Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

- The nude is the most enduring subject in art.

For more than 20,000 years,

images of the naked human body have been at the very center

of a long and complex saga.

It's hard to understand any of the major developments in art

without an understanding of the key role played

by changing depictions of naked men and women.

In this series,

I'm going to explore the ongoing significance of the nude,

what it tells us about various civilizations

and what it tells us about ourselves

and the world in which we live

In the ancient civilizations of the Greeks and the Romans,

the nude was used in abundance

to glorify an idealized male physical strength,

because they were militaristic societies,

but everything changes after the collapse of these empires

and the rise of a new Christian one.

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(birds cawing)

I'm standing in a church in West Sussex,

the Church of St Botolph's in Hardham

and on the walls are some

of the earliest medieval wall paintings

that exist anywhere in Britain.

These images were painted sometime just after 1100

by a group of artists called the Lewis group

who traveled around this part of West Sussex

and who fused the Anglo-Saxon style

with something of the Norman style

that we might see in the Bayeux Tapestry.

The image that I'm looking at puts

the nude fundamentally center stage,

but with a very strong Christian moral purpose.

We see Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

They're very simplistically drawn

although there's something wonderfully visceral

and almost intestine-like

about the external view of their bodies.

Adam is pointing and Eve is reaching over

and taking the Apple from the winged serpent,

wrapped round the tree that we can see there.

And on the other panel on the other side of the chancery,

we see them hiding their nakedness

and suddenly nudity is no longer an expression

of human ideals and beauty and perfection,

but it's an expression of sin.

Why?

Well, the Bible makes itself quite clear.

Once the apple had been eaten,

then the eyes of both of them were opened, it says,

and they discovered that they were naked.

So they stitched fig leaves together

and made themselves loincloths.

And then Adam says to God,

I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

Why Judaism and subsequently Christianity took this view

is puzzling, but the nude so greatly celebrated and admired

in the art of Greece and Rome was now cloaked

in a cloud of shame that we've never really shaken off.

- I think the Christian religion has a lot to answer for,

quite frankly, in terms of the way we view art,

because the church had very, very strong desires to censor.

And the church did so.

The church destroyed images,

the church insisted on removing images

from public view because it was considered

that in the Christian Church, nudity was evil.

Nudity was the work of the devil.

- This series is focusing largely on Western art,

but it'd be wrong of me completely

to ignore the other parts of the world

and how they were portraying the nude

at exactly the same time.

If one looks at India, for example,

what's apparent is an openness,

in sharp contrast, to the inherent European prudishness

of the Middle Ages.

These Hindu temples contain images that we still can't show.

And indeed the British imperialists two centuries ago,

tried to cover them up, even destroy them in some cases,

but in Hindu beliefs,

the act of sexual union is akin

to understanding the universe.

The pleasure of love making is seen

as the doorway to spiritual balance

and the embrace of man and woman signifies

the ultimate union of the soul and the divine.

In the 14th century, Western art underwent a revolution

and the great revolutionary artist

was a man called Giotto di Bondone.

A man who was born near Florence around 1267

and his early life, according

to the great Florentine art historian, Giorgio Vasari,

was as that of a shepherd boy,

who was discovered by Cimabue painting animals on a rock.

Cimabue was the greatest Florentine painter of his day,

and took Giotto on as a pupil

and they worked together on the great murals at Assisi,

depicting the life of Saint Francis,

a lot of which has subsequently been destroyed

by an earthquake,

but this I think is Giotto's crowning achievement.

It's in the Scrovegni Chapel here in Padua,

and it depicts the lives of the saints,

the life of the Virgin Mary, and, most dramatically,

the life of Christ in 38 panels rendered directly

on the wall and showing a real drama

that's never been in Western art until this point.

Now, Giotto works rather than the manner of an architect.

What I mean by that is that Giotto

would have to do sketches and drawings on parchment.

He would then pinprick holes

to outline the various figures and forms

and then the parchments will be put on the walls,

charcoal will be blown through

and so the outline will be there visible.

