Original subtitles

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leonardo da vinci is believed by many to

have been the most talented individual

who ever lived

he was an absolute experimenter and you

can see that across not only his

painting but all areas of his life

drawings of helicopters and submarines

cannon and anatomy

you name it he did it

he was a universal man he was greatly

interested in science so we only devoted

part of his time to art

but while his greatest legacy remains in

his art we're still unearthing the

secrets of how he worked

leonardo really tried to make painting

do everything he wanted movement he

wanted light he wanted color he went to

psychology

he tried to put so much into a painting

with still uncovering the fascinating

discoveries he made and the mysteries of

what happened to his masterpieces

long after he died

modern scientific methods offer great

opportunities to know a lot more about

leonardo's technique

one always imagined that he was a

feverish constantly changing rather

fretful painter leonardo crashes forms

together

and that influenced almost everyone

art lives from constraints and dies from

freedom

leonardo was born at a time when the

house of medici was ruling over florence

this eminent banking family would

eventually produce four popes but their

rise to prominence had occurred when

cosimo de medici came to dominate the

region that a young leonardo was born

into and it was cosimo's son lorenzo who

would be crucial in establishing

leonardo's legacy

we don't know much about how leonardo

began we know he was born in 1452 in a

little tuscan town not far from florence

he was actually an illegitimate child

and was brought up by his paternal

grandfather but his father was quite a

successful lawyer in florence

and that drew the young leonardo to

florence

he was apprenticed to andrea verrocchio

now he is the leading artist in florence

did painting sculpture everything bits

of engineering presumably leonardo's

father who was well connected said i've

got a son who's

pretty good at this painting drawing

thing would you take him on in the case

of leonardo because he was a genius when

he was old stands to reason he must have

been a genius when he was young so he

was obviously recognized as a prodigy

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poor is the pupil who does not surpass

his master

leonardo's earliest dated work made

during his time with verrocchio is this

drawing of the arno valley region where

he was born

verracchio was a terrific source of

inspiration and he set this image of

versatility for leonardo he also looked

at her lesser-known artist antonio

polyolo who did wonderful anatomical

nude figures which inspired leonardo

he looked at the great florentine

tradition of the painter mazatchio who

he mentions the sculpt donatello who he

mentioned so he saw himself in that

florentine tradition of anatomy

perspective he was quite a talented

student and he worked with the master on

a painting of the baptism of christ

there's a story in visari that says he

helps paint one particular scene

avarocchio said it's so great i'm never

going to pick up a paintbrush ever again

it's possible that a statue made by

verrocchio of the biblical david may

have been modeled on the young leonardo

as well as the angel in the painting

tobias and the angel attributed to

verrocchio leonardo may have even worked

on this painting himself specifically

the fish held by tobias

verrocchio obviously was the prime

influence there were some very talented

students

working in varakiya's studio and they

actually included botticelli and

perugino

by the time he reached 20 and he went

into the guild he was setting up with

his own studio and his father helped him

out with that but he still kept this

very close relationship with rocchio so

that was really how his

artistic life was formed was in the

studio setting with him

following such an extensive education

leonardo needed to make a name on his

own but these were difficult times an

attempt had been made on lorenzo de

medici's life in the infamous patsy

conspiracy

lorenzo's brother was killed but he

survived

the conspirators were soon caught and

executed

leonardo would sketch the hanging body

of one of the collaborators bernardo de

bandino baroncelli

at around the same time leonardo

received one of his earliest known

commissions in florence the adoration of

the magi

but he would leave this painting

unfinished

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leonardo was a perfectionist when it

