All language subtitles for Sky.3D.The.Vatican.Museums.3D.1080p.Bluray.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org

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There is no surer way to escape
from the world than art.

But there's no surer bond to it than art.

To see the whole world's amazement
contained in just one place.

To feel yourself enveloped by the
wonders of creation at a single glance.

To discover the mystery
of the sheerest inspiration.

To experience the desire
of the great artists of every age

to reflect divine perfection.

There's the past, the present

and the future contained
in the Vatican Museums.

Over 500 years of history,

one of the greatest treasures
of humanity.

Remnants of an ancient
and mysterious world

that wants to tell its story.

The story of the Vatican Museums,

of the Popes who wanted them.

And at the same time,

our history.

Have you ever asked yourself why we speak
of the Popes Museums in the plural?

We say Ofecia Museum,

Lourdes Museum,

we speak of the Prado in Madrid

and the Hermitage
in St. Petersburg.

But in this case we say,

we must say,

the Vatican Museums.

The reason why is
because right from the beginning,

the Popes Museums had the function
of representing the comprehensive

whole of everything
produced by the hand of man.

Unique, artistic man,

a metaphoric figure in some ways
comparable to God the creator.

Because just as God created
the world from the void,

so the artist creates something
radically new from the matter

shaped by his hands.

And we shall find together,

doing so in a most effective way,

thanks to the visual technique of 3D,

the third dimension.

Because when it comes to artworks,

you have to get inside them,

you have to touch them.

We shall talk about the masterpieces
of the Italian Renaissance

and those of Greco-Roman art.

Everything that human artistry,

the talent and genius of mankind
have produced,

the Popes have wanted to preserve.

This is very important and
must be understood from the onset.

Because this is how
the Vatican Museums were born.

Dust,

ashes,

for some just an instant
in the vast circle of life.

And yet, our every day is spent trying
to elevate ourselves from that dust

to confront what
dominates our thoughts.

Divine perfection.

In the Ennead,

Virgil narrates that the priest,
Laacorn,

challenged the goddess
Minerva.

The punishment of the gods was terrible.

Virgil writes,

First, the serpents throw themselves

in the small bodies of his two sons

and then coil around Laacorn himself,

squeezing him in huge coils.

He tries to tear away the knots
with his hands

soaked with ghastly blood
and dread poison.

He sends terrible cries heavenward

into the bellowing of bulls.

When it was discovered in 1506,
in a vineyard just outside of Rome,

Pope Julius II
of the della Rovere family

had the Laacorn
brought to the papal palace

for placement in what would become

the courtyard of the statues.

Marking the beginning of what today

we call the Vatican Museums.

The public of the time was disconcerted

by the exceptional truthfulness
of this marble martyrdom,

which right from the start
was hailed as one of the major works

in the entire history of art.

The Laacorn is
the beginning of a journey.

The journey of humankind
to discover a forgotten past

that contains a future
yet to be written.

Here we are in a deliberate and
conscious celebration of Roman glory.

The classical world that enters
the home of the Pope of Rome.

And this is important because
the Popes considered themselves,

in a certain sense,

the legitimate heirs
of classical civilization.

First there was the empire of Augustus,
of Trajan, of Hadrian.

Then, said the Renaissance popes,
there will be the imperium sine fine,

the everlasting empire
of the Roman Catholic Church.

This is why we find more Greco-Roman
sculptures here in the Vatican Museums

than in any other museum
in the world.

Going through the collections of
classical statues of the Vatican Museums

is like taking a plunge
in the oceans of time.

We feel dwarfed by the powerful figures

stunned by the murmurs of stone
and by its gaze

in an endless,
undecipherable rhythm.

The imperium sine fine

seems to recite
the Augustus of Prima Porta,

a symbol of absolute power,

whose potency
remains intact even today.

The grim countenance and raised arm,

which imposes silence
before the battle,

intimidate as though
in the presence of a Greek god

made of stone and light.

By one's gaze wanders over the mystic
allegory and scenes of military victory

that decorate the lorica or cuirass.

The depictions are so intense as to seem
illusions produced by a magic lantern.

Spectres of light that inflame
our thoughts.

