Original subtitles

SECRETS OF HISTORY

LEONARDO DA VINCI GENIUS WITHOUT BORDERS

Welcome to the life of one of the world's greats.

No words are too strong to describe Leonardo da Vinci.

How could we not roll out the red carpet

for a man who so deftly handled both art and science?

He is the Renaissance embodied.

Tuscany, Florence, and his patrons,

as well as becoming part of France,

thanks to the royal patronage of Francis I.

And it is in France, in the Louvre,

that the most sought-after woman in the world, the famous Mona Lisa,

sits smirking at millions of admirers.

We'll find out everything tonight about the Mona Lisa.

And it's no coincidence that we are here,

at Chambord in the Loire Valley,

at this iconic Renaissance château.

Leonardo da Vinci

probably left his mark on Chambord.

A subtle mark, as the first stone was laid a few months after his death.

But his shadow still hangs over this spellbinding edifice

whose design defies reason.

It may be the Italian master's posthumous masterpiece.

Leonardo da Vinci has left an image in our collective memory

of a wise old man with the beard of a prophet.

Without a verified portrait,

this caricature makes us forget

that Leonardo da Vinci was once a spry young man,

possessed of incredible grace and beauty.

His universal reputation as a genius

eclipses the life of a simple mortal with his own joys and sufferings.

His career has left many fascinating mysteries

which still engage the passionate.

Tonight, Secrets of History will show you

the unusual fate of Leonardo da Vinci.

From his youth in Tuscany,

to his ascension through the palaces of Milan,

to proud Italian fortresses,

to the luxurious châteaux of the Loire.

We're going to open some secret doors

to understand his visionary machines,

his mysterious writings, his masterpieces,

as well as his lesser-known creations.

Get ready for a breathtaking journey

in the steps of a giant, into the mind of a genius.

In the heart of Paris, not far from the Louvre,

sits the Banque de France, one of the world's most secure locations.

Twenty-eight meters underground,

this room holds the gold reserve.

It also holds an old chest of unimaginable value.

With a secure escort, like a new Ark of the Covenant,

the chest is taken out

and its contents filmed for the first time,

exclusive to us.

It contains the 12 original codices,

Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks,

brought back by Napoleon Bonaparte

from his first campaign in Italy and left to the Institut de France.

These are spoils of war, but we can see

that General Bonaparte was not wrong to bring them back.

Each of these notebooks is insured today

at 55 million euros.

There are 12, which means this is over 600 million euros.

Documents like this are immensely valuable,

but what interests us, however,

is what they contain, what they reveal about the person.

It's an extraordinary mystery

of a unique genius, perhaps one of the greatest geniuses in history,

and this is his day-to-day work, his day-to-day imagination.

The first impression, for a layman,

is that it's totally incomprehensible.

He was left-handed, so probably to avoid rubbing what he'd written,

he wrote backwards.

To read the manuscripts, we use a mirror:

this is called mirror writing.

Hold it like this

and you can read the text very easily,

as long as you speak the Tuscan dialect.

Few have seen these mysterious books up close.

In the 18th century, they were classified with the letters A to M.

This notebook, B, is from Leonardo's years in Milan.

It's a particularly beautiful and bountiful notebook.

Leonardo always had his notebooks with him to record his thoughts

and to sketch what he saw or imagined,

and this book in particular is full of interesting things.

We can see here some violets.

One of the botanical drawings in this codex.

This is a project for a church.

This is one of Leonardo's studies for central-plan buildings.

There are many examples of this in this book.

The notebooks are of different sizes. Some of them are exercise book sized,

some are smaller, some are very small,

like this one, for example, notebook L.

This book still has its original cover.

It's a simple covering.

It's touching to know

that he always had this with him

on his many journeys around Italy, especially to Romagna,

where he was particularly interested

in military arts and fortification.

These pages give us insight into Leonardo's very thoughts.

Leonard da Vinci holds many records.

The latest example:

the sale of Salvator Mundi, or Christ Savior of the World.

On November 15, 2017, this painting attributed to Leonardo

was acquired by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

for the sum of 450 million dollars.

The most expensive piece of art in history.

There are paintings which are icons worldwide.

It's no coincidence that the Mona Lisa

is the most famous painting in the world.

It's because Leonardo da Vinci was someone extraordinary.

His brain was enormous.

How could he be the greatest painter,

the greatest sculptor of his time, the greatest director,

a brilliant engineer, a prophetic inventor,

but also be interested in geology, science, archaeology?

Ballistics, hydraulics, cinema.

Geometry, mathematics, anatomy, botany,

painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture,

it's scary, really.

It is a little intimidating, such a variety of talents

because we have to add to all that that Leonardo was very handsome.

He was, it seems, the greatest dancer of his time,

an outstanding musician,

he was very sporty, add all these human qualities to him.

Leonardo was a radiant, brilliant person,

always with a group of people around him

who loved listening to him.

He charmed everyone.

He was very appealing.

He could convince people, too, he was impressively persuasive.

He worked with Ludovico Sforza,

he lived with Cesare Borgia,

he worked for the king of France.

Leonardo was considered the equal of some great princes.

In the Renaissance, Vasari, one of Leonardo's first biographers,

had only one description:

"Leonardo is divine."

How could you explain all that

without divine influence?

He's indefinable. We still can't see through him.

Leonardo escapes us.

The more we find out,

the more we feel like we aren't getting him.

He really was universal in the way he talked

and still is today, for everyone.

You don't have to be a specialist

to be moved, to cry when faced with one of Leonardo's works.

We are here on the grounds of the Château du Clos Lucé,

nestled in the delightful valley of the Masse, a Loire tributary.

It was in this magnificent dwelling with its luscious setting

that Leonardo spent the last three years of his life

at the invitation of Francis I.

In the Middle Ages, this gallery was a rampart.

It was made this way during the Renaissance

to dress the facade with pink brick

and tufa stone, as is typical for Loire châteaux.

We are now entering Leonardo da Vinci's bedroom.

This place is particularly special.

It is the only surviving residence of Leonardo's left today.

The decor was recreated as it was in 1519

with Renaissance furniture and objects

such as this canopy bed

carved with cherubs and sea creatures.

This all gives us a picture of the Tuscan master's private life,

who only had to glance out the window

to see the royal château of Amboise

where his good friend, Francis I, lived.

We are right to talk about Leonardo's private life.

It gives us an insight into some aspects of this mysterious man

who was naturally extroverted in his younger years

but became more and more reserved,

eventually writing in one of his notebooks

this line from Ovid's Metamorphosis:

"You Greeks, I doubt you can tell of my adventures,

"whatever you may know of them,

"as I did them without witnesses,

"with the shades of night for company."

Leonard was a real beauty. He was tall,

extremely charming, a big personality.

He knew that you had to conquer hearts

through intellect and through appearance.

He was a real charmer. He wanted to charm in every aspect.

He's known for his clothing as well,

with his tendency towards style and fashion.

He spent a huge amount of money on clothes,

so his clothing was definitely elegant and refined.

We imagine Leonardo liked colors a lot

and kept up with the latest fashions.

He showed himself as a sort of man of elegance,

like a dandy of his time

who always went against the current trends.

When it was fashionable to wear long clothes, he wore short clothes.

When dark colors were in fashion, he had a pink jacket.

We can see how much he must have influenced

and impressed his contemporaries

with this social ease.

He was very spontaneous, very unaffected.

He was very free-spirited. Nothing held him down.

Prodigious and affable,

Leonardo da Vinci was also blessed with a sense of humor

and a particular love for boyish pranks.

We can also see a lot of jokes in his notebooks.

There are funny word games,

wise and eloquent riddles.

Leonardo liked to play with his name.

Leonardo, leone ardente, the burning lion.

One of Leonardo's word puzzles shows a burning lion.

He was ready to go to extreme lengths for a gag.

One story goes that in Rome

he had a small room where he made his guests wait

and in this room, there was a very well-hidden hole,

and he had spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning pork intestines.

He inflated the guts

and blew them up so much that they filled up the room,

and the people in the room were hiding in a corner

because it seemed like this gigantic bubble

would crush them.

That amused him a lot.

This young Leonardo, so full of life,

who certainly enjoyed life to the fullest.

Leonardo da Vinci was a free spirit in every aspect

and perhaps also in his sexuality.

I would like to know more about da Vinci's sexuality,

but he never talked about it.

Leonardo kept it a secret.

There are a lot of theories, but they are still only theories.

In 15th century Florence, homosexuality was illegal.

At worst, it could lead to being burned at the stake.

However, it was relatively tolerated and widespread in high society

and in artistic circles.

It was not unusual.

The German word Florenzer, which means "Florentines",

means a homosexual.

That was how they said it back then.

To fight against homosexual practices,

there was a letterbox in Florence for anonymous accusations.

These letters, which are still kept in the town archives,

were collected in the morning by the nightwatchmen

and monks as a sort of moral police.

We have in this registry for anonymous accusations

dated April 9, 1476, an accusation against Leonardo da Vinci.

It's written here

that Leonardo da Vinci was accused of practicing sodomy

with Jacopo Saltarelli.

Jacopo Saltarelli was a 17-year-old goldsmith.

He was one of Leonardo's young models.

The accusations talk of sodomy and even all-male sex parties.

The whole thing was kind of covered up,

just because there was no proof to show

that Leonardo definitely had sexual relations with Saltarelli,

so it was forgotten.

He never married, he never started a family.

So it's not impossible

that Leonardo was a homosexual.