came to art

and he sometimes left works unfinished

and in some cases he abandoned pictures

i think he aimed at finishing pictures

and some of them did get finished but

the problem is along the way he can

always see another way of doing it he

can see a different bit of the

composition a different emotional

context a different landscape

so it's very difficult in that

circumstance to say yeah i really

finished with this picture he was always

on the move you know to venice and then

to rome and then back to florence then

back to rome and then he himself put

about this idea that

he didn't finish things because he could

then say boy imagine what it been like

if they'd been finished

and that was i think common and probably

still is a bit he did have a clear sense

of finnish pictures the last supper was

finished the mona lisa is pretty much

finished i think and quite a number of

paintings are finished but it was a

difficult job getting to that point

leonardo was now a part of lorenzo de

medici's court and after surviving the

patsy conspiracy

lorenzo's power in florence only grew

but he needed to secure a peace with the

powerful duke of milan ludovico

schwarzer leonardo would travel to milan

to help achieve this goal

leonardo was working at the court in

milan and his employment gave him the

time and money to pursue his very wide

interest both in the arts and sciences

so it was a very important time for his

work somebody like the duke of milan

rang you up and said you know hey why

don't you come and work for me then you

know you said okay you didn't say no to

people like that

he probably lived a very various life we

don't have eye witness descriptions but

he was doing this and that within the

court he complained often that the court

duties were

getting in the way of his quest for fame

to do immortal works as it were so he

diverted from project to project ranging

from military engineering civil

engineering architecture stage design

very varied i think it suited him quite

well because we know he's got this

restless intellect and restless

creativity

ludovico schwarzer was obviously

impressed and leonardo would work in the

city for almost two decades

it would be schwarzer who would

commission the last supper

ludovico employed leonardo for 19 years

and not without signs of frustration and

the last supper he writes to a secretary

saying get leonardo going and get him

onto the next wall so

there was that element of frustration

but i think all patrons including

ludovico knew they got someone amazing

that was a great virtuoso

whilst in milan leonardo would create

one of his most enigmatic portraits the

lady with an ermine

the subject of the painting is cecilia

galerani the mistress of

ludwika sforza the duke of milan

she came from a bourgeois family in

siena but obviously had a very nice dad

i think because she was taught all the

things that her brothers were taught she

was taught maths and latin and all that

sort of stuff da vinci started painting

her portrait in 1489 and she was quite

an unusual character for the time she

hosted almost what we could now describe

as a salon so all the intellects of the

day from milan would meet with her and

she would invite da vinci to join

the animal in the painting is an hermann

and i say that firmly because it doesn't

make sense as anything else

the ermine was a symbol of purity it

wouldn't go across a bog it would rather

be captured by a hunter it was also a

symbol of moderation you may think for

duke's mistress

and

symbol of purity is slightly anomalous

but that's how it worked in the

renaissance so it must be an ermin

ludwika was awarded the order of the

airmen

hermann became also his nickname

so

that's how art historians connected the

subject of the painting

to

his mistress

leonardo is only believed to have

completed four oil paintings of women

throughout his career

after his death two of them la

belfaranier and the mona lisa would end

up in the louvre but were not completely

certain who were the sitters for these

portraits

a third the geneva de benshi took a long

time to finally be accepted as a

leonardo

but it was the portrait of chachilia

galarani the lady with an ermine that

would have the most eventful history and

thanks to modern science would continue

to give us insight into the workings of

a genius

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there are three classes of people

those who see

those who see when they are shown

those who do not see

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leonardo da vinci died in amboise in the

kingdom of france on the 2nd of may 1519

the paintings that he had taken with him

there now reside in the louvre in paris

but he left behind a whole plethora of

works both finished and unfinished that

would eventually be scattered all across

the world

you're just beginning later 15th century

to get artists recognized as kind of

intellectual ornaments of the court

you're beginning to get what i call the

super artists the raphael considerably

younger michelangelo a bit younger

who were becoming huge figures in their

own right and some of the italian courts

were beginning to accommodate this new

brand of rising artists

the three titans of the renaissance era

rafael michelangelo and leonardo had

such a profound impact that their works

became treasured in a way unlike artists

before them and chichilia galirani the

woman captured as the lady with an

ermine owned a rare portrait completed

by leonardo which would endure the most

perilous journey of all before finding

its new home in poland

what happened to the portrait was it

obviously was in the hands of chichilya

galarani we know she had it in 1498 this

is a better destination from manchua who

was avid to get the best artists working

for her said would you send the

portraits i'd like to compare it one

with giovanni bellini the great venetian

artist chichilia wrote back and said i

can lend it to you but it's not a good

likeness but this is not the painter's

fault i have changed a great deal in the

intervening years so we can be pretty

sure that it was with the family with

chichellia herself and

until her death what happens to it then

we simply don't know

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for the first 300 years we don't know

anything about it but it was bought in

about 1800 by a polish prince adam

charter risky who purchased it in italy

the young princess adameja goes on a

tour with his brother to sicily the

brothers

spend their time

acquiring

artworks

among them

the famous raphael

and the leonardo da vinci painting they

knew that it was a leonardo but they

didn't know who the painting was of

when the picture was in the collection

of isabella sartorisky they put an

inscription on it almost certainly at

that time saying la belle franiere

leonardo da vinci so she got the right

artist but the wrong girl it's

incredibly innovatory how that painting

works we think of mona lisa as very

novel but this is very novel as well

she's there and she's looking sideways

and smiling

now who is she smiling at what has drawn

her attention i think it's almost

certainly the duke so there's a kind of

triangular relationship

there's us looking at her she's looking

at the duke so we can imagine almost

certainly that the person who she's

glancing at and smiling slightly is the

duke and that is incredibly novel to

build in this other presence in the

painting which is implied

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the painting had arrived in poland where