Auguste Rodin once said that

the artist must strike a spark

and then let himself be consumed

by the fire of his own creation.

Certainly that's what happened
with Francesco Franzoni,

a sculptor summoned in 1788
by Pope Pius VI

to reconstruct the horses
that pulled the splendid chariot

dating from the first century AD.

Even today, in this small room,

one breathes the power
of the two steeds

dashing in a race towards infinity.

So real that
their thundering hoof-boots,

a name, can be heard.

A spark, an idea
that comes from the distant past.

How willing are we
to dash into the unknown

and to look within ourselves

in the name of beauty?

In the dense silence of dawn,
Hercules reawakens.

The languid giant

is captured at the moment
when he's gathering his strength

after the rest following
the celebrated labors.

According to a legend,

when Pope Julius II, a broad-minded
man of volcanic temperament,

came across this work,

he found it too damaged
to compete with an alcohol,

and so he asked his most
ingenious collaborator to restore it.

But Michelangelo Buonarroti
refused.

That hauntingly perfect body
and that vibrant lump of marble

that was once a head
are a true revelation.

If we think of the frescoes

that Michelangelo would later paint
on the vault of the Sistine Chapel,

we see that there is an immediate
echo of the art of antiquity

in the nudes of the Sistine Chapel.

And we can understand how,
before such a work,

a great artist like Michelangelo
found his way.

Thanks to his encounter with the
Lacombe and the Belvedere Torso,

Michelangelo finally understood
what he had to do.

Release the life
trapped within the marble.

Restless and tormented,
voluble and disdainful of convention,

Michelangelo had come
to the Pope's court at the age of 23,

determined to challenge the perfection
of the masterworks of the past.

And he succeeded in doing so at once

with one of his most famous works,
the Pietà.

The mother, childlike,
gentle and resigned,

holds her son as though
he had fallen asleep.

This Virgin has
the same delicate features

found in Michelangelo's recurrent
memories of his mother,

who died when he was still a child.

The splendid cast,
conserved at the museums,

perfectly expresses the epic-making
force of a masterwork

that would influence
generations of artists.

The fact that at first it was thought
to be a classical work

prompted Michelangelo
to inscribe his name

seal-like on the ribbon of
the Virgin's dress,

the only signature
of an unequalled career.

With the Pietà, Michelangelo
finally leaves behind

the influence of another great artist
who often crossed his path,

Leonardo da Vinci.

Is it really possible
to capture the secret of life?

In Leonardo's view,

the more familiar one is

with the essence
of the elements of creation,

the closer one comes
to the mystery of God.

Like a prodigious architect,

he shapes life and death,
truth and symbol,

in one of his most controversial
and famous works,

Saint Jerome.

Unfinished, it was turned into
a shoemaker's stool in the 17th century

and rediscovered two centuries later.

The adventurous history of Saint Jerome
does not obscure its force.

The vibrant gesture of the arm,

the suffering face and the secret
shining in the saint's hollow eyes

have all the anxiety of reality.

Leonardo outlines the perspectives

that would lead to a new
conception of art,

turning form
into emotional expression

and building on the great intuition
of the father of Italian painting.

Giotto.

Ascetic as Saint Jerome
and revolutionary as Dante Alighieri,

Giotto painted
the Stefaneschi triptych

as an altarpiece
for the old Basilica of Saint Peter's,

demonstrating that he drank eagerly
at the fountain of life

of Saint Francis' doctrine.

Christ and the saints are faces
marked by real life

and shaped by faith.

On both the front and back
of the altarpiece,

the bodies seem to
instinctively find their place

in the typically Byzantine gold
that represents paradise,

but serves Giotto, above all,
as a background

against which to make the truth

of a three-dimensional world emerge.

Giotto brings God closer to mankind,

revolutionizing art and discovering
for the first time

the passions of the human face.

Three centuries later,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

put the teachings of his
great masters to good use.

As with Giotto,
Leonardo and Michelangelo,

Caravaggio's work
broke with the past,

shocked contemporaries
and paved the way for the future.

In the descent,

the sacredness of the moment
emerges from the darkness,

pierced by a primordial light

that lends the figures
a unique, dramatic touch.