After being interrogated, Leonardo's name was finally cleared

after a humiliating trial.

This unfortunate episode would lead him to his greatest discretion.

Another clue as to his private life:

his relationship with his apprentice, Salai.

He recruited this young man, Gian Giacomo.

He very quickly nicknamed him Salai, little devil.

Salai was a demon in Leonardo's life,

who stole his assistants' styluses,

who did all sorts of mischief, stole money,

and Leonardo forgave everything.

There's a little note from Leonardo addressed to Salai:

"Let us make peace and no longer war."

In another note, Leonardo wrote:

"Ladro, bugiardo, ghiottone."

Thief, liar, glutton.

So, Salai was a rascal.

At first, it seemed like he was an apprentice,

but that's hard to believe.

He may have been a model,

maybe he was a young man who he liked,

maybe he was a young man who caught his eye,

which can't be ruled out.

Sources tell us that Salai was an incredible beauty,

so, Leonardo, who was always searching for creative inspiration,

must have been struck by this boy's beauty.

Salai, his model, his little devil,

who some people believe is Leonardo's St. John the Baptist.

He loved Salai's curly hair.

There are funny little references

which remind us that Leonardo liked young men.

There are many

somewhat obscene drawings in Leonardo's notebooks,

and Salai's name appears.

There are drawings of genitals and all sorts of orifices

which can be used for things other than reproduction.

And someone, probably maliciously,

wrote "Salai" next to something that looks like a man's anus.

It could be malicious

or it could be a workshop joke, someone just wanting to play a prank.

Maybe Salai himself did it, he was certainly capable.

Leonardo represented sexuality in a very bizarre manner.

For example, he drew a cross-section of coitus,

which is kind of almost psychotic.

There's this idea, in psychosis, that there are no borders

between your own body and others' bodies.

One of Leonardo's drawings may shed light on his sexuality.

Found almost by chance by a private owner,

it is one of eight paintings of St. Sebastian mentioned in his books.

And the only one verified so far.

Classed as a national treasure,

it's estimated to be worth at least 15 million euros.

It's something truly exceptional.

This is the biggest name in the history of art.

It shows St. Sebastian,

by Leonardo da Vinci.

We can see the characteristics of Leonardo's left-handedness.

We can clearly see traces leading to the left.

And St. Sebastian is shown before being pierced with arrows.

This is the first showing of this drawing in France in 100 years.

There are almost no others in existence.

It's a miracle.

This piece is important when it comes to Leonardo's private life,

and it's something dear to him

in the sense that St. Sebastian is the patron saint of homosexuals.

It's a young St. Sebastian, he's around 30,

and that was the age Leonardo was when he drew this piece.

He definitely put a lot of himself in there.

It's not a self-portrait, but it's definitely inspired by his life

and the struggle between religion

and the right to love the male form

and to represent it in an attractive way.

Leonardo da Vinci's personality is difficult to determine,

as he left few clues in the many pages of his notebooks.

His rare and often unfinished works

raise more questions than answers.

Hidden behind the myth, the man of flesh and blood

has left a few traces of his feelings.

It's difficult to understand Leonardo da Vinci's psychology.

He seems like someone who was quite prudent about himself.

Leonardo must have written thousands and thousands of pages,

and his personal feelings are extremely rare.

It wasn't until Jean Jacques Rousseau that introspective writing started.

There was a darkness in him

that was always hanging over him. We can see it in his writing.

There was always an ambiguity

between good and evil, light and shadow

fighting within the same person.

Being very attached to nature,

Leonardo differed from his contemporaries

in the matter of food.

Ahead of his time in many respects,

the man made a choice which broke with the times.

Leonardo would be popular today as one of the most famous vegetarians.

That's something extraordinary.

His contemporaries said,

"Our Leonardo, who does not eat animals."

Imagine that time when only the rich

could afford to eat meat,

someone like Leonardo deciding that meat was bad for your health,

absolutely extraordinary.

No-one in Europe was vegetarian.

It was impossible.

He wrote a lot on the subject.

"Do not make your stomach a graveyard."

The idea repulsed him.

He was an animal lover

with a particular fascination with birds.

Leonardo would go to markets to buy birds in cages,

open the cage, and watch the birds fly away into the sky.

Francis I, at the start of his reign, wanted Chambord.

His monogram, the crowned F,

and his sigil, the salamander,

are everywhere here.

Ground had barely been broken on this marvelous château

when Leonardo da Vinci died just 500 years ago.

And it took until the reign of Louis XIV

for it to be completed.

In the absence of archives, the original plans remain a mystery.

However, it is difficult to imagine

that it was not awarded to the man whose official title

was the king's first painter, engineer, and architect,

Leonardo da Vinci.

When you approach this magnificent open central staircase,

one thing becomes clear: this château is the work of a genius.

This helical movement at the heart of the keep

seems to take the château towards the heavens.

It is composed of two helices

which intertwine,

allowing two people to climb and descend the steps

without meeting each other.

This feature is significant,

since Leonardo, as we know from his notebooks,

had a particular liking for centered, round designs.

He even designed two- and even four-part staircases.

The theory of da Vinci's influence on the design of Chambord

is all the more attractive because, before his death,

the king assigned him the task of designing a perfect city

in Romorantin, in the Loire Valley,

where Francis I wanted to establish his court.

In the last months of his life,

Leonardo visited his compatriot Domenico da Cortona

who was one of Chambord's first architects.

No proof but an accumulation of clues.

We can only speculate.

If Leonardo did indeed sign his name to the original plans,

that would mean this magnificent building

is his last masterpiece,

his testament in stone, a legacy for eternity.

Let us start at the beginning.

From the start, Leonardo's life is astonishing.

Illegitimate and illiterate son of a notary,

born in a small town in Tuscany, what future could he have?

Twenty-five km from Florence, in the heart of Chianti Montalbano,

lies the commune of Vinci, from where Leonard took his name.

His ancestors settled there, and his father, Piero,

was a local person of note.

The da Vinci family was a line of notaries,

from the 14th century onwards,

who had even obtained Florentine citizenship.

That meant they could cover judicial authorities

in the Republic of Florence.

This right wasn't given to all the notaries in the village.

His father was not married,

and he probably seduced a peasant

from around Vinci, named Caterina.

The problem was that he fell in love, but they could not be married.

So Leonardo was an illegitimate child born out of wedlock.

He was what they called a bastard.

Stendhal said, "He is a child of love."

Leonardo was born on the night of April 14 to 15, 1452,

around three hours after the Ave Maria evening prayers.

We're lucky we know,

thanks to an extraordinary document, very rare.

It must have been his grandfather, in a moment of affection,

who noted it in a notebook.

"Today, a grandson was born to me, son of my son Piero."

Founded in the 13th century,

Santa Croce is the historic church in the burgh of Vinci.

Today, it still holds a precious souvenir

from Leonardo's first days.

We are in the baptistery of the Santa Croce church in Vinci.

This is what baptismal fonts were like at the time.

And this is where little, newborn Leonardo

would have been baptized.

Piero accepted his first son,

for the time being his only male heir,

but he would not legitimize him.

Caterina remained outside of the family.

Caterina was distanced from the family,

she doesn't appear amongst the guests

at Leonardo's baptism.

She stayed in the shadows.

Leonardo's family decided on an arranged marriage

for Caterina to hush up the scandal.

So, Caterina was married

to Antonio Buti,

called Accattbriga, the brawler.

A man who was very violent and angry,

since accattbriga means the brawler,

someone who doesn't miss a chance for a fight.

Leonardo was taken from his mother very early on.

We know that at five-years-old he was with his father's family,

specifically in his grandfather's house.

In Anchiano, three km from Vinci,

there is a house designed the same way

as that in which Leonardo grew up.

It lies in a landscape that has barely changed for centuries.

Leonardo grew up with his father's family,

with his grandfather Antonio and his uncle Francesco.

We picture Leonardo as a child being very curious, lover of nature

and animals. He no doubt watched especially

all sorts of mechanisms,

like windmills,

and the atmosphere, effects of light and smoke.

We can also guess that the countryside of Vinci

had an influence on Leonardo

that stayed with him throughout his life and work.

His oldest drawing is of a landscape.

We can picture that in his younger years,

he began to observe the world, the stars, the moon, the sun,

and tried to understand how everything around him worked.

We think that this ability he had

for observation,

there was something of the future genius

who used nature to be creative.

But the boy's future was still uncertain.

Especially since after four successful marriages,

Piero had legitimate heirs

in whom he placed all his hopes,

going as far as to exclude Leonardo from his will.

As a bastard, some doors were closed to him.

Illegitimacy in the 15th century was not a problem in the upper class.

However, for notaries and merchants

it was more difficult, especially for notaries.

So that had a consequence for Leonardo,

which was that he could not be a notary,

and he could not go to university.

He would remain uneducated.

When he was around ten,

he must have started thinking: what would Leonardo da Vinci become?

He had already started drawing,

so he could be sent to the scuola d'abaco.

This was a school where, in two or three years,

you were taught how to get by, to have a career in trade,

or have a career in art.

Young Leonardo showed a precocious intelligence,

but it was definitely his extraordinary drawing skills

that caught the eye of Piero.

One day, his father took a bunch of his drawings

and showed them to one of the great artists of Florence.

He said, "What do you think?" And the artist said,

"They're very good, for a kid."

"Will you take him on as an apprentice?"

"Yes."

