the Dominican convent in Bologna

and announced that he was
going to be a knight of Christ,

so they let him in.

In 1482, he moved to Florence,

where his first task was
to teach logic and ethics

to the San Marco novices.

Judging by what happened next,

logic and ethics were not
things he knew much about.

At some point in
his early days in Florence,

Savonarola had a vision.

He saw that the Catholic church
was in need of purging

and he began to suspect
that he might be the one

who had been chosen to do it.

According to Savonarola,

the Renaissance world
had grown sinful and corrupt.

The rich had grown corrupt.

Art had grown corrupt.

As these sermons of Savonarola's
grew more and more fiery,

so more and more people
wanted to hear them.

Soon there wasn't enough room
in San Marco

and he began preaching here
in the Duomo in Florence

to ever-larger crowds.

Savonarola preached against make-up
and immodest behaviour.

Against music, dancing

and licentiousness.

And he began preaching,
as well, against art,

and those examples of it that
were not Christian enough for him.

Things reached a head in 1493,

when he had an especially
apocalyptic vision

that the sword of the Lord
was about to fall on the city.

Now, as it happened,
at exactly the same time,

the French were
about to invade Italy.

And when they turned up
outside Florence in 1494,

it was as if Savonarola's prophecies

were about to become uncannily true.

God, it seemed, had decided
to back Savonarola to the hilt.

Every one of his mad prophecies
was coming true.

If this had been
a genuinely enlightened era,

the kind of Renaissance
we've all been taught about,

then Savonarola's prophecies
would have been recognised

as the rantings of a lunatic.

But the Renaissance never was
as enlightened or progressive

as we've been taught

and, instead of locking him up,

Renaissance Florence
turned herself over to him.

Gangs of young men
began to patrol the city

to ensure that women were
wearing suitably modest dress.

New laws were issued

against sodomy,
adultery, drunkenness.

And a series of bonfires
were started -

the Bonfire of the Vanities...

..and all that was sinful
was thrown on them.

Botticelli, who had painted
such gorgeous re-imaginings

of the classical world,

was one of several
Florentine painters

who fell under Savonarola's spell

and who were persuaded
to throw their pagan art

onto the Bonfire of the Vanities.

It's also said -
with good reason, I think -

that this strange painting,

Botticelli's Mystic Nativity,

was inspired directly by one
of Savonarola's Christmas sermons.

"Christ will come again,"
said Savonarola,

"and when he does,
the countdown will begin

"to the end of the world."

Savonarola's reign of terror
didn't last long.

In 1498, he was challenged by
the Franciscans to a trial by fire

to prove that his Dominican
prophecies were true.

Savonarola refused,
and the mood in Florence

turned quickly against him.

Imprisoned and tortured
by the Papal Inquisition,

he confessed that his visions
and prophecies had all been made up.

And a few weeks later,

they hanged him in the
Piazza Signoria in Florence,

and then burned his broken body

to keep it from the relic-hunters.

Remember earlier in the film

we were looking at
baby Jesuses in art

and why they are so ugly?

Well, this is the other end
of the story.

Jesus was 33
when he died on the cross,

a fully-grown man.

But in Renaissance pietas,

Mary cradles him on her lap
as if he was still a baby.

It's one of the
most awkward poses in art,

and only the best artists
could pull it off.

Imagine me stretched across
the lap of my mother,

and she's holding me up
as if I were weightless.

That's so hard to get right.

And what all these pietas
are trying to do

is to link the death of Jesus
with his birth,

because Jesus was born to die,

and by dying save the rest of us.

That's why the baby Jesus
looks forward to the man

and the manly Jesus
looks back to the baby.

It's a very problematic scenario.

Not surprisingly,
most Renaissance artists

tied themselves into ugly knots
trying to imagine it.

Here's Cosimo Tura from Ferrara -

different as ever,

and describing
the impossible scene

with a wild-eyed
and wired intensity.

Even the great Perugino,

usually so poised,

struggles mightily
with the terrible dynamics

of this terrible pose.

This particular pieta

is by an artist called Sodoma.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you
why he was called that,

this is the Renaissance after all.

Anyway, it's a decent stab at
this fiendishly difficult subject.