As always, Caravaggio's saints
are poor derelicts

taken from off the street,

without halos and lacerated
by earthly suffering.

And yet Christ has the serenity of a man

who has died
in the sleep of the righteous.

The delicately abandoned arm

is a clear reference
to Michelangelo's pieta,

while with three fingers

he lightly touches the tombstone

that will seal him in the dust.

Three,
the same number of days

that separate him
from the resurrection.

If his life was tormented
and marked by incomprehension,

Caravaggio proved
to have deeply sensed

the meaning of Christianity.

The sole light
in his dark and self-destructive world

that seemed to compel him

to paint every work
as though it were his last.

With him,
a new anxiety is touched off

that would explode centuries later

with modern art.

Past, present, future.

Any artist capable of
revolutionizing the art of his time

seems to speak a unique language

that adds a new piece

to a great mosaic

at once ancient and modern.

Karl Krauss once said,

art is what the world will become

and not what the world is.

But to what extent

does the art of the past
speak to our time?

And how would it
influence our future?

There are important dates
in the history of the Vatican Museums.

The first is 1506,

when Alcon was discovered,

marking the beginning
of the Greco-Roman statue collection.

Another date to remember is 1973,

when Pope Paul VI
of the Montini family

inaugurated the gallery
of modern religious art.

This was a steady objective
of the policy of Pope Paul VI.

He was a very refined intellectual.

Familiar with the contemporary world,

he had an obsession.

The huge gap

separating modern art
from the Church.

The dream he made come true.

The exploit, in some ways,

rash that he managed during his papacy

was to lay the foundations
for reconciliation

between the Catholic Church
and the art world.

Forty years after the inauguration,

the tormented dialogue between old
and contemporary art and religion

still vibrates in the rooms of the
Gallery of Modern Religious Art.

It's a rhapsodic and
unpredictable collection,

where one is struck by the power
of new and provocative ideas

with which, after centuries,

artists go back
to measuring themselves

against the greatness of God.

In 1899,
a year before he died,

Vincent van Gogh,
confined in a mental asylum,

painted incessantly.

There was one work
hat obsessed him,

the Pietà by Eugene Delacroix.

But why?

What was he looking for?

His tormented life

and the violent brushstrokes
of his most famous works

are attenuated in this small,
precious Pietà.

Van Gogh's Virgin Mary has the worn
features of a peasant woman,

who with calloused hands
offers the world her dead son

for the salvation of all.

This Christ does not have
the calm features of the original,

but features hardened
by the worries and isolation

that afflicted Van Gogh himself.

In every brushstroke,

he sends Van Gogh's profound
desire to rediscover God,

to open the doors
of the mental asylum and to escape

from his state
as an outcast and prisoner.

In a letter to his brother Theo,

Vincent writes,

God is like an eclipsed beacon,

and it is certain that
in this moment

we are in an eclipse.

That does not prevent us
from feeling a terrible need for,

I shall call it by its name,
religion.

And so I go out at night

to paint the stars.

60 years later,

Russian Jew Mark Chagall,

one of Pope Francis'
favorite artists,

followed the trail
blazed by Van Gogh

with his red Pietà.

The echoes of Michelangelo
detonate in a red

that represents the blood
shed by Christ on the cross,

capable of saving the world
from a tangle of horrors and atrocities

that evoke those of World War II.

In the Vatican museums,

the old slips into the new

and art becomes timeless
sublime prayer.

In the madonna by Lucio Fontana

every rough edge left,

every vibrant corner
bespeaks uneasiness,

so variable and real

that it's impossible
to capture in its completeness.

As with his famous slashed canvases,

Fontana pursues
a new dimension of space.

And in meditating
on the frenetic truth of his age,

tries to find the meaning of life.

In the words of Salvador Dali,

heaven is to be found
neither high nor low,

neither on the right nor on the left.

Heaven is found exactly at the
center of the man who has faith.

Now I still don't have faith,

and I'm afraid to die
without heaven.

Salvador Dali, too, was searching for
another dimension of the mystic,

and he did so by digging deep
within himself.

Anticlerical, like all the surrealists,

late in life the artist looked
for a mediation point,

as demonstrated by the crucifixion

displayed in the Vatican museums.