While he hadn't been very present as a father,

Piero did have the intelligence

to understand his son's talent

and to send him to work in the workshop

of Andrea del Verrocchio.

Verrocchio wasn't just any artist.

He ran the best workshop in Florence.

He was court artist to the Medicis.

The Medicis were a very cultured family,

especially Lorenzo, who sought to gather around him

an intelligentsia. People who,

in the fields of literature, history, science, art,

represented perfection, a return to the ancient methods,

but also showed modernity. He wanted to create new styles,

to show that Florence was the intellectual capital of Italy.

Piero, in sending Leonardo to Verrocchio's workshop,

knew that it would allow him to be an artist of the highest level.

Leonardo da Vinci left for Florence.

The city was buzzing in every regard.

Politics, architecture, and, of course, art.

It was a golden age that we call the Renaissance.

Under the great masters,

young Leonardo quickly made his mark,

and it didn't take him long to step into the light.

The city had, in the 14th century,

written in its decrees that it should be beautiful.

It was absolutely full of beautiful palaces.

It was a city of merchants, of artisans,

a city that liked to show off its wealth

through festivals and tournaments.

He must have been immersed

in noise, smells, and a city that was still under construction.

The city was a republic

that was deftly controlled

by the Medici family.

The Medici's dominance in Florence created greed.

In 1488, a conspiracy by a rival family, the Pazzi,

ended in a bloodbath.

As a witness to ferocious repression,

Leonardo attended the execution of one of the masterminds at Bargello,

where his father worked.

Here, at the corner of the stairs and the keep,

Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli was hanged.

Leonardo was here.

He could see the hanging,

and we know this because he left a very detailed drawing

of Bernardo Baroncelli,

even including the clothes he was wearing:

his small black hat, his large jacket,

his pink doublet, and black shoes.

Aside from its proximity to power,

Bargello Palace was five minutes from Verrocchio's workshop

where Leonardo was cutting his teeth.

Patronized by the Medicis,

the workshop enjoyed a variety of commissions

which ensured the young artist had excellent training.

The Verrocchio workshop was particular

in that it was very versatile.

You could be a painter, but you also learned sculpture,

you also learned mechanics, goldsmithery,

the work was collective,

and no-one specialized in any one area.

It was like a family

where the young apprentices lived together

with their masters who became like a spiritual father to them.

All the young men who came through the Verrocchio workshop

would go on to dominate Florence's art scene

in the years 1480-1490.

Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Signorelli,

everyone, for example, who painted the Sistine Chapel,

they all came up through Verrocchio's workshop.

Bargello Palace today hosts a collection of works,

one of which shows Verrocchio's talent

and may show the grace of a young Leonardo da Vinci.

Here, we have David who has just fought Goliath,

done by Verrocchio,

perhaps using Leonardo da Vinci as a model.

Of course, there is absolutely no proof of this.

But it was common practice in all workshops

to use apprentices as models.

This mixture of arrogance and grace

is an evocation of the youth and beauty of Leonardo da Vinci,

especially if you compare it to Donatello's David,

where you can see the biblical hero

has his eyes lowered, he's in nostalgia, melancholy.

So, two pieces produced in Florence in the 15th century,

two opposed interpretations of victory.

Verrocchio's workshop was attached to gigantic projects

such as the cupola of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral.

Leonardo probably helped in topping the lantern

with a gilt copper sphere weighing over two tons.

But it was in painting

that the young apprentice made a real impression.

His talent was utilized

when master Verrocchio was working on the Baptism of Christ.

This painting is really within the style

of Florence in the quattrocento, the 14th century.

Everything is built around hard lines,

linework that we call the "dry method".

There's a hardness to the flesh.

John the Baptist baptizing Jesus.

There are angels watching.

And Verrocchio allowed Leonardo to paint a figure

in the lower left part, a student's part.

And Leonardo painted something incredible

with an unbelievable dynamism and life.

We can see how soft and light the hair is,

the contours of the face blending in with the background,

so, it's an early example of what we would later call sfumato.

The Baptism of Christ is a great story

because it was when Leonardo showed

that he was young but already better than the rest.

Biographers tell us that once Verrochio saw

the quality and beauty of the angel, he put away his brushes for good.

"It is a poor student who does not surpass his master,"

wrote Leonardo.

His promising beginnings

involved particular use of light in a series of studies of drapes

carried out over his years with Verrocchio.

The department of prints and drawings at the Louvre

holds several of these rare sketches on linen,

which are worth a considerable sum.

Light was one of Leonardo's great passions.

Light is the interplay of light and shadow.

And in the drapery series,

the goal is to be able

to convey the darkest blacks

and the brightest lights and the greys in between.

It looks like these drapes are carved from metal

by the fact that the brightest spots are on the edges,

these strong breaks in the drapes

like light playing on a bronze statue.

This type of work is specific to Leonardo.

Registered with the guild of St. Luke in 1473,

an association of painters,

Leonardo da Vinci created his first big commission

for a Florentine monastery: Annunciation.

Its balanced and supremely structured composition

reveals the artist's search for perfection

which tended towards obsession.

But his style reached a turning point

with his Adoration of the Magi,

commissioned eight years later by another monastery.

With the Adoration of the Magi, whether drawing or painting,

it reaches freedom.

The preparatory sketches for the Adoration are breathtaking

because they are full of crossed-out material,

with an extraordinary dynamism and sense of movement.

In this painting, we see Leonardo's ability to revolutionize,

to innovate with traditional iconography.

Normally, the Virgin with child was on the left or right,

Leonardo placed them in the center,

like a pillar, like a fulcrum,

around which all the other figures are placed

from all the corners of the world.

He didn't just want to represent the procession of the Magi

but also the specific light

of divine illumination at that particular moment

and represent the reactions of all those present

to the sudden appearance of the divine in the real.

Towards the edge of the piece,

one figure is of particular importance:

a probable representation of Leonardo himself.

This would make this the only self-portrait from his younger years.

Normally, when a painter represents themselves, they're looking outwards,

for one simple reason:

they have to look into a mirror to draw themselves,

so they can't have their head turned.

That's not the case at all with Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi

as he's not looking outwards. Did he use a set of mirrors?

It's entirely possible.

Is this elusive gaze that of an artist

subconsciously rejecting a piece that was too ambitious?

Leonardo would drag his feet and did not meet deadlines.

Despite his extraordinary ascent, Leonardo, 30 years-old,

was known for being slow and not completing works.

Compared to other artists like Botticelli, Ghirlandaio,

they never stopped painting.

Leonardo produced almost nothing.

It was practical for him to stay with Verrocchio.

He had money, good commissions,

and he could continue to hone his skills

to do what he wanted to do.

All his life, that's what Leonardo wanted.

To have the ideal conditions to flourish in all fields,

and he could only find that in lessons.

Leonardo clearly chose his side.

He went to the Princes.

His career was encouraged more

by the princes than by the Republic.

We can see it in manuscripts from that period

where he expressed anxiety

about his creativity and the passing of time

and anxiety about not being able to finish the Adoration in time.

He gave up on a piece that was too complex.

It was time to leave.

His first masterpieces created in Florence,

such as the Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi,

allowed the artist to forge a solid reputation.

In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci was 30.

After years of working with Verrocchio's workshop,

it was time for him to explore new horizons.

Leonardo headed for the duchy of Milan

where the powerful Sforza family reigned.

He hoped to find new masters there, welcoming and generous.

Sent by Lorenzo di Medici to give a gift to the Duke of Milan,

young Leonardo took this opportunity

to show the true scope of his talents.

His years in Milan allowed his creativity to flourish.

Eternal masterpieces, spectacular inventions,

and even some luxurious interior decorating.

For Leonardo, it was time for excess.

February 1482.

In the middle of Carnival,

Leonardo made his entrance to the Lombardy capital.

He was received in the Sforza castle, the residence of the Dukes of Milan.

Leonardo arrived in Milan like a musician,

with a gift:

a lyre with a carved dragon head

made from a horse skull. It was absolutely fantastic,

and Leonardo could play it.

Leonardo was first and foremost an artistic ambassador.

Gian Galeazzo Sforza was the duke of Milan.

But it was his uncle, Ludovico Sforza,

known as il Moro, who held the real power.

Leonardo da Vinci was ready to get into the good graces

of this powerful man,

as shown in a letter

where he lists his skills.

He wrote the first résumé in history.

And he used a great technique.

If you read his ten skills, one by one,

he presents himself not as a painter but as a military engineer

capable of creating incredibly complex machines

that will kill your enemies.

The Duke needed such formidable weapons,

so he hired Leonardo as a military engineer.

Leonardo's audacity paid off.

Ludovico il Moro believed he could use the Florentine's talents

to serve the fame of the Sforzas.

He entrusted him with the project of creating a giant mounted statue

of the dynasty's founder.

Leonardo got to work right away.

He visited all the stables in Milan

to find the loveliest horses

and he drew them,

but one had a particularly lovely neck,

one had well-muscled legs,

a third one had a fantastic mane, etc.

He took all these drawings, combined them,

and created the beast of his dreams.

As well as looks,

Leonardo wanted to make his bronze statue an impressive size.

Over seven meters high. Something never seen before.

This huge technical challenge

would force him to revise his design for almost 15 years.

The complexity lay in

melting 13 tons of bronze practically at once,

then filling a mold with the bronze.

Leonardo invented a system

using three synchronized forges.

How did he synchronize them? With gunpowder.

This meant that when the bronze got to a certain part of the mold,

it would explode

and they could pour the second forge, then the third one.

