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00:00at 26 Michelangelo is the rising star of Renaissance Italy for five years he's
00:18been establishing himself as a talented sculptor in Rome now he's heading home
00:24he's desperate to prove he's the greatest artist Florence has ever produced I'd known since I
00:33was a child that I was destined for far greater things than those around me I had challenged the
00:40ancients themselves and conquered Rome with my pieta Michelangelo is a driven artist he wants
00:50to be the best that is possible he is competitive he wants to do better than anybody else I was a
00:59returning hero Florence's favorite son or so I thought also returning is the superstar artist
01:13of the day Leonardo da Vinci he's been away in Milan building a dazzling reputation now he's back in
01:23Florence determined to secure his legacy if Michelangelo wants his name to go down in history
01:30as the greatest he must first outshine Leonardo I wanted to make my mark to eclipse Leonardo carve my
01:42name into Florentine history rivalry is profoundly embedded within the Renaissance there has to be
01:53somebody that you're competing with to make you want to up your game and I think that that is one
01:59of the things that makes Renaissance art so powerful going head-to-head these two very different men
02:07will use all their creativity ingenuity and skill push each other to extraordinary new heights and create
02:16some of the most brilliant art the world has ever seen
02:19the Renaissance is usually regarded as this beautiful period where everything is golden and shiny but there is
02:41another side to it it's endlessly bloody and conflicted and violent and that's what the art responds to the art feeds off
02:54art is propaganda in the Renaissance images are extraordinarily powerful in that respect it's
03:09actually very modern this is really the age where patrons realize the power of art and once you start to
03:17mix art and money then it's a lethal cocktail
03:19Michelangelo Leonardo Raphael they are really the first superstar artists
03:38I am Michelangelo Bonarotti artist and an old fool he lived for his art but it was almost like his vacation was a sentence
03:54I've had so many paymasters bankers and princes cardinals and popes but what I did was always in the service of God and in the pursuit of perfection
04:07two things go hand in hand in the renaissance a ruthlessness in politics and a true belief in the power of art but to really understand the renaissance you have to tell the whole story
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04:48Florence is returning to normality after a decade of violent upheaval.
04:56Once the artistic centre of the Renaissance,
05:00the city has been torn apart by the puritanical preacher,
05:04Geronimo Savonarola.
05:07Under his rule, Florence has fallen prey to religious extremism,
05:11art has been burned and artists and patrons forced to flee.
05:16It's an absolutely extraordinary shift from all the art and all the luxury
05:22to this real ground zero religious zealotry of Savonarola.
05:27But it speaks to a certain populism that people buy into.
05:31But what happens is, as you might expect,
05:35there are still things like famines, plagues and pestilence.
05:39He cannot deliver salvation on earth.
05:43After five long years, the people of Florence are starving
05:48and tired of misery under the puritanical tyrant.
05:52They turn on Savonarola, hang him, burn his body
05:57and throw his remains into the river.
06:00free from the Savonarola's madness.
06:06Florence was reborn.
06:08A new era had dawned.
06:10Hope was restored to our Florentine soul.
06:15Instead of turning to a charismatic leader or a powerful family,
06:20the people of Florence look to forge their own destiny as an independent republic.
06:27But Florence is in a perilous position.
06:30Surrounded by warring city-states and foreign superpowers,
06:34for the republic to survive, Florentines must use every tool at their disposal.
06:39They turn to the great political minds of their time, men like Niccolò Machiavelli.
06:48I think he is the first great political scientist.
06:51He looks at the workings of power and tells you what you need to do to hold on to it.
06:58And I tell you, that's an extraordinary quality to have at this moment of history.
07:06Machiavelli creates a citizen army.
07:09But the people need to be inspired to fight for Florence.
07:13And the new republican government knows just how to do that.
07:19Florence still retains its cachet as a centre for art.
07:23And the usual way in which the Florentines try and rebuild,
07:27try and develop a new regime, they turn to art.
07:32The republican government wants to fill the city with rousing images.
07:37And this creates an opportunity for its two most ambitious artists,
07:42Michelangelo and Leonardo.