it resides today but in the intervening

years it traveled all across europe as

its owners attempted to protect it

the november uprising of 1830 meant that

isabella chartariska had to flee warsaw

taking the lady with an ermine with her

the next time it was seen was in paris

at the home of adam chartarisky however

it had to be hidden in the basement as

the franco-prussian war commenced it

returned to warsaw in 1876 where it

remained until the outbreak of the first

world war when the charter risky family

took the painting along with the rest of

their collection to dresden

when hitler invaded poland the leonardo

was seized from the charter risky estate

and it was taken back to berlin

in 1939 just before the war the

atmosphere was quite jolly

things weren't looking very good but

nobody was expecting what was about to

happen

from the west germans come from the east

russians come the collection was moved

to shinjava which is 16 kilometers from

here the palace in chinava gets

plundered by the german army but before

that collection is moved here into

pokemon we're not exactly sure where it

was hidden but i suspect it might be the

secret room

behind the library

dss come in and steal the collection the

gestapo moves in and takes over one wing

of the palace and as war continues the

village of pequena

is witness to

horrific things

it went to berlin to the kaiser fruit

museum um but then the very unpleasant

gowl lighter of poland hans frank

decided that he wanted it he then goes

on the wall of his office and in 1945 at

the end of the war he goes almost on the

run with it takes it to silesia to his

country house but the monuments men find

it and bring it back to the charter

risky museum

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the lady of the urban has an amazing

status within polish culture we know

that isabella greatly admired the

renaissance and saw herself as a kind of

new renaissance figure around about

1800. i think it's got a huge totemic

value in partly because not many

countries have you know it's one of six

places where you can find a leonardo but

also because it's been through so much

as indeed has poland so i can see why

they would identify very strongly with

the sufferings of that picture

it's been on postage stamps and so on so

this particular picture in leonardo has

sort of been absolved within polish

culture it's become a polish picture in

a very profound sense

the lady with an ermine now takes pride

of place in the charter risky collection

and recently it's given up some more of

its secrets thanks to some revolutionary

technology which has shed new light on

leonardo's way of working

modern scientific techniques offer great

opportunities to look

under the surface of paintings so we

know a lot more about leonardo's

technique and what the paintings

originally must look like

the layer amplification method pioneered

by pascal kart has shown us lots of

things from the lower layers now we knew

that leonardo was a manic fiddler with

paintings he kept altering them and so

on

and what this has shown is that the

alterations are even more extensive than

we suspected

it's been shown recently that the

background of the painting which is now

black was originally a bluish gray with

a darker area of bluish gray where there

would have been shadow the urban has

almost certainly been adjusted though i

think it's more difficult to see than

pascal [ __ ] claims one of the most

striking things that the layer method

has come up with is the interlaced

pattern we know that leonardo loved

these interlaced patterns these knots he

did them independently you can see a

whole lot of interlace on her costume we

couldn't previously see what that method

has done is to confirm or extend

something which we could already see in

other paintings

over the centuries experts have had to

piece together leonardo's body of work

in total he only left behind around 20

or so paintings many of them unfinished

he's believed to have approached every

single work differently and as more

paintings become accepted in his canon

we've learned more about the amazing

techniques he used and his incredible

manuscripts show the artistic

breakthroughs that he made throughout

his career

leonardo looked at how light behaved in

nature

and he was able to think about two

aspects of it one is tone that's to say

where does exist on a on a scale of

black to white as a in the grey tone as

it were

and he also thought about colors and how

they related to that scale

he had this theory called the simple

colours or six colour theory which was

effectively you could paint anything

using what we would now call the primary

colours plus black white and not enough

green which she thought of as a primary

colour for reasons that elude me you

look at chichili galirani lady with the

urban you can see both the individual

colors are singing out in their proper

notes but they're also part of a unified

pattern of light and shade

why does the eye see a thing more

clearly in dreams than the imagination

when awake

one of the most notable features the

painting is the way the light behaves

leonardo talked about light hitting

things he talked about percussioni

so where the light hits at different

angles it makes different effects and

the procrastinate then rebounds so if

you look under her chin you've got this

rebound of light back into the shadow

and under her hand as well leonardo's a

great pioneer of this technique

but despite all his remarkable insights

and achievements

even the great leonardo doubted his own

ability at times

i have offended god and mankind because

my work didn't reach the quality it

should have

in a sense his ambition for painting

and his sheer inventiveness made it very

difficult for him to finish paintings

but

at the end of the day he finished the

world's most famous painting perhaps the

second most famous painting the last

supper and did the world's most famous

drawing the vitruvian man so that's not

bad

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you