There was still one more difficult problem:

raising and turning the beast with all its material,

almost 100 tons in total.

A Herculean task in the late 15th century.

The reconstructions at the Leonardo3 museum in Milan

give us an insight today.

Today we would use enormous cranes.

Leonardo could only rely on his own ingenuity.

Here is an example of a giant lifting machine.

With its complex mechanism,

even a child could lift the horse just by turning the winch.

Very slowly, of course.

It had to be turned one meter to lift it one millimeter.

Unfortunately for Leonardo, war intervened.

When the French arrived in Italy in 1495,

bronze was needed to make cannons.

The French also destroyed the clay prototype

that Leonardo had made.

So, the project was buried for good.

Unable to cast the Sforzas' glory in bronze,

Leonardo contributed to the prestige of their court

with luxurious parties whose setting and special effects he designed.

One of them went down in history.

It was held in 1489

at the wedding of Gian Galeazzo Sforza

and Isabella of Naples, a princess.

The party was based on surprise scenery effects.

Isabella was invited to arrive at 8 p.m.

At that moment, a concert was held in her honor,

playing music from Naples.

When night fell,

one of the walls in the room

rose up, revealing the heavens behind it.

It was an extraordinary piece of mechanics.

It showed the revolutions of all the mythological stories

and the gods, Jupiter and Apollo,

on a series of platforms

all working almost like an astronomical clock,

with the stars revolving around the scene

which opened up like an egg.

Leonardo also designed some exceptional costumes

which could inspire stylists today,

they are so creative and original.

It was opera before opera.

It was a complete art with pyrotechnics

and music, celestial music.

Leonardo was a theater director,

a musician,

and a great mechanic. Practically a magician.

Since he had become essential to his pleasure,

Leonardo frequently went with Ludovico il Moro

to Vigevano, 35 km outside of Milan.

A summer palace where the Sforza court would vacation.

It was a place of pleasure, of relaxation,

for balls and ceremonies,

banquets, theater shows,

and Leonardo da Vinci was the director, of course.

Leonardo played the lyre and the viola excellently,

but in particular, he would improvise poetry.

And love was never far from his amorous games,

which were not so innocent.

In Vigevano Castle, Ludovico il Moro

had a bedroom for his mistress, Cecilia Gallerani,

better known as the Lady with an Ermine.

She was Ludovico's mistress before and after his marriage

to Beatrice d'Este.

This strong connection allowed Leonardo to paint her picture.

It was an amazing portrait,

the first modern portrait in the history of art.

He didn't just show the features of her face

but the passions of her soul.

Leonardo invented the psychological portrait.

Lady with an Ermine is magnificent.

It shows a living person.

There's a spotlight on her.

She's turned to the side, a smile on her face.

There's something very alive, we can see a personality.

This was a woman who was the intellectual equal

of the man facing her.

She has this ermine in her hands

that can't escape,

representing Ludovico il Moro.

In the medieval bestiary, an ermine is an animal that,

rather than being captured or soiled,

prefers to kill itself.

This gave the idea of Ludovico being a man of integrity and virtue,

which was far from the truth.

Ludovico's relations with Cecilia Gallerani

are documented in missives from Italian ambassadors

who came to Vigevano.

One in particular

says that Ludovico il Moro, I quote, "has come over with a fever

"caused by an excess of coitus

"demanded by a harlot who is always by his side."

This young madam was none other than Cecilia Gallerani,

the Lady with an Ermine.

The Duke's wife, Beatrice d'Este,

jealously chased Cecilia from the court.

But Ludovico was incorrigible,

and, once again, Leonardo, privileged witness to his infidelity,

was commissioned to portray his next mistress: Lucrezia Crivelli,

better known today as La Belle Ferronnière.

In La Belle Ferronnière, Leonardo represents female eroticism.

The cheeky look,

looking at the viewer, even provoking them.

This portrait isn't just of a debauched woman,

it's about the ambiguity and poetry within a person.

Cecilia Gallerani was very nice, very kind.

La Belle Ferronnière is more austere, more distant.

We get the impression that she's not so open,

much more distant from the viewer.

Ludovico was aware that Leonardo could give her

the most refined, alive, and subtle image

in his intellectually astonishing court.

It's not just political affirmation with huge horse statues,

he also illustrated real charm.

At the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza and amidst the whirlwind of parties,

Leonardo da Vinci did not forget his primary calling as a painter,

quite the opposite.

The young master's style was taking shape,

and the masterpieces kept coming.

To such a degree that his name was already making it across borders.

With his fame growing,

Leonardo had to deal with new commissions.

For this reason, he started his workshop in Milan,

where he employed the collaborative model

he learnt from Verrocchio.

But it was alone that Leonardo da Vinci

created one of his most spectacular works.

It started as a commission from Ludovico il Moro

for the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

It would eventually become a mausoleum to the Sforza's glory,

and the basilica already held a number of treasures.

It was Leonardo's job to decorate the monks' refectory

with an appropriate theme: The Last Supper,

Christ's last meal in the company of his disciples.

The Last Supper is the achievement of the Renaissance.

It is a huge composition with never before seen power.

The Last Supper opened a new chapter in art history, humanity's history.

Leonardo creates a space with a visual trick.

It's all geometrically structured.

The apostles are organized into groups of three,

forming irregular triangles,

and there is only one perfect triangle,

which is Christ,

to show, obviously, Jesus's moral perfection.

The moment that Leonardo chose to represent is crucial.

It's the moment when Jesus informs his disciples

that one of them will betray him,

so he represents the emotional reaction to that,

the electric current that passes from one to another,

trying to know who could do such a terrible thing.

Some are offended,

some are completely stunned.

Some are surprised.

And this movement in the soul

of each of these figures is what interested Leonardo.

Judas is uncertain.

He hasn't yet chosen good or evil.

He doesn't know what his destiny will be.

Leonardo took his time in painting Judas,

to the point that the prior of the monastery grew impatient.

There's a great anecdote about the painting of The Last Supper

where the prior had had enough.

What was going on?

He'd been working on it for years.

So he went to complain to the Duke.

Why isn't he making any progress?

The Duke said as well, "Leonardo, it looks like you're doing nothing."

And apparently Leonardo came in,

looked at the piece, made one tiny brushstroke,

and left. And didn't come back for a week.

Relations with the prior had degenerated,

and Leonardo said,

"I've looked everywhere for someone with the treacherous look

"to serve as a model for Judas.

"But looking at you, Father,

"I think I've found him."

Leonardo explained to Ludovico

that for a great genius, the more they work, the less they achieve.

So he had this extremely odd way of working,

but it showed above all else

that he was an incredible perfectionist.

Like no other painter has ever been.

Leonardo never mastered the technique for frescoes,

which require speed

and don't allow mistakes. You can't go over what's done.

For Leonardo, fresco work was unbearable.

He always needed to have that freedom

to revise his ideas, to perfect things.

To get even closer to perfection,

Leonardo invented an experimental oil technique

which allowed him to endlessly refine his work.

But this ingenious process had a price.

What's awful about The Last Supper is that

while it was a huge accomplishment,

it was a technical disaster.

Over time, pieces fell off,

and what we see today is only a ghost.

It's a memory of what Leonardo painted.

The Last Supper is lost forever.

While the original piece is lost,

modern technology allows us

to bring it back to life.

The Leonardo3 museum in Milan

has brought back many parts that have disappeared.

Leonardo didn't just create this famous rectangle,

he may have also painted the ceiling, 33 meters of heavenly vaults

with lapis-lazuli and little golden stars.

Try to imagine what it was like to enter a room

that was entirely painted to look three-dimensional.

Entering the house of Jesus under a starry sky,

it was the most amazing thing at that time.

Leonardo invented virtual reality at the end of the 15th century.

Today, we have used the latest technology

to give our visitors a time machine,

to see The Last Supper as it was in Leonardo's day.

A true miracle.

In the delightful setting of Clos-Lucé,

Leonardo spent most of his days

scribbling his scientific thoughts in his notebooks.

This Florentine was an unparalleled musician

as well as an inventor and a visionary architect,

as attested by this double-decker bridge

designed to avoid contact in case of plague.

It's time now to look at Leonardo scientific prowess,

this man who dreamed of flying through the air

and navigating under the sea.

A giant, always ahead of his time.

Leonardo da Vinci saw the future

five centuries after his time.

I would say that Leonardo da Vinci was very modern,

very up-to-date, very contemporary.

He was a pioneer of innovation, the patron saint of engineers.

He devoted his life to the study of the universe.

With an ever-watchful curiosity, capable of questioning ideas

that were 2,000 years-old.

Throughout his life, he maintained a highly rational mind

that said, "OK, that's what they say, but let's check."

Or, "I think so, but am I sure?"

An uneducated man

but a disciple of experience, as he himself said.

Leonardo contributed an encyclopedic knowledge

working in all fields in Renaissance courts.

You can't understand Leonardo without understanding his predecessors.

Leonardo did not invent the machine gun.

Leonardo did not invent the tank.

Leonardo did not invent a whole host of machines

or the mechanical techniques they used.

They were not his inventions.

Leonardo drew on the knowledge of his time,

but he went further.

He looked in medieval manuscripts

and copied machines drawn by other inventors,

one by one. But Leonardo was able to improve them

because he was much better at drawing.

By isolating certain details

and drawing annotated cross-sections,

Leonardo invented technical drawing.

In his own way, he contributed to the rise of the technology needed

to overcome a shortage of labor.