Then of course, he's got to work directly onto wet plaster

in a process that is risky and has gotta be done quickly.

And this is the result.

Giotto's representation of nudity largely continues

the Christian tradition of using the nude

as a portrayal of sin.

This is Giotto's Last Judgment, in my opinion,

the best Last Judgment ever painted,

apart from Michelangelo's 200 years later

in the Sistine Chapel.

At the center is Christ,

throned in splendor, passing judgment,

but the most dramatic, traumatic and disturbing part

of the whole picture is here on the right

where four tongues of flames suck nude figures

down into hell.

This is the descendant of depravity

where figures are pulled apart.

They're falling, they're being raped.

They're being violated by demons

and here with this massive image of Satan,

they're being devoured and excreted in a vicious cycle.

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But what Giotto did that was revolutionary

was to begin imbuing human figures

with emotion and a sense of powerful drama.

There's a panel just to the right of the crucifixion

where Christ lies in the arms of his mother.

He's dead.

His mother has a sense of real loss on her face.

Likewise, the figures that surround it convey

a real sense of drama

and suddenly it becomes clear that raw emotion

and the real essence of a story in the Bible

can be brought to life through painting.

And that's what Giotto does.

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Giotto's fame as an artist spread dramatically

during his lifetime and in 1334,

he was invited here to the city of Florence,

where he was given the title of Grandmaster

and also appointed as architect

of the campanile or tower next to Florence cathedral.

At this time, Italy was a mass of city states,

each vying with the other

for military and political and economic supremacy.

Florence's economic supremacy centered

on the wool trade and banking.

And of course the best way

of affirming how successful you were,

was to commission the best artists and architects

to build public monuments.

And it was this combination

of the economic and the aesthetic

the led, over the next 60 years,

to the foundations of the most influential

and important art movement of the last 2000 years,

the Renaissance.

At the core at the beginning of the 15th century

were three great figures,

one an architect, Brunelleschi,

who built the dome of Florence cathedral,

mirrored on the classical dome from the Pantheon in Rome.

And then a sculptor, Donatello,

and a painter called Masaccio

who reinvented the classical nude.

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Masaccio looked back to Giotto for inspiration,

but set his characters in three, rather than two dimensions,

based on the new science of perspective,

creating an illusion of solid figures

in space with light coming from a precise direction

and with the subsequent shadows,

giving both a sense of depth

and physical intensity to the work.

This is the rebirth of Classical ideal nudes,

based on Greek and Roman models,

as opposed to the Christian iconography we've just seen,

though like St. Botolph's,

the nudes here are Adam and Eve

being expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Their nudity, once again, a symbol of their sinfulness,

but with a subtle but crucial shift in attitude evident.

For Masaccio doesn't paint them

as totally fallen human beings.

Their dignity is still intact

and their bodies are a blend of Christian guilt

and the beautiful Classical nude

which celebrated naturalness.

This was the beginning of a major struggle

in which artists were going to try

and win back guiltlessness, nakedness,

and a sense of beauty.

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The new approach to painting in general

and the nude in particular

towards the end of the 15th century

is most clearly demonstrated by Sandro Botticelli

and this painting, above all, "The Birth of Venus".

The rebirth of Classicism,

of the values of the Classical world

of Ancient Greece and Rome which underpinned the Renaissance

was made widely popular at this time

by the excavation of ancient statues.

Artists were greatly impressed and influenced

by these statues and Botticelli was no exception.

What we see is an image of the goddess, Venus,

emerging from the sea.

She's on a shell.

She's being blown gently to shore by two wind gods

who scatter petals or roses around her

and she's just about to be greeted

by another figure on the shore, well, she's a nymph,

but some people have said,

she's a goddess too, the goddess of spring, Primavera,

who holds a cloak for her.

The painting is charged with ambiguities.

We can read superficially what it's about,

but I think ultimately it's this image

of a wonderful, dramatic frozen moment

in which her nudity is central,

because it's just about to be covered up by the cloak.