07:46It is one of the most amazing moments in the history of the Renaissance
07:51because their need to create civic art to bolster the Republic
07:57coincides with them having the services of the two greatest artists
08:02that are alive at that moment.
08:04It must have been the equivalent of having your own army,
08:07but you have your own army in terms of art.
08:10Both artists want to contribute to the new regime.
08:20So this is an incredible stage.
08:22They have a sense of the historical moment that they are living.
08:27And of course, both being ambitious,
08:30they both want to be interpreters of this moment
08:33and possibly the key interpreter of this moment in Florence.
08:38This must have fuelled the competition between them.
08:43And this really pushed them to show everything that they are capable of.
08:49It was my chance to return and to create great things for my city.
08:53I wanted to make my mark.
08:58The first major commission is to be a public sculpture,
09:05showing off Florence's strength in the face of its larger, more aggressive neighbours.
09:11The new Republican regime work out that what's required here is a David.
09:16David is a young man with no power who takes on a giant.
09:22It could not be a greater metaphor for a small little city-state,
09:28punching above its weight in a huge country where there is violence and horror all around.
09:35For 40 years, the city has had an enormous block of Carrara marble sitting idle.
09:47It is legendary in Florence.
09:50It towers over 17 feet tall and is dangerously brittle.
09:55No one has dared to sculpt it.
10:02Now one artist has the chance to take it on and make his name.
10:07This giant block of marble, this gigante, as it's called,
10:11this block of marble, in fact, has been around for quite some time.
10:14Many artists were vying for this particular commission
10:18because it is quite a prestigious one.
10:20And many, of course, submit proposals for it.
10:24Whoever takes this on, it's the most monumental thing
10:26that they'll take on in their entire career.
10:28It's going to define them, or it could lead to them being completely ruined.
10:33I mean, it's that big a task.
10:35It's all or nothing. Take it on. Succeed. Florence is yours. Fail. You're out.
10:44There were other contenders, of course, and a few excellent artisans
10:47who'd attempted to scale this mountain of marble.
10:54Nobody had the courage to put their hands to the block,
10:58nor the experience, nor the engineering know-how to do something worthy.
11:05I had the courage, and I wanted it.
11:11So they chose me. Of course.
11:17Michelangelo has a reputation for being a difficult person,
11:22ambitious as hell, and willing to take on any project in the world
11:27in order to prove that he's the best.
11:29Michelangelo was very aware of Florence's need to reassert and reassure itself
11:39of its strength, its beauty, its right to a future.
11:44This is the most cultured city in Europe.
11:48This is the city in which sculpture is shared with every citizen.
11:54Michelangelo is a young man proving himself,
11:59not just to himself, but to the powers that be in Florence.
12:03But Leonardo is not to be outdone.
12:09He takes the unprecedented step of opening his workshop to the public.
12:15He knows he can't beat Michelangelo's David for scale.
12:19Instead, he wants to showcase his intellectual and technical brilliance
12:23by inviting people to examine his studies and sketches in meticulous detail.
12:31There are a lot of great artists during the Renaissance,
12:41but nobody quite gets to the orbit of Leonardo da Vinci.
12:47Leonardo wove together art and engineering and science and everything else.
12:52He was always trying different things to experiment,
12:56and that's the way he tries to integrate his science into his art.
13:00He was the essence of the Renaissance man.
13:03He was probably the person in history who knew the most you could possibly know
13:08about everything that was then knowable.
13:14Renaissance art manifests the incredible ambition of human beings
13:21to know and command nature, to penetrate its mysteries,
13:26and to look for a degree of beauty and harmony and understanding.
13:33For Leonardo, he's pushing the boundaries of what art can represent.
13:41Centre stage in Leonardo's open house is a spectacular and ground-breaking preparatory drawing,
13:47known as a cartoon, of the Virgin, Jesus, Saint Anne and John the Baptist.
13:56The National Gallery of the National Gallery of the National Gallery of the National Gallery.
14:05Having worked at the National Gallery for over 18 years,
14:07I have had the privilege to be in that room,
14:10and it is an extraordinary experience every time.
14:14Leonardo is using this technique that he's now become synonymous with, called sfumato,
14:21and this translates to smoke.