At a time when the Black Death had eliminated so many people,

Leonardo took it upon himself

to replace people with machines.

So, during the 15th century, particularly in Tuscany,

there was great technological innovation.

And Leonardo set himself apart with an avant-garde approach:

creating technology inspired by nature.

This made him a pioneer in biomimetics.

Many things were dreams. The dream of flying, especially.

It's often based on principles

that come from observing birds.

If you understand how birds fly, you can make humans fly.

To make this dream a reality,

Leonardo designed several flying machines.

The 3D laboratory at Dassault Systèmes

have virtually recreated them thanks to the Open Codex project.

It brings together over 200 individuals

from around the world

who bring Leonardo da Vinci's inventions to life.

There's something magical about imagining flying this glider

which is much more like a bird

than a plane should be.

I'm looking at the ribbing

which is designed to hold the person in the glider

who would be here

and would operate the handles to make the wings beat.

In Milan, at the Leonardo3 research center,

Leonardo's flying machines have been recreated full-scale,

down to the last detail, like the famous ornithopter.

But in reality, the engineer could not take flight.

Technically, the machine works.

All the parts are operational.

What's amazing is that he understood

that to fly, you can't just beat your wings,

you need to bend them, like moving your arm.

This requires an extremely complex mechanism.

But the question was: could the machine fly?

The answer is no.

No human has the strength to produce a hundred wingbeats a minute.

It was impossible.

But Leonardo didn't just dream.

He created functional machines,

mechanisms that are no less relevant today.

The odometer, for example.

It meant he could measure distances

using a gear system.

It moves this platform here

and makes balls fall into a receptacle.

Once your journey is over,

you simply count the balls, and you know the distance.

Once again, Leonardo was ahead of his time,

as to calculate the kilometers traveled in a car,

we all have an electronic odometer.

Biomimetism, robotics,

design, virtual reality,

five hundred years later,

industrial engineers have proven Leonardo da Vinci right,

making him even more visionary.

What motivates us is the trinity of science, technology, and art.

When he scrawled in his tiny notebooks,

just little sketches,

you can see that this guy worked with the imaginary.

He was outside of the limits of the physical world.

With digital technology, especially 3D, it's the same thing.

Leonardo da Vinci did not shy away from anything

in knowing the laws of movement or of light

and the secrets of life.

Whatever doors he came up against,

Leonardo always looked for the key in nature's great open book.

Leonardo wanted to explore the inside to better express the outside.

To do this, he dissected cadavers.

The Specola museum, in Florence,

contains the oldest collection of anatomical waxworks.

The Church allowed doctors and painters

to carry out dissections in hospitals

and universities.

But it had forbidden the study of the soul, inside the heart,

as that was intangible.

They believed that the soul was bestowed by God.

In 1507,

Leonardo began dissecting an old man who had just died in front of him

in the Santa Maria Nuova hospital.

He looked for causes of this quiet death

and made a major discovery: the causes of a heart attack.

There's a clinical description in his writing

of atherosclerosis that could have been written by a doctor.

He was the first to do it.

And he saw that an artery in the heart

had become dried, hard, and clogged.

Maybe that could be the cause of death.

And he discovered that there were eddies inside the ventricles.

That was one of the most important discoveries

because the heart was then analyzed from the 17th century on.

As well as the mysteries of death,

Leonardo wanted to follow the secrets of life to its origin.

He dissected a pregnant woman and then her fetus.

He was the first to discover the three membranes

that surround the fetus

and the first to correctly draw the internal position of the fetus,

as before, we didn't know how it was positioned inside the belly.

It was a horrid job, he didn't do it for fun.

Once he had understood the muscles, maybe the nerves and bones,

the rest was of no interest to an artist.

He didn't just dissect,

he tried to understand

because he knew that a representation

that only went on surface appearances

didn't get to the depths of the soul. That's what he sought,

relentlessly, with his scalpel

and with his pencil or his paintbrush.

It's not Leonardo the painter and Leonardo the scientist,

he became a great painter because he was a great scientist.

Gifted with an extraordinary eye,

Leonardo da Vinci sought to capture the moment,

to deconstruct every movement.

I'm convinced he had a sort of superhuman sensitivity,

that is, he was able to deconstruct movement very quickly.

For example, he saw the movement of the wings of a dragonfly.

He saw it.

And Leonardo wrote a treatise on movement

where he deconstructed human movement.

It was a cinematic vision

where he broke it down, image by image.

There are so many drawings of cats, for example,

by him. Live cats that he studied.

What's funny, with these cats,

is that there's a little dragon right in the middle,

and if you're not paying attention, you think it's a cat too.

That's Leonardo's method.

His mind always worked by analogy.

Whirls, whether it be the curls in hair,

whirlpools or water, or eddies in blood

in the valves of the heart,

for Leonardo, these were analogies

that proved there were echoes in the upper world and underworld.

Leonardo said there was a correlation between the body and nature.

Bones were like rocks, flesh like the earth,

and blood like the rivers.

We are here in Leonardo da Vinci's workshop,

recreated at Clos-Lucé

in the spirit of a Renaissance bottega,

with care taken over every detail.

Look at these pigments for creating colors

and all these painter's accessories and here, a lapis-lazuli.

Over there, there are drawings and sketches

showing the important work carried out in this place.

In this atmosphere of toil,

it feels like Leonardo could appear at any moment.

I cannot resist showing you this underground passage

that is said to have once connected Clos-Lucé with Amboise château.

According to tradition,

it allowed Francis I to meet Leonardo in secret.

But it is not clear why the king would have to hide this.

There are many tenacious legends surrounding Leonardo da Vinci.

Some of them have their charm. Look here,

an ancient light well, now blocked up.

And there, a pile of rocks stops us going any further.

After spending almost 20 years in Milan,

Leonardo had to make it through a symbolic tunnel.

The arrival of the armies of the king of France, Louis XII,

predecessor of Francis I,

expelled the Sforzas from the duchy.

And Leonardo, 50 years-old, had to change his patron.

This began a period of instability

which forced him to become a sort of artistic and military mercenary.

With rivalries with the other great artists of his time,

this genius had to surpass himself.

Without his protector, Ludovico Sforza,

Leonardo hesitated over going over to the French side.

Everyone was after him,

but he decided to offer his services in Venice as a military engineer.

His plans were not followed through.

In Mantua, he began a portrait of Duchess Isabella d'Este,

which also remained unfinished.

Leonardo made more journeys to Rome, Florence,

waiting for fortune to strike.

And a devil appeared:

the renowned Cesare Borgia, calling him to new adventures.

It may seem surprising

that Leonardo chose to work for Cesare Borgia,

an extremely violent, bestial, controversial man

of his time.

But we have to remember that Cesare was the son of a pope,

of Pope Alexander Borgia, Alexander VI,

and he was very close to the king of France.

This great captain tried

to carve himself out a principality to the north of Rome

between the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.

A very important swathe of Italy.

Leonardo was taking a risk,

but he thought, "It'll work.

"This is someone who is going to build a great duchy

"and become a very important man. It'll be like with Ludovico.

"I'll be able to really flourish."

On June 21, 1502,

Leonardo joined Cesare Borgia in Urbino,

an important ducal city that he had just conquered.

We have a passport written by Cesare Borgia

that names Leonardo da Vinci

as his fully-empowered military engineer.

Leonardo was on the march with Cesare Borgia's troops.

Leonardo the engineer invented mobile bridges.

He mapped out the whole region.

This meant he was able to visit all the fortresses.

Among these fortresses,

Leonardo spent almost two months at Imola,

where Cesare Borgia had billeted his troops.

Cesare Borgia entrusted Leonardo with checking the buildings,

their strength, and suggesting improvements.

So, Leonardo made sketches,

proposed ways to optimize, particularly in the ravelins,

which were circular defensive elements.

Sort of the outposts of the fortress.

Leonardo's time here left us a very important document

both scientifically and artistically:

the map of Imola.

It's a planimetric map of the town.

A very precise, very accurate map,

a bird's eye view, so to speak.

Leonardo didn't have a plane or a drone

or anything like that,

but he had his head and his eyes.

Leonardo, a man of war, carried a sword.

He was on the front line to observe the horrors of the battlefield.

Leonardo called war: una pazzia bestialissima,

a most beastly madness.

So, clearly, from a rational point of view,

he hated war and all its consequences.

He must have been a pacifist

but then, there's reality,

and if you want to be important and close to a great politician,

there was no choice,

he had to work on military arts to win over the prince.

But the death of pope Alexander VI in 1503

brought about the fall of his son, Cesare Borgia.

Leonardo once again lost his protector

and returned to Florence, where his glory began.

When Leonardo went back to Florence, it was the artistic capital.

There was a rivalry and competition between artists.

It wasn't like Milan under Ludovico il Moro.

The old generation was there: Botticelli, Signorelli, Perugino,

and a young man who was being talked about,

a certain Michelangelo

who had done the Pietà in St. Peter's in Rome,

which had blown everyone away.

He would soon create David,

his monumental nude sculpture.

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo seemed to cordially hate each other.

The origin of the conflict

may have been a comparison between two types of art,

and Leonardo had said that painting was superior to sculpture.

This would have annoyed the young Michelangelo.

There was probably jealousy as well.

Leonardo was a very outgoing man,

he liked comfort,

he liked to work when he wanted to.

He always had a group around him who liked to listen to him.

Michelangelo was a tortured, dark man,

he was difficult, hot-headed,

he destroyed himself physically for his work.