And yet we see her revealing as much of herself

as is possible in the conventions

of 15th century Florentine art

and Christian morality in general.

Some people have also seen in this image,

a wonderful fusion of different ideas of the Christian

and the Classical,

that in her facial expressions and in her gestures,

she's very much like some images of the blessed Virgin Mary.

At the same time, people have looked at this

and said, Plato, the great Greek philosopher,

his ideas were very strong in Florence in the 15th century.

And his idea about ideal and perfection and perfect forms,

fuses with the Christian idea

about the divine being the source of all perfection

and that this is an image of perfect beauty.

Botticelli himself had severe reservations about this work,

which stemmed from the fact

that a vehement Christian preacher called Savonarola

was spreading a message in Florence in the 1480s

about the association of nudity

with sinfulness and depravity,

and consequently Botticelli destroys a number of nude images

that he's produced,

but this painting survives,

in many ways as a manifesto to the shifting status

of the nude in Western art.

In this image, the idea that the nude is sinful and depraved

is moved firmly to one side and suddenly we see,

in all its glory, the idea of the nude

as something to be celebrated,

something beautiful, something natural.

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If Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" is very much

a painted symbol of the desire to make the nude beautiful,

that this is the sculptural one.

Michelangelo's monumental vision of David,

produced in 1501 when he was only 26 years old.

Michelangelo was trained as a painter

under a man called Ghirlandaio

and he's also immediately taken up by the patrons

who are the banking firm and family

who effectively rule the city of Florence

in the latter half of the 15th century,

the Medici family, but they're overthrown in the 1490s

and a republic is implemented in Florence

and Michelangelo has to flee to Rome.

But he's invited back by the Republic in 1500

and in 1501, commissioned to make this work.

Now, it's hewn from Carrara marble

and Michelangelo gets a piece of stone

that's already been worked on by a sculptor

and discarded and produces this image of David,

which is a biblical character,

but fused with Classical values.

He's proportionate, he's harmonious, he's beautiful.

There's a calm, but there's also an inner strength

and the crucial thing about this work is where it's sited.

The original was taken away at the beginning of the century

and put in the Academia Museum.

And this is a replica made on the original site

where David was located.

He stands outside the Palazzo Vecchio.

This was the seat of Florentine government

and he's there as a symbol of the city itself.

He looks south to Rome,

which is the city that offers the greatest threat

to the Florentine Republic.

And on the platform that you see David emerging from

was where public proclamations were made by government

and the population would gather around

to make or vote on those decisions

just as the population or the tourists gather around now

to pay homage to David himself.

He's become a symbol of many things.

Ultimately, I think, of Michelangelo's prowess,

but also of male beauty.

- We might think of David as a Classical sculpture

because it's proportions are, in many ways, Classical,

reminiscent of the great Classical sculptures

of Greek antiquity.

But in many ways,

it's a startlingly modern Renaissance sculpture.

Many Classical sculptures have a slightly sullen aspect,

an introversion.

They look in at themselves.

They don't directly challenge the viewer.

David looks straight out at the viewer.

David is a statue which is almost belligerently proud

of its nakedness.

It challenges the viewer, both, I think, with sheer bravado,

but also deliberately erotically.

- Man was now seen as the most beautiful thing

in the universe and nowhere is the merging

of the Classical and the Christian ideals

more visible than in Michelangelo's greatest work,

the Sistine Chapel.

At the turn of the 16th century,

Pope Julius the Second had decided

to have the chapel in the Vatican decorated.

The initial plan was for 12 enormous figures

of the Apostles,

but Michelangelo rejected this as unworthy

and instead painted episodes from Genesis and the creation.

It took four years of intense labor,

a saga told by art historians in Hollywood,

of hundreds of hours of lying on his back,

eyes inflamed from paints and so on.

But finally, the work was unveiled

and the nude loomed large.

Michelangelo's homosexuality seems to have infused his work.

Young, naked, and often eroticized men are everywhere,

surrounding the very moment of creation itself.

Some members of the church preach

that characters in biblical scenes

should always have loincloths

and others even insisted that the baby Christ

should always be decently draped.