14:24In other words, the actual transition between light and dark is almost imperceptible.
14:32It's as though these people are coming out of the mist towards you.
14:37Leonardo plays with quite a traditional iconography and transforms it into a study of human emotions,
14:54human interactions, and a study of the dynamism of the figures.
14:59People flock there to see this composition.
15:02Despite himself, even Michelangelo can't stay away.
15:09Leonardo and Michelangelo are polar opposite.
15:14Leonardo is gregarious. He has a posse around him.
15:17He likes to perform in public.
15:20Michelangelo's a bit of a recluse.
15:23Leonardo loves painting.
15:25Michelangelo prefers sculpture.
15:28And Leonardo starts making fun of Michelangelo's sculptures.
15:35There I was, listening to the great Leonardo,
15:41playing host to his admirers.
15:46What does he announce?
15:48The gifted painter will produce few works, but they will be of a kind to make men stop and contemplate their perfection with admiration.
16:00Sculpture?
16:02The manual exercise, often accompanied by profuse sweating.
16:07His face is plastered and powdered with the dust of his marble, so he has the appearance of a baker.
16:14Only one person in the room can be the best of the best.
16:20And what Leonardo does, he uses this opportunity to get one over on Michelangelo.
16:29When Leonardo denigrates sculpture, Michelangelo's furious.
16:32I think in 1501, he definitely feels like he's the underdog.
16:37And now I have the chance to prove him wrong with my David.
16:53With my David, I would silence all those who doubted the preeminence of my art.
17:00In carving the David, Michelangelo's absolutely making the statement that sculpture is the equal to painting and maybe the superior.
17:12And so Michelangelo's identifying with David, David who was able to slay Goliath, conquer all, Michelangelo's conquering all of art, maybe even conquering Leonardo and showing that he's the best of all.
17:25I know as an artist myself, you're always striving to do things that maybe people think you can't do.
17:41The way that he looked at a piece of marble, he could already see something in it, a figure, what he was going to create.
17:53He could already picture that.
17:54All sculptors of that age drill in from the outside of the block to a series of points that have been predetermined on a model.
18:08The amazing thing about how Michelangelo evolved as a sculptor is that he rejected that entirely.
18:15He recognized that you start with a given block of material and you reduce it to find the form that is hidden in the block.
18:26This idea of direct carving that came completely from Michelangelo.
18:34He wants that challenge of, I suppose, revelation.
18:38In the David, Michelangelo is working entirely by himself.
18:44It's hard work.
18:45If you've never tried carving marble, first of all, this hammer weighs more than five pounds.
18:49This man must have been unbelievably strong and he knows exactly how to hit the chisels precisely.
18:55It's a terrifying thing to take on.
19:07You make one mistake when you attack that block and it's done.
19:11I mean, every chisel, you're thinking, do you screw it up?
19:15And if you do, it's over.
19:17It's terrifying.
19:18I mean, how do you sleep?
19:19How do you carry on that work?
19:21It's breathtakingly brave and dangerous.
19:23It's a real tightrope.
19:26Michelangelo starts work on his David early in the morning of September the 13th, 1501.
19:34He toils for almost two and a half years before finally unveiling his eight and a half ton masterpiece.
19:42David is so impressive.
19:52It's so realistic.
19:55To have been able to do that out of a lump of rock is incredible.
20:10The moment that Michelangelo chose to depict is not the victorious moment where David can stand on top of Goliath and he's won.
20:16It's the moment just before, it's the moment where he's not sure if he's going to win the fight, where he's scared.
20:29And you can see the tension in his body, you can see the fact that he's just starting to twist and the muscles are bunching up.
20:36David totally changes the conception of sculpture.
20:40He shows that he's able to make inner matter live and asking it to carry feeling and thought.
20:53When David was revealed, you know, people couldn't believe it.
20:58It's not just this placid, blank face.
21:01There is thought going on.
21:03And to be able to sculpt thought, I mean, that's incredible.
21:08To be able to sculpt thought onto someone's face.
21:12Come on, it's crazy.
21:14So, in a sense, it's exceeded its commission.