This rival culminated in a duel

at the end of 1503.

It took place in the Council Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio.

Leonardo was commissioned to paint a monumental fresco

depicting a victory of the army of the Republic:

the battle of Anghiari.

To provoke the artist's pride,

the government also commissioned Michelangelo

to paint another fresco of a battle in the same hall.

The Florentines were very sneaky. If they wanted Leonardo to finish,

they had to put him in an unpleasant situation,

with his rival.

Leonardo threw himself into his composition,

and when you look at the preparatory drawings,

they're covered in scribbles and full of inventions.

It's really something else.

And Leonardo decided to do something that had never been done before,

which was to paint war

as it really is, in all its horror.

After two years of military service under Cesare Borgia,

he was very aware of what war was like.

When he described battles, he said,

"A painter has to know how to show the dust that rises during a battle."

So, he wanted to show the indignity,

the rivers of blood in the mud...

The horses fighting,

the men fighting, the sweat, the blood flowing.

Michelangelo chose something different:

the battle of Cascina.

It's more about the psychology before the battle.

The men who are on the lookout, ready to act

to defend the Republic of Florence.

And it's quite a striking scene.

There's no battle.

They are two very opposed choices.

Michelangelo's was probably the more original.

Leonardo's was the more classic

but the stronger image.

But what was announced

as the biggest duel in the history of art

ended early.

Michelangelo abandoned his project in the early stages.

He was called to Rome to paint the Sistine Chapel.

For Leonardo, this was another technical disaster.

He didn't know how to paint on walls.

And, once again, he used a trick,

but it didn't work.

Today, only copies, such as this one by Rubens,

give us an idea of Leonardo's lost work.

It's a tragedy that we can't see

these compositions finished.

Imagine these things on a monumental scale

but right up close. The Sistine Chapel of Florence.

The Battle of Anghiari changed the course of art.

After this new failure,

Leonardo left Florence for Milan, still under French rule.

He restarted his workshop and brought in a new recruit:

Francesco Melzi,

a disciple who would stay with Leonardo to the end of his life.

He was an aristocrat, a very cultured boy

with whom Leonardo

had a much more intellectually sophisticated relationship.

Melzi became responsible for Leonardo's papers,

and he inherited them.

Melzi was the promise

of being able to organize all the theories he had in his head.

Francesco Melzi and other pupils

no doubt contributed much to his Bacchus,

a painting attributed to Leonardo.

This masterpiece has unfortunately seen the ravages of time.

The Louvre has entrusted it to the research and restoration center,

in the expert hands of Cynthia Pasquali.

A painstaking restoration

with almost surgical precision.

Is this really a Leonardo or was it his workshop?

We haven't answered that, and we may never answer it.

When we get into the painting,

when we examine it in order to restore it,

we look at a lot of things.

This painting of Bacchus in the state it's in now,

the piece is completely buried

under previous restorations

which altered it, the damage it's been subjected to.

So, we don't see it as it was.

Cleaning is something

that is the most dangerous, I'd say,

because it's irreversible. Once you've removed something,

you can't put it back.

So, we take our time over it

to be sure we don't remove anything that might be original

or historically significant.

For example, we found a little rabbit

that was buried.

He's there, see,

a little rabbit looking at the field

that was underneath a repainted spot.

Da Vinci's works are so dirty

because we've hardly dared to touch them

since they're so important.

This painting of Bacchus,

he has a strange look to him,

showing he's not so holy.

Leonardo always painted to express emotions.

Sometimes these emotions were not very Catholic.

Could we say that? Maybe.

Leonardo da Vinci is now 60.

Despite the years, his renown, and his philosophy,

the master needed a new protector now more than ever

to allow his inspiration to flow.

But Leonardo would have to wait a few years

before finding the right man for the job.

When he arrived in Rome in 1513,

it was in the service of someone very important:

Gian Medici, brother of the pope.

He lived in the Vatican, in the Belvedere,

one of Rome's most beautiful palaces.

And he was entrusted with important work,

mostly engineering.

But he was almost never asked for his services as a painter

because competition in art was fierce in 16th century Rome.

Leonardo had acquired a reputation

as being an easel artist, producing smaller paintings.

The pope was an extremely cultured man

but also a very pragmatic man.

He preferred artists who worked quickly.

Everyone knew he could not manage these large worksites,

manage the site at the Sistine Chapel

like Michelangelo did, to oversee the decoration

of the Vatican's chambers like Raphael did.

These men were much younger than him,

and they were known as artists that would see something through.

Leonardo very quickly realized

that there was no place for him in Rome.

Suddenly, an unexpected event changed his fate.

In 1515,

Francis I, the newly-crowned king of France,

claimed the Duchy of Milan and restarted war in Italy.

Crowned with glory after the battle of Marignan,

he met the pope in Bologna to negotiate peace.

Accompanying the papal delegation,

Leonardo da Vinci was probably a witness to this meeting.

Francis I and the pope met just here,

on the Piazza Maggiore.

They offered the people gifts such as food and clothes.

Francis I even demonstrated his miraculous powers,

the amazing gift that the kings of France possessed

to heal the sick

just by looking and touching.

The event is documented in this 17th century fresco

where we see Francis I in Bologna

healing the women.

It must have been on this occasion

that Leonardo and the king of France met each other.

Their meeting in Bologna was brief but intense.

Leonardo must have been fascinated by Francis I,

a young king, full of ambition,

someone who even wanted to become an emperor.

The victor of Marignan was an impressive man,

the ideal prince.

He was tall, handsome,

women liked him, he was admirable, he could fight.

He was a troubadour, a courtesan, a beautiful soul.

For his part, Leonardo saw in Francis I

that man he'd been dreaming of his whole life.

A protective patron, a father figure

who wouldn't ask him to deliver precise commissions on time,

but who would let him work at his pace, in peace.

On the other side, we can picture Francis I

who wants to create the best court in Europe.

He was very affected by what he saw in Italy,

by their marvelous courts,

and he thought that

maybe if he could get Leonardo out of Italy,

he would be a lovely jewel for his court.

Francis I pressured Leonardo to come to France.

A letter from his advisor, Lord Gouffier de Bonnivet,

to the French ambassador in Rome conveys this enthusiasm.

"I ask you to request that Mr. Leonardo come before the King

"as this man has a great devotion,

"and assure him that he will be welcomed by the King and his mother."

And it worked,

since Leonardo probably thought about it a little.

Remember, Leonardo was old,

so it would be a long, difficult journey,

and, no doubt, he must have known

that it would be his last, that he wouldn't come back.

He accepted the invitation and made his way to France

where he would spend the last three years of his life,

taking with him the Mona Lisa, St. Anne, and Saint John the Baptist.

It's an emotional thought.

Imagine da Vinci on his journey,

his paintings packaged fairly well,

these paintings that are so fragile.

We treat them as sacred relics,

we hardly dare to touch them today,

and they were treated like something totally normal back then.

It's emotional and frightening.

This time we are here

at the magnificent Amboise château that Francis I loved so much

because it reminded him of happy childhood memories.

The château you see

is made up of buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries

as well as both impressive towers,

such as this one, known as the tour des Minimes,

40 meters above the Loire.

As the heart of royal power during the Renaissance,

Amboise did grow in size, but alas,

it was partially destroyed after the Revolution.

But we can get an idea of its extent

thanks to a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

viewed from the south face.

Leonardo did make it here to Amboise

in fall 1516.

In this room, the château's largest,

Francis I heard his council

and most likely welcomed Leonardo and presented him to his court.

Look at these remarkable columns,

one decorated with fleurs de lys

and the other with ermine spots,

the symbols of the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Brittany.

You see here a throne

also decorated with fleurs de lys.

Just imagine Leonardo da Vinci's official entrance,

the great Renaissance master

accompanied by his disciples, here before Francis I.

The young king had found his magic man.

And Leonardo da Vinci, now in his twilight years,

was not thinking of retiring, quite the opposite.

These three years in France

were productive years for him,

full of ambitious projects.

France loves Leonardo

because Leonardo was good to France.

A stone's throw from Amboise,

Leonardo da Vinci took up residence at Clos-Lucé,

with a generous salary and ideal working conditions.

The Saint-Brice family has owned this estate since 1854.

For several decades now,

they have been restoring it,

bringing this unique place back to life

to carry on the memory and heritage of Leonardo da Vinci.

When Leonardo da Vinci arrived at Clos-Lucé,

he came with his favorite pupil, Francesco Melzi,

as well as Battista de Villanis, his new servant from Milan.

He was well-loved by the royal family.

They spoke Italian both in the town and in the court.

There were Italian artists in the town of Amboise,

so, for Leonardo, it was a new Renaissance.

But Leonardo could also orchestrate

some exceptional events.

A talented scenographer.

He coordinated no less than four great parties here.

And they were spectacular.

They involved everything that Leonardo could do,

which meant creating devices

to show that the French court

was one of the most refined in Europe.

Known as a master of scenography

and special effects since his time in Milan,

Leonardo da Vinci reproduced his memorable

heavenly event in France.

And the old master had one more trick up his sleeve.

One machine in particular made an impression:

a mechanical lion, designed in tribute to the King.

In Bologna, it has been recreated by a historian,

an expert in ancient robotics.

The mechanical lion is an amazing automaton.

It was like nothing before it.

And it was two or three centuries

before western mechanical science.

It works with a system of springs

and a sequence changing mechanism

which uses gears.