This faceless Christ without a cross

has a healthy young body
imbued with a soft divine light

that seems to slowly
approach the viewer

so as to envelop him.

All is immersed in a sort of
desolate paradise lost,

adrift in a disquieting eternity

that well represents
Dali's personal conflict,

torn between provocation

and an inner search for the absolute.

The Vatican museums are a labyrinth

to be gone through in the same way
we do when examining our inner self.

Every work in the museums,

even the most apparently remote,

has a powerful bond with the others.

But what if the torment
or personal message of an artist

becomes so great
that it is comprehensible

to completely different
peoples and cultures?

What happens
when art becomes truly universal?

The Vatican museums
are like a mirror

that reflects the history
and the destiny of humankind.

That is how the pope wanted them.

One day in the year 1508
here in Rome,

a great pope, Julius II,

summoned two men
to appear before him.

One was a 25-year-old,

Raffaello Sanzio d'Albino,

or Raphael,

whom he asked to paint
his private suite.

What today we know
as the world's most famous rooms,

the Raphael rooms.

The other man was 33 years of age,

a Florentine
named Michelangelo Buonarroti,

to whom he said,

you shall paint the vault
of the Sistine Chapel for me.

The great history of universal art

begins with this pope
and with these great artists.

And it dates from the year 1508.

Raised in Urbino
in the refined studio of his father,

already as a boy,
Raffaello Sanzio

was familiar with the painting of
Leonardo and Michelangelo

and looked for a point of mediation
between the two.

Summoned to Rome
to assist established masters,

Raphael surprised everyone
right from the first fresco

of the Stanza della Signatura,

the work that was
to change his fate forever.

The disputation of the Holy Sacrament

is so grand as to cancel
the work of all the others.

It is the triumph of the Eucharist,

the divine word
that shows itself to the world.

According to Vasari,
the work has no equal.

Julius II
dismissed the other painters

and assigned the entire
fresco cycle to Raphael,

understanding that his art
was ideal

for telling old truths
in a new way.

Raphael wanted to outdo himself

and meditated
on the future of his art

as expression of a prayer

understandable
throughout the world.

Thus, some of his
greatest masterpieces were born.

Voices of the past
resound with new force

in the Stanza della Signatura.

This is the School of Athens.

All the wisdom of the world
is represented here,

which is the reason why
it is called the School of Athens,

as if all schools of human thought

were gathered
around Aristotle and Plato.

The supreme philosophers.

Raphael glorifies his contemporaries

in the bodies of the ancients,

creating a sort of personal
affective family tree.

And so we can recognize
his beloved Leonardo da Vinci

portraying Plato,

while the mathematician Euclid

is Donato Bramante,
Raphael's mentor.

Raphael himself peers out
from behind his teacher, Perugino,

creating an instant rapport
with the onlooker.

A last-minute addition

in the guise of
the restless Heraclitus

is the dark face of
Michelangelo Buonalotti

in a supreme tribute by Raphael
to his much-applied rival.

And the enthusiasm for the novelty
of Michelangelo's approach

takes shape in another
of the room's masterpieces,

the Incendio di Borgo.

Echoes of the Aeneid resound
among the classical architecture

never so theatrical and dramatic.

But the lead role
is played by the bodies,

twisting bodies,
despairing over their fate,

dominate the space,

and draw our gaze towards the Pope
in the background,

who extinguishes the flames
by making the sign of the cross.

In exploring the Raphael rooms
at the Vatican Museums,

among other things one can
come across the first nocturnal scene

in the history of art.

It is the liberation of St. Peter,

where God's miracle is performed
once more on the Church of Rome

with the coming
of the Angel of Salvation.

Feodor Dostoevsky said that divine
things issued from Raphael's hands

and divine are the rays of light
radiated by the angel,

which defeat
the rigid black prison bars,

setting the scene in the delicate
atmosphere of a dream.

This is a dream that,

thanks also to the silver
aura of the moon,

is narrated by the one true element,

the light that seems to come
directly from paradise.

The true philosophy,

the divine religion,

the law that governs the actions
and life of human beings

and the beauty that consoles
the soul of everyone.

We can experience this
by entering Raphael's rooms,

willed by a pope
who had understood everything.