In fact, a year after his death in 1565,

the Vatican repainted some scenes

it thought too risque.

In particular, his Last Judgment was declared obscene

and 41 nudes painted over.

One cleric declared that such works were more suited

to a bath house than to a church.

Michelangelo did, however, set a trend

in which artists, keen to show off their skills,

chose Christian subjects in which they could show nudity

without fear of retribution

and indeed even celebrate sexuality and flesh effectively

for the first time since antiquity.

The erotic charge that Michelangelo gave to the male nude

was echoed in the paintings of the female nude

by Tiziano Vecellio,

known as Titian in English speaking world.

And in this work in particular

his celebrated "Venus of Urbino", painted in 1538.

Titian is born in Venice and he's a Venetian artist

throughout his life who in some ways symbolizes

a major shift in power in the Italian art scene,

a shift from Florence to Venice,

a city where light often informs the art

of the 16th century.

And Titian becomes a celebrated star,

if you like, of the Italian art world by the time he's 50.

And in the 1530s,

he's courted by, among others, the emperor Charles the Fifth

who makes him court painter,

but by numerous aristocrats

who want him to paint their portraits

and in particular one Guidobaldo della Rovere

who later becomes the Duke of Urbino

who commissions this work from Titian.

Now, what we see is a woman lying out on a bed,

Venus, given a Classical veneer,

but she's also recognizably a more modern woman.

Her eyes look at us in a way

that is both elusive, but knowing.

Her hands cover her genitals,

but equally there's a sense

that she knows exactly what she's doing.

The bed on which she lies has ruffled sheets

as if something has just taken place.

But also there's a kind of invitation in her open pose

for something to take place subsequently.

It's almost inviting us to join her.

At least that's the way a lot of male commentators

have seen this piece.

She holds a bunch of flowers, a symbol of love,

but with one of the flowers having fallen,

precarious, I suppose,

or an image of love being something

that can be precarious or transient.

We know that Guidobaldo had recently married

a very young wife and wanted a visual manual

to show his wife how to behave.

Firstly, as a sexual being

who could seduce or entice her husband.

Secondly, as a loyal wife,

and thirdly, as a domestic wife who can run a household,

but also if we look at the way that Titian applies paint,

he sensually applies, brush strokes open up.

And the idea that paint and flesh

are closely bound together,

I think it's very strong and it's that,

that makes this work so influential for subsequent artists

like Rubens or Velasquez or, perhaps above all, Manet,

who take this iconic image and use it as a way

of exploring the idea of woman as goddess

and as sexual being.

The most radical developments in the depiction of the nude

stem from the work

of the great Renaissance man himself, Leonardo da Vinci,

whose studious analytical approach to the portrayal of man

was so advanced that it took over a century

before it began to dominate the way art

was taught and produced.

The two centuries of the Renaissance were about two things.

First, that to be human was not necessarily sinful.

And secondly, as part of this,

man, not God had moved to the center of art.

Leonardo watched and took part in the dissection

of the human body,

which enabled him, literally as well as metaphorically,

to get under the skin of the nude

and allowed him to understand the workings

of muscles and veins and, more broadly,

how the body actually functioned from the inside out.

Consequently, he was able to render the nude

ever more accurately.

Order stands at the very center of the Italian Renaissance.

The human figure is a microcosm of the universe.

A figure whose extensions are encompassed

by the perfect, almost divine shapes,

of the circle and the square.

Man at the center.

The measure of all things, naked.

The Renaissance, here in Florence,

described as the cradle of civilization

did so much more than simply give rebirth

to Classical learning.

In many ways,

it reinvigorated Western art for the next 500 years

and it still does and the nude was its central emblem.

And the nudes produced by artists like Botticelli

and Michelangelo, but above all Leonardo,

heralded a shift in the way that humanity saw itself

and represented itself.

And in particular, Leonardo's "Vitruvian Man" hinted

at what was to happen over the next 300 years in the West

when man, stripped down in his most natural state,

increasingly moved center stage.

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