It contains the origins of calculus.

Although it hadn't been formulated, the concept is there,

as there are different combined movements

like a car going from forward gear into reverse.

At first, they were frightened, "Oh, it's a lion!"

And then, they were fascinated.

"How does this thing move by itself?"

And then, the cherry on top,

the lily appearing.

He would recreate it a few times

to enchant the court

with the idea that automatons

bring to life an ephemeral work of art,

impressing the public enormously.

He invented, he amazed, he inspired wonder.

Behind the splendor and great festivities,

the friendship between Leonardo and Francis I

was demonstrated every day.

Francis I was inamoratissmo,

totally enamored with Leonardo.

They were made for each other.

There was an almost paternal respect between them.

Francis I had lost his father when he was two-years-old,

and he saw in Leonardo a sort of father figure and a mentor.

These two men shared

an extraordinary intellectual passion.

Several times, Francis I called Leonardo "my father".

Now over 65,

Leonardo had not yet made his last brushstroke.

There is no age limit for greatness. Despite his declining health,

ideas and plans were forever forming

in his brilliant mind.

With the support of his loyal pupils and Francis I,

Leonardo proved his reputation for genius to the end.

Upon his arrival,

the king tasked Leonardo with a huge project:

constructing the Royal Palace in an ideal city for his court.

The place they chose was Romorantin,

Francis I's childhood home

where part of his mother's castle still exists.

She was a great woman, intelligent. Today we'd say she was a politician.

Louise of Savoy, during the first ten years of the King's reign,

she was the one in charge. The King was young.

Louise of Savoy played an important role

in Leonardo's arrival,

as it seems that the king and his mother

already had plans for the Royal Castle

before they met Leonardo.

The project grew bigger

after they met Leonardo.

Leonardo had the triple title

of engineer, painter, and architect.

As an engineer, Leonardo is interesting

because in France, he could now carry out

architectural work in creating a palace.

He learned the French didn't have palaces.

They had châteaux, but they were rather provincial

compared to what Italy had.

So, Leonardo was invited to create a palace at Romorantin.

The idea was a grand château

with stables, a town, a new Rome.

Leonardo only drew sketches for this ambitious project,

but the museum of Sologne in Romorantin

still holds today the plans

and maps created by Leonardo himself.

This is a reproduction of the Arundel Codex.

One of two codices containing the plans for Romorantin.

There are three pages on Romorantin,

particularly this one

which shows the overall plan of the project.

There are more technical drawings,

such as this pump system.

Hydraulics were fundamental to this project.

One of the main ideas of the project was its relation to the river.

There was a palace that was supposed to look onto the water

extended by a perfect town around 400 meters long.

Something massive, never done before in France.

But Leonardo da Vinci envisioned even more:

managing France's water courses.

In particular, he wanted to divert the Cher

to increase the level of the Sauldre at Romorantin.

Leonardo dreamed of colossal projects,

like joining the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

By digging a canal

that connected Romorantin to the Atlantic,

another to the Channel,

a third to the Mediterranean, maybe a fourth to the Rhine,

he would make this town into a hub of communication.

He worked on it a lot over 1517,

but he was already old and sick,

and the project was no doubt abandoned in 1518.

With no work to direct as his health permitted,

Leonardo returned to his favorite craft.

In particular, his Saint Anne.

Leonardo refined this painting for 15 years, to his last.

Now in the Louvre's great gallery, this painting remains unfinished.

Yet, it is almost perfect.

It's almost like Leonardo's will and testament.

He showed all of nature in this painting.

It was the work of his entire life.

"I wanted to be a great painter, I wanted to be a great scientist,

"and here is the result."

The protective, reassuring feeling shared by all the figures,

in particular the Virgin Mary and child,

seems to resonate with the artist's personal life.

It's a mother who is accepting her son's sacrifice.

And Leonardo wanted to represent that moment

when the Virgin wants to hold on,

but she accepts his fate,

which is necessary to save humanity.

He may have thought of his own situation,

being a bastard himself.

In his last years,

this look of sadness, of melancholy,

it may be himself he sees in it,

so she's the most interesting, most surprising figure.

It's the smallest smile in the painting,

the most emotional, the most poignant, and human

because there's this melancholy, this sadness.

It's the beginnings of a smile that doesn't hide her sadness.

Leonardo died whilst constructing this smile,

the most subtle and human smile

that he ever painted in his life.

He worked with images of women his whole life.

His work features many instances of the relationship

between mother and child,

which he always shows with immense tenderness.

There are always protective Madonnas,

loving, gentle.

In Spring 1519,

Leonardo, 67, was struck by paralysis

and lost the use of his right hand.

Bedridden in Clos-Lucé,

the old lion's strength was declining day by day,

until May 2.

He received the last rites.

Leonardo took his last breath

and resigned his soul to God.

At his side was his loyal associate,

friend, and assistant, Francesco Melzi.

The letter to Leonardo's half-brother written by Melzi

is clearly full of sadness,

full of the awareness

that a great person, one of the greatest, had left us.

It was the death of a truly great man.

One year before his death,

the master dictated his last wishes to the notary at Amboise.

A copy is kept today at Amboise Château.

Leonardo took a certain number of precautions

to ensure his belongings were shared

particularly between two people

who played big parts in his life.

Salaï inherited a certain number of artworks,

and Melzi, who was with him until his last moments,

who would play an important role

in remembering Leonardo's work.

His funeral was held ten days after his death,

and he wanted his funeral

to be that of a great lord.

That means the whole clergy and the Friors Minor,

everyone was invited to Leonardo's funeral

in the collegiate church,

and the procession, very solemnly,

with 60 people bearing torches,

accompanying Leonardo's casket.

It was time to say goodbye.

In France, one man in particular was saddened more than others.

Legend has it that he died in the arms of Francis I.

It's very symbolic, this prince of art and literature

being there for the last breath

of this wise man, this scientist, this great artist.

However, we know that it's just a story,

as the day that Leonardo died,

Francis I was at Fontainebleau

for the baptism of one of his sons.

In the 19th century,

painters such as Ingres seized on this legend

and created a romantic vision of the king at Leonardo's bedside.

He really did believe he was an extraordinary person,

so it is likely that he held Leonardo in his arms,

perhaps in his bed, to comfort him, to make him feel better.

I think that story is based on something that actually happened.

Leonardo da Vinci was first buried in the collegiate church,

once located in the heart of Amboise,

which was sadly destroyed during the Revolution.

In 1863,

excavations found a skeleton not far from a tombstone

which bore fragments of the artist's name

and the name of St. Luke, patron saint of painters.

We can logically infer, but not prove,

that this is the Italian genius.

In 1874, his remains were transferred

to St. Hubert chapel,

a magnificent location in a flamboyant Gothic style.

"Like a full day brings us good sleep,

"a life well lived brings us a peaceful death,"

wrote Leonardo in one of his notebooks.

After such a productive life,

we can be certain that this Italian genius

will rest in peace forever.

Despite the many mysteries,

one thing has always been certain:

time and death have not buried the memory of this extraordinary man.

Leonardo is more alive and more popular than ever.

And it may be because the legend of his life

is still sprinkled with a collection of mysteries,

starting with that of the Mona Lisa.

The most-viewed portrait in the world,

the most critiqued, and the most studied,

but something about it seems to escape us still.

The Mona Lisa's ineffable smile,

could it be Leonardo thumbing his nose at posterity?

Why is there such a universal passion

for the Mona Lisa? Why do people come in droves

to take selfies with it?

It's a mystery to me.

It's striking, mostly, it's alive.

There's an interaction with her.

The first time I held the Mona Lisa,

I thought, "This is incredible, how was this painted?

"It's so full of life. There's a vibration in it.

"Am I crazy?"

The Mona Lisa is something to be crazy about.

Painted in oil, on a 77 by 53 cm poplar panel,

she does seem to be alive.

The Louvre receives mail from across the globe concerning this painting,

some addressed directly to Mona Lisa herself.

Senhora Monalisa,

called la Gioconda, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

This one here, for example, a Mr. Léon

who writes, "My dear Mona,

"I am sorry to keep you waiting.

"I could not be freed from my obligations

"concerning the celebrations

"of the Armistice of the First World War."

We have to show Mona people's holiday photos.

"Hello Mona, hello Lisa.

"We are in Prague. The weather is lovely,

"so we are always smiling. Lots of love, kisses."

Before becoming a legend,

Mona Lisa was a flesh and blood woman.

Lisa Maria Gherardini, also known as Monalisa,

Lady Lisa.

She was the second wife of a fabric merchant,

Francesco del Giocondo.

The painting's story begins in Tuscany in 1503

in uncertain circumstances.

But the ancient villa of the Ghirardini family

still stands today in Vignamaggio, in Chianti.

It was a holiday home

where Leonardo da Vinci was invited, according to local legend.

To welcome the master,

they held a great banquet

with various types of game and meat.

Unfortunately, Leonardo was a vegetarian.

He didn't eat anything.

So, they gave him wine.

Unfortunately, he was teetotal.

So, it was a disaster, in the end.

There's a local legend that's very funny:

Leonardo went to his room

and he was joined by little Lisa

who was a friend of the family

who came to see him. They got on well.

That's when, according to legend,

he created the sketch of Lisa's face

that would later become the Mona Lisa.

A note, dated October 1503,

the time at which Leonardo began the Mona Lisa,

written by Agostino Vespucci,

a Florentine civil servant,

mentions Lisa del Giocondo by name in reference to Leonardo's painting.