Julius II della Rovere,

a pope who managed to choose
in a single stroke

the ablest of all.

One is Raphael,

the other is no less the Michelangelo.

To discover himself
in the eyes of the other,

at once identical and different.

Brothers and rivals,

opposite reflections
of the same image.

Different in terms of style
and temperament,

Raphael and Michelangelo
continued to work

on increasingly more ambitious works,

each determined
to outdo the other.

When, in 1509,

Pope Julius II proposed that the fresco

the vault of the Sistine Chapel,

Michelangelo accepted.

Because even if he considered painting
to be an art inferior to sculpture,

it was the challenge
that he'd always been seeking.

Michelangelo tackled the undertaking
and did it all by himself

in a sort of hand-to-hand combat.

A duel against the 1080 square
meters of the Sistine Chapel

to be filled with figures,

more than 300 of them.

He worked here for four years
until 1512,

a brutal task.

Just think what it meant
to work all alone

on a scaffolding 20 meters high

in the cold of winter
and the heat of summer,

with the colors that had dripped
down on his face

being mixed with the sweat
and the dust.

Covering the vault of
the Sistine Chapel with frescoes

was an auroric exploit.

In the Sistine Chapel,

there is all the love, provocation,
and obsession of a man

with a desire to make a life

pour out from a bare,
unsafe ceiling.

Michelangelo had to cope with
myriad hardships and difficulties,

ranging from the constant and
frequently harsh interference of the Pope

to the mold
that devoured his frescoes.

As was the case with the flood,

which became detached
upon completion.

Michelangelo had to paint it
all over again,

with nothing more to aid him
than the strength of desperation.

But in the end, Michelangelo won.

And when it was opened
to the public in 1512,

the Sistine Chapel
dumbfounded the whole world.

Michelangelo had taken his inspiration
from the events of Genesis,

clashing with Julius II,

who would have preferred
classic portrayals of the apostles.

Instead, such events served the real
protagonist of the work, the body.

Mythological, gigantic, absolute.

Not surprisingly,

Pope John Paul II
described the Sistine Chapel

as the sanctuary of the theology
of the human body.

The body, painted
as a flawless sculpture,

as the matrix of the divine,

which passes through
the ancient inspiration

found in the Belvedere Torso
and in the Lercum,

where it all began.

As is evident in the audacious
interpretation of the creation of Eve,

just as the church was born
from the blood of Christ,

so woman is born
directly from Adam's rib,

bringing with her the same
masculinity and manly appearance.

In the temptation
and expulsion from paradise,

Eve's guilt is harshly highlighted
by the horror in her features.

While the serpent,
which also has a female body,

appears to be reflected by the angel
that drives out Adam and Eve,

the composition is at once
powerful and disquiet.

Everything happens before the eyes of
the Hebrew prophets and pagan symbols,

the great sages
who from the abbesses of time

announced the coming of the Messiah.

But the most extraordinary
fresco of the entire vault

is the creation of Adam.

The idea is primitive
and yet extremely powerful,

the spark of life
that is about to be passed on

from the finger of God
to that of Adam.

It is as if God were
looking for himself in Adam,

mirror of his youth,

each hand outstretched
towards the other

without ever really
being able to touch.

It is as if Michelangelo was searching

for the whole reason of his art
in that infinitesimal space

separating the two index fingers.

The vault of the Sistine Chapel
was an absolute triumph,

but Michelangelo came out of it
a broken man,

his back bent,
his eyesight dimmed forever.

And yet,

his fate was destined
to be linked once again

with that of the Sistine Chapel

over 30 years later.

Without having seen the Systine Chapel
it is impossible to form a worthy idea

of what a man is able to achieve.
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe -

Despite their fierce rivalry,

Raphael was one of the first to acclaim

the sealing of the Sistine Chapel.

For him,

Michelangelo's pathos
marked a new starting point,

and at the same time,
a testament.

The Transfiguration
is Raphael's last painting,

and also his greatest masterpiece.

This work of crystalline beauty

seems painted with
the very essence of emotion.

In the upper portion,
Christ ascends heavenward,

looking beyond the limits
imposed by the composition,

indicating where the prayers,

the looks and the hearts
of the faithful

must turn to.