21:23But there's a classic piece of Republican bureaucracy around the David piece because there is a committee which is set up.
21:32And they meet to discuss both the piece and where it should be cited.
21:37And Leonardo da Vinci sits on that committee.
21:40I wanted it placed outside so it could be seen in close-up and in the round by everybody.
21:49Proud symbol of the city in defiance of the tyrants that surrounded it.
21:57But not everybody agreed.
22:02Leonardo senses an opportunity to keep Michelangelo's sculpture hidden in the shadows.
22:07He declares that David's nudity is an offence to the good people of Florence.
22:13And sets about persuading fellow members of the committee that it's a corrupting influence.
22:19David caused a bit of a scandal, and can still cause scandal to this very day, because he's very lifelike.
22:27He looks like a very realistic depiction of a naked man.
22:33David doesn't have to have his clothes off to fight Goliath, but he does here.
22:39It's this huge exploration of male beauty.
22:43Why did David's amazing body disgust people?
22:52Maybe because they were jealous and they didn't look like that. I don't know.
22:56I think nudity is so controversial because we are still not comfortable with it.
23:04We think of being naked as vulnerable rather than being, you know, empowered and beautiful.
23:17All that taboo is in your face, whether you like it or not.
23:23And it's almost like he shouldn't have been doing that.
23:35The committee votes, using the ancient tradition of placing beans in jars to indicate their preference.
23:43Leonardo's attempt to keep David hidden is narrowly rejected.
23:47Instead, Michelangelo's sculpture will proudly stand right outside the seat of government in Florence's main square.
23:56You can see Leonardo sneakily voting against the more public location of the piece.
24:04He loses out. Michelangelo wins.
24:07But Leonardo does have the last laugh because one of the issues is that because of the nakedness,
24:12should the genitals be covered up? And that's what Leonardo encourages.
24:15Then, led by Leonardo, utter nonsense followed.
24:22They hammered nails into my David and attached a copper fig leaf to conceal what they considered was his indecency.
24:33Shame on them.
24:35It stayed there for hundreds of years until the 19th century when we finally took him inside and took his fig leaf away.
24:42Well, at least at last I'd made something important for my city.
24:48And even if they didn't understand it, they all were talking about it.
24:54That solidified him as a master and made him famous at that time.
25:00That's when he first became an art star.
25:08David is a symbol of Florentine strength and intellectual superiority.
25:13It's such a powerful political message, the Republican government wants more.
25:18What better way than to exploit the intensifying rivalry between their two leading artists.
25:25What they decide to do is deliberately commission Michelangelo and Leonardo to produce frescoes in the Grand Council Chamber.
25:34This is the first time that they're in the same place at the same time doing works of art.
25:42They're both given substantial spaces to create paintings of two key battles in Florentine history.
25:51Leonardo is given the task of depicting the Battle of Anghiari.
25:58Michelangelo is then given the task of depicting another battle called the Battle of Cascina.
26:05It's a battle of battles to mythologize Florentine history and to see what they come up with.
26:11Michelangelo wants to take on Leonardo in his own field of expertise in making a painting.
26:20This is the very, very competitive Michelangelo coming to the fore.
26:26It is a remarkable moment that just by chance you have the Florentine Republic with the two great artists Leonardo and Michelangelo.
26:33It's almost like a boxing match.
26:36Now I had the chance to best Leonardo in front of his eyes.
26:39I knew what I was up against.
26:49Michelangelo and Leonardo unleashed their creativity spurred on by a major technological advance.
26:59For the first time in history, artists have access to an almost endless supply of that most precious possession.
27:07Paper.
27:13The rise of the printing press changes absolutely everything.
27:17Paper is suddenly being made in huge quantities.
27:21It's becoming more and more available.
27:24What that means is that the artists can do preparatory drawings.
27:27You don't just say, well I only have this one tiny ration piece of paper.
27:32It's the brilliance of what artists start to do at this point.
27:37You can be more experimental.
27:39The body can evolve, I can change the direction of the head, I can change the curve of the neck.
27:46It's pushing the limits of what you can do.
27:49With no constraints on their experimental ideas, Michelangelo and Leonardo devise very personal and radically different compositions.