This is today's irrefutable proof of the model's identity.

But Leonardo's attachment

to the painting to the end of his life,

tells us that to him, it was more than just a portrait.

This painting has slowly become

something more than a portrait of Lisa del Giacondo.

It's become the expression of a woman

who represents the universality of humankind.

In the Mona Lisa, he has represented

the humanity of which a woman is capable.

This vast, infinite interior world.

And the landscape brings out this humanity.

Through her smile, through her gaze,

Lisa establishes complicity,

an intimacy with the viewer

that has never been seen in the history of painting.

It's blown people away.

We've realized that it's a painting

wherein Leonardo has conveyed this life force.

Leonardo da Vinci had almost no material.

It's just layers of paint.

How did he place these layers? That's the mystery of the Mona Lisa.

The center for research and restoration of Musées de France

is trying to pierce the veil using x-ray analysis.

We have here La Belle Jardinière,

a painting by Raphael from the same time as the Mona Lisa.

There's something different to what we usually see

in paintings from that period.

In comparison, the x-ray of the Mona Lisa is surprising.

They seem like failed x-rays,

ghostly, with fluid edges.

It's difficult to find the surface composition

although you can see here a suggestion of the head

and the neckline here.

But where are her clasped hands? Where is the landscape?

It's still ghostly.

How did he do it? There are no brushstrokes.

There's nothing, it's evanescent.

There's the famous sfumato around the figures.

You can't tell where a face becomes clothing

and clothing becomes landscape.

Everything merges together, harmoniously,

and it seems to exist in its own right.

In order to control its conditions electronically,

the Mona Lisa is kept in a wooden case.

As if in suspended animation,

the Mona Lisa is kept in a stable environment

at 20 degrees, 24/7,

and 50% humidity.

You can't take this painting out, it's extremely fragile.

When you see it laid on a table,

it's just a sheet of paper. It's so fine,

even worse than paper,

it's curved, it's warped.

And you can see this long crack

which reaches as far as Mona Lisa's face.

Miraculously, it has stopped just above her head,

but with one unintended climatic change,

it could break in half.

It would lose some material.

The Mona Lisa's face would break in two.

This painting really has to be controlled daily,

I'd say even second by second.

The Mona Lisa hasn't always been so well-protected.

August 22, 1911,

the most famous woman in the world

was stolen by a 30-year-old Italian worker.

In just a few minutes, he grabbed the Mona Lisa,

dismounted it quickly in a service corridor,

and made off with the painting under his arm.

It was a national scandal

because this was a part of French heritage

that disappeared spectacularly,

and the news spread around the world as of August 1911.

The impact was huge.

Vincenzo Peruggia was the very worker

who installed a protective window over the painting.

For over two years,

he hid the Mona Lisa in his room in Paris.

But in December 1913,

he took it to Florence to sell it to an antique dealer

and was arrested.

His motivation for the theft

was to return a stolen masterpiece to Italy.

France could breathe easy.

The Mona Lisa was returned to her home in the Louvre.

Since then, conservators have objected to any removal.

As a rare exception, she set sail for New York in 1963,

where she was welcomed like a celebrity

as an initiative by Minister for Culture André Malraux.

She was loaned for the eyes of another icon: Jackie Kennedy.

The painting was replicated, on postcards,

in photographs, color reproductions.

I think it was the first time

that a work of art was recreated thousands of times

throughout the world.

Copies of the painting date as far back as Leonardo's time,

such as the Prado Museum's La Gioconda, in Madrid,

painted in Leonardo's workshop.

But Mona Lisa doesn't only have twin sisters.

The Condé museum in Chantilly château

holds a strange cousin of the Florentine woman.

This is a drawing, known as La Joconde Nue.

It's a very mysterious work

which came from Leonardo da Vinci's workshop

and which has given rise to a lot of speculation.

We've found a lot of resemblances

to the painting in the Louvre, in the position of the hands,

the way the body is turned.

What really makes it similar to the Louvre painting

is this enigmatic smile,

sketched lightly, very much Leonardo's style.

It's also this soft portrayal.

We have all the mysteries of the Mona Lisa here,

to which we can add the mystery of her nudity,

of her hairstyle, of this figure's gaze,

which may be imaginary, aiming for a universal beauty.

The Mona Lisa has caused some fantastic speculation.

Some even see Leonardo

as the patron saint of a secret cult only known to the initiated.

The legends persist, but the mysteries remain

because at its core, there is such an unusual mind,

could it be part of a multitude of truths?

The Louvre's archives department

holds all publications on the Mona Lisa from 1503 onwards.

Alongside the official files,

it has attracted countless theories, more or less original.

Here, we have what we call "Leonardo's follies".

These are letters which are not historical or scientific.

These are all people who think they've discovered

the secret of the Mona Lisa, the mystery she's hiding,

so we have a lot of theories,

all of them unbelievable.

The whole world

writes to the Louvre about the mystery of the Mona Lisa.

The latest famous example is The Da Vinci Code.

This novel, by Dan Brown,

was a worldwide bestseller and was adapted for the big screen.

It painted Leonardo as the master of a secret society

and his most famous paintings are full of coded messages.

It's true that there is ambiguity within Leonardo,

which is perfect for adoption by an esoteric organization.

There are mysterious parts of his life.

The interplay between light and shadow,

which frequently occurs in his writing.

We know that he carried out dissections.

Could he have been a necromancer?

Someone who digs up bodies,

cuts them up to study them.

Doesn't that sound like black magic?

Leonardo lived in a time when magic was very important.

Astrology was very important in the court of the Medicis.

It was the time of Hermes Trismegistus,

of looking for secrets in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Leonardo left some mystery,

but he sought out mystery

like an aesthetic seduction.

If we look at St. John the Baptist,

he is appearing out of the shadows.

St. John the Baptist

was the last painting undertaken by Leonardo.

This masterpiece shows the last prophet,

announcer of Christ's coming to Earth.

After the Mona Lisa,

St. John the Baptist is definitely considered

to be his most mysterious painting,

but I'd say it's the one that makes you most uneasy.

He's giving a very invasive look

and a noticeable smile.

This is someone who is very ambiguous,

and it's difficult to interpret, seeing it for the first time.

Firstly, because the religious symbols are hidden.

The cross he's holding is barely visible.

And there's this strong gesture,

his hand pointed towards the sky,

an indication

that the real truth is Jesus who is coming soon.

This gesture says, "Look." In my opinion,

he wants to say,

"Look around, mystery is everywhere, beauty is everywhere."

We can definitely say

that Leonardo had some unconventional theological ideas,

but this did not make him an expert

in ancient magical theories,

including Egyptian theory.

For this idea that Leonardo was an initiate

in some esoteric rite, there would be traces elsewhere.

This is the contradiction in Leonardo's oeuvre,

which is, from start to end,

rational, intelligent, coherent,

and defies this type of explanation.

Another source of misunderstanding is the Vitruvian Man.

Drawn by Leonardo based on an ancient treatise

on the ideal proportions of the human body,

it is often interpreted as a symbol of cosmic harmony

which conceals the golden ratio,

a divine proportion synonymous with true beauty.

Contrary to popular belief,

the golden ratio is absolutely not present in the Vitruvian Man.

There is, however, this fundamental idea

that within the microcosm of Man,

there are harmonious proportions.

Vitruvius' text explains

that a man can fit inside a circle and a square,

and Leonardo found his own solution to this

by offsetting the square relative to the circle.

It's possible as well that the Vitruvian Man,

iconic as it is,

could well be Leonardo da Vinci.

I think that Leonardo had a very high opinion of himself.

He saw himself as... not quite God's equal,

but as someone capable of similar creation.

A figure of perfect genius,

Leonardo da Vinci has seen extraordinary posthumous fame.

Virtuoso artist, visionary engineer, poet of life.

Every century has seen him as a role model.

A great figure can have as many faces as we want

and that has to adapt to a new time, to all periods,

and answer almost every question.

And with Leonardo,

there's enough material for quite a while yet.

Leonardo da Vinci is immortal.

His work knows no borders.

His oeuvre is universal.

It is the genius of Leonardo that he showed

that a life of obsession with perfection

means producing little,

but the little he did produce is absolutely breathtaking.

Today, we're all about productivity, speed.

He was exactly the opposite.

Leonardo's inventions

are such a part of today's culture and visual language

that we don't even notice anymore.

He's on signs for parking lots,

brand logos, jeans.

He can be used to sell almost anything,

precisely because he has this mythological allure.

Leonardo's charm echoes through the centuries.

He's irresistible.

He's such a dense personality,

so profound, rounded.

When you study Leonardo,

you feel like he's still with us.

Leonardo da Vinci charmed the most powerful princes on Earth.

His work changed art history forever.

His discoveries and inventions were ahead of his time.

This Italian genius evoked the admiration of the entire world

and created so much mystery that we are still searching

to understand this divine man.

Yes, Leonardo da Vinci was certainly almost divine,

making himself an omniscient creator.

We are still exploring his unique world,

his sublime reality.

But beyond this inestimable legacy,

Leonardo, a mortal man,

may have revealed to us something even more precious:

we can conquer time

by seizing the present and appreciating its value.

And I'd like to close this program

with the words of Leonardo himself:

"Look at the light and admire its beauty.

"Close your eyes and observe.

"What you saw is no more,

"and what you will see is not yet."

Thank you for watching,

I will see you very soon for a new edition of Secrets of History.

Subtitling: Hiventy