Below him is chaos,

amazement, the tangle of bodies

that culminates in the healing
of the young man possessed.

So, unexpected and powerful

as to take one's breath away.

Here there is love
for ancient philosophy,

there is admiration for Michelangelo

and the desire to distinguish himself
from his rival,

and a profound sense of theology

in the white light
radiated by Christ,

expressed better
than in a thousand words.

There are figures that were
to become exemplary

for the history of art.

They would be mentioned by Ingres,

by David, by Poisson,

because it really can be said

that Raphael taught the world.

No artist up to Picasso

failed to come to study,
to copy, and to understand.

Painted at the end of his days,

when he was bedridden

and wasting away
from a premature disease,

there is all of Raphael
in the transfiguration,

and the idea that art
ought to be transformed

into a sublime prayer to God.

Here lies Rafael, in real Life
nature feared to be outdone by him.

Now that he is dead,
it fears to die.

-Epitaph of Raphael's tomb in the Pantheen-

Meanwhile, Michelangelo,
deprived of his historic rival,

was sinking deeper into his solitary,
obsessive search for perfection.

Michelangelo worked
under two great Popes.

One was Julius II,
with whom he offered quarrel.

The other was Paul III
of the Farnese family.

It was Paul III
who commissioned Michelangelo

to decorate the altar wall
of the Sistine Chapel.

By this time Michelangelo was old

by the standards of the day,

being in his sixties.

Nevertheless, he agreed
to take on the work.

The job of painting 600 square meters

was completed in the month
of October of 1541.

In the book of Revelation,
St. John wrote,

And when the Lamb had opened
the seventh seal,

there was silence in heaven

about the space of half an hour.

And I saw the seven angels

which stood before God,

and to them were given

seven troubles.

In those years
the world was shaken

by the religious storm
involving the Lutherans,

which with worrisome ease
was calling into question

the basic tenets of Catholicism.

Restless as always,

Michelangelo became fascinated

by the theories
of a group of reformists

that was looking
for a drastic point of agreement

between the Roman Catholics
and Lutherans,

the spirituality or spiritual men.

These theories gave new lymph
to his inspiration,

almost becoming the reason that
made it seem worthwhile for him

to face single-handedly the enormous
creative and physical effort required

to produce The Last Judgment.

This shockingly revolutionary work

was different from anything
ever seen before.

Michelangelo repudiated past art

and distanced himself from
the perfect perspective of the ceiling.

Everything in The Last Judgment
is sheer strength.

The lapis lazuli blue background
becomes incandescent lava

where the bodies of
terrorized souls float heavily,

while on their naked backs

even the angels' wings
have been destroyed.

All is waiting, hope and fear,

and no one is spared
Christ's dreadful gesture

which prompts even
the Virgin Mary to withdraw.

The Day of Judgment has come

and never was it so real.

After 500 years of criticism, praise
and incomprehension,

The Last Judgment remains

the deeply personal act of faith
of a truly unique artist.

And at the same time,

a point of no return
for the history of art.

The journey of mankind
in search of divine perfection

down through the centuries.

Tormented,

thrilling

and without end.

Believing the masterpieces
of the Vatican museums,

we sense what drove great artists

to make themselves
an instrument of God.

And at the same time,
our truest part is revealed to us.

The fascinating thing
about the Vatican museums

is that one must visit them
at a leisurely pace.

Go at your own pace

and you'll have the impression
of entering something

marvelous and fascinating history

and the destiny of mankind.

And this is the reason why
the museums are steadily growing

and why the collections
are becoming richer.

A museum is a living creature.

It is like a plant, like a tree

that grows and changes
over the years.

The Vatican Museums
are all of this.

Art is testimony
of the spiritual aspirations of man

and of the quest for the supreme beauty

that finds its origin
and its fulfilment in God.

The Vatican Museums were founded
by Pope Julius ll in 1506

and opened to the public in 1771
at the desire of Pope Clement XIV.

Each year more than 5 million people
admire the masterpieces exhibited

in the 7 kilometres rooms and corridors
of The Vatican Museums.

lt is the world's sixth
most-visited museum.

Subtitles by Andante