28:02Leonardo is a painter at heart, always adding, building up, experimenting, and he's supposed to be a teeming mass of soldiers and horses.
28:15Leonardo chooses to depict a huge scrummage of men on horseback, lances going everywhere and people caught in the middle of an actual pitch battle itself.
28:30It's one of the defining things about Leonardo's life is he just wants to understand everything possible about nature.
28:40And you can just see all the emotions both on the faces of the warriors and the horses in this climatic moment of battle.
28:49And then Michelangelo realizes, I'm going to take him on, but I'm going to take him on on my own grounds.
29:02And my own grounds is the grounds of the human figure.
29:07Scopters see what painters do not.
29:10How to portray the true beauty of the human form.
29:14His battle picture is not a battle picture at all.
29:19It's a bunch of nudes coming out of the river getting dressed because they're about to go into battle.
29:29This is a work in which we see Michelangelo relying entirely on the naked human body and showing all the variety of things that he can do with it.
29:40Michelangelo is being very, very smart.
29:42He uses this opportunity still to prove the superiority of sculpture and to show his own ability to use sculpture to influence painting.
29:55And we would see which way would achieve the best results.
29:57With Michelangelo and Leonardo fixated on fighting each other, neither notices the arrival of a new disruptive threat to their reputations.
30:12In the early 1500s, Florence is an extremely exciting place.
30:19These artists are reinventing art, pushing it further, getting better at it.
30:27There is no way that Raphael is going to miss that.
30:3021-year-old Raphael Santi is a boy wonder.
30:35He's already built a reputation as a brilliant, gifted artist in his hometown of Albino.
30:41And now he arrives in Florence, determined to prove himself against the very best.
30:47He knows how to behave. He is lovely. He is charming. He is handsome. But he is also driven. He makes his name very, very quickly.
31:00Raphael wastes no time. He charms Leonardo, who is captivated by the young artist.
31:08Leonardo introduces him to several prominent patrons. But it's a strategic mistake.
31:15Raphael wins work from the benefactors Leonardo and Michelangelo depend on.
31:20Now both must compete not just with each other, but with Raphael too.
31:29Ah, Raphael. Talented youth. I have my doubts.
31:39Michelangelo sees him as an immediate rival.
31:44Raphael is a prodigy.
31:47He's able to absorb styles and reproduce them in his own inimitable fashion.
31:55Raphael spends weeks studying Michelangelo and Leonardo's sketches for their battle paintings.
32:02Learning all he can from the two masters.
32:06He was sneaking my ideas and then roughing up the urges of making them look like his own.
32:11Michelangelo would have us think that Raphael is an arch plagiarist and doesn't know anything and only copies other people's works.
32:24But if you want to be an artist, you go and try to copy the works of those who came before you.
32:30Don't ever put the name Raphael together with the word copyist. Raphael analyzes the art that he sees. He figures out what he can use to maybe go the next step.
32:47From Leonardo, Raphael takes moti del anima, the motions or the movements of the spirit, and those movements will impact on the way you look, on the gestures you make, on your facial expressions.
33:04And that's what makes the figure look truly breathing and alive.
33:11He saw Michelangelo's great ability to construct the human body in a heroic way.
33:19He's thinking of that capability that Michelangelo has to show you the rippling muscles underneath the surface.
33:27There is always a competitive spirit at work.
33:32Raphael says, I'm going to do better than Michelangelo and Leonardo.
33:37That's who he's trying to outdo.
33:40The three of us, there in Florence, the young man, the old and me.
33:48Leonardo realizes that by introducing Raphael to Florence's wealthy elite, he has undermined his own position.
33:59It's now more important than ever that his battle scene is a triumph to maintain his reputation.
34:07So he takes a risk and tries a daring new technique.
34:10He wants to make colour more brilliant and dazzling than has ever been seen before.
34:18Rather than painting on wet plaster in the fresco method, he paints oils directly onto the wall surface.
34:26Leonardo is constantly looking for a better way to do things, constantly experimenting.
34:33To achieve these complex results, he feels that he has to explore different ways of painting on the wall.
34:41Leonardo has a passion for innovation. He has a passion for experimentation. He wants to do it better.