What Sodoma's pieta gets wrong

isn't the anatomy but the mood.

There's a tenderness missing.

Sodoma gives us a decent Jesus.

It's the Mary he can't manage.

If Jesus was 33 when he died,

Mary would have been around 50,

so she has to be middle-aged

yet also emblematically
beautiful and innocent.

Now, how do you paint that?

It's an enormous challenge
for any artist.

One of my favourite pietas
is this one in the Louvre,

painted in around 1450 in Avignon.

This is pioneering French realism.

Feel the emotional depth

of this forgotten
French Renaissance.

So the pieta was a test

that only the greatest could pass.

And here in St Peter's in Rome,

Michelangelo finally gives us
the perfect example.

He makes his Mary a little bigger

and his Jesus a little smaller

so they fit together gracefully.

And, yes, Mary is
a bit young for her age,

but this extra youth

adds a note of fragility
to the moment

and stokes up the tenderness

of the mother-son relationship.

So that's Zechariah, 14:1.

"Behold, a day of the Lord cometh."

This is another Michelangelo,

the Risen Christ.

It's the moment when Jesus,
risen from the dead,

comes back to earth
after the crucifixion.

According to the scriptures,

he's supposed to be
completely naked,

because he left his shroud in
the sepulchre when they buried him.

And that's how Michelangelo
originally sculpted him.

But, as you can see,

someone has added
this discreet loincloth.

Happily, it's removable.

In the past, when the famously
liberal John XXIII was Pope,

Jesus was allowed to be fully naked,

as Michelangelo sculpted him.

But these days, he's not.

You can always tell the papal mood

by coming here to
Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome

and seeing if
Michelangelo's Christ is naked,

as he's supposed to be,

or covered up, as the authorities
have decided he should be.

So far in this film,

I've only nibbled at
the edges of Michelangelo.

He's such a huge
Renaissance presence

you'd need a 24-part series

to tackle him properly on the telly,

and not the few minutes
I have left in this film.

So there's only time
to focus on one aspect of him.

But it's the key aspect -

his religious fierceness.

With some Renaissance artists,

it's never entirely clear
what they believe in.

But, with Michelangelo,
there's never any doubt

that he's an old-fashioned,
tub-thumping Italian Catholic -

guilty, angsty and devoted.

It's true of everything he made,

but it's particularly true
of his masterpiece -

the Sistine Chapel.

It's the greatest room of art
in the world,

a banquet of tremendous
religious storytelling...

..and not just by Michelangelo.

Botticelli is in here too,

showing the Punishment
of Korah, Dathan and Abiram,

when God burns them up
with invisible fire.

And here's Perugino again,

with Christ handing
the keys of heaven to St Peter,

and doing it so gracefully.

So, on the lower level,

there are all these impressive
frescoes by other artists.

And then, up above,
there's Michelangelo.

Together, they act as one space

that encircles you with art

and engulfs you in
a dark religious storyline.

There is no angrier God in art
than the God of the Sistine Chapel.

He presides over a room filled
with trepidation and guilt.

Up on high, God creates Adam,

and Adam lets him down.

God creates Noah,

and Noah lets him down.

God creates the prophets,

and the prophets let him down.

And because they are prophets,

they know what is coming.

It's like a steam roller
of fear passing over you,

a typhoon of guilt,
trepidation and anxiety

blowing through the Vatican.

And because it's happening
all around you,

it pulls you into it,

it soaks into you.

And the reason why
everyone up there is so frightened

is made clear by Michelangelo

on the far wall.

This isn't any old day
we've walked into.

This is the last day of all,

the Day of Judgment.

Just as Zechariah predicted,

the end of the world is upon us

and everyone up there knows it.

And, of course, it isn't just
the saints and the prophets

painted by Michelangelo
who are being judged,

everyone who walks into
the Sistine Chapel

walks into the day of reckoning.

We're all being judged.

The whole room is judging us

and terrifying us with
the consequences of our sins.

Who's going to be saved

and who's going to be doomed?

That's what the walls are asking us.

It's not a very Greek question,

but it is a very Renaissance one.

In the next film,
things cheer up again

when we go to Venice.

We'll be eating, we'll be drinking,

and we'll be doing a bit of this...