34:48And of course, there are reasons why people have been doing things in the same way sometimes when it comes to art.
34:55And so you mess with those at your peril.
34:57Leonardo was experimenting again. And as always, too much.
35:07Leonardo failed.
35:10Leonardo's secret blend of oil and pigment fails to dry.
35:16The paint smears and his work is ruined.
35:20With his technical skill failing him, his confidence evaporates.
35:25Leonardo packs up his studio and flees Florence, humiliated.
35:32I cannot imagine what must have been the kind of sense of frustration and disappointment for him at this moment.
35:40He's come back to his hometown in order to be a great artistic hero.
35:46And he's failed. His new technique hasn't worked.
35:49There must have been a sense in which he knew that he'd blown it.
36:01Michelangelo is left as the leading artist.
36:05But without his old rival, the fire in his belly dissipates.
36:10The whole scheme fell apart. As did his painting.
36:19I finished my cartoon, which was of such concebate art that it was admired by everyone who saw it.
36:26But the battle was over.
36:29With Leonardo gone, Michelangelo loses his main competition.
36:36Rather than embrace a new rivalry with an upstart like Raphael, he looks elsewhere for the struggle he needs to spur him on.
36:46I think something extraordinary happens to Michelangelo.
36:50He decides that he's in rivalry with artists that just go back way into the past.
36:57The burden doesn't come any heavier than that.
37:00But I think at this moment of time, he thinks he's up for it.
37:04Michelangelo wants to prove he can go further than any artist has before.
37:08But it becomes clear he can't do this in Florence.
37:15After six years, the Republican experiment is a catastrophic failure.
37:21The city's trade and banking have been taken over by rival states.
37:27There is no money, and opportunities for artists are becoming vanishingly rare.
37:33That moment of the Republic, there's a certain romance about it, and the brief flowering of works, the David, the Battle of the Battles.
37:46But I think it's always a mirage. It can't sustain itself.
37:50And the tiny Florentine Republic, it's just shrunk down to almost nothing.
37:57Michelangelo realizes that he's got to look elsewhere to bigger and wealthier patrons.
38:06It's just not going to work anymore in Florence.
38:09Luckily for Michelangelo, as Florence declines, the fortunes of Rome are on the rise.
38:16Around the turn of the century, the papacy's resurgent.
38:32And central to this is the rise of Pope Julius II.
38:36Julius is on a mission to make the papacy the most powerful force in the known world.
38:42He wants to capitalize on his position as a spiritual leader of Christianity.
38:49And also shore up his secular power as ruler of the Papal States, a vast territory stretching across the Italian peninsula.
38:59For centuries, rivals have been encroaching on the Pope's lands, undermining his influence.
39:06Julius is determined to get it back.
39:08Julius wants to do nothing less than make the papacy stronger than it ever has been.
39:15He's determined, he's resolute, and his ambition is sweeping.
39:21Pope Julius II is a warrior pope.
39:26He takes the name Julius from Julius Caesar.
39:29Now that's quite significant because he's very much seeing himself as a campaigning military ruler.
39:34Julius II is a bit of a thug really.
39:38When people talk about him, they say, tread carefully.
39:41The man is irascibility incarnate and you don't want to get on the wrong side of him.
39:47Julius does not just want to assert himself on the battlefield.
39:51He has also learnt from Florence the power of images and intends to use them as part of his arsenal.
39:57Julius loves art and when he becomes Pope, he's deeply aware of the power of art to convey messages as a means of propaganda.
40:10The architecture of Rome, the art of Rome is an opportunity to reflect the power and authority of his papacy.
40:17Pope called me to Rome.
40:36I was to sculpt his funerary tomb.
40:40My task was to carve another mound of marble into the most glorious monuments, the like of which had never been seen.
40:51And with the gifts that God himself had granted me, there was no one else who could take on such a task.
40:58This was an offer I could not refuse.
41:02Julius the second envisions a tomb for himself that's not only will rival the tombs and mausoleums of the past, but that will surpass everyone and become a wonder of the world.
41:22He devotes something like 10,000 ducats for this project and this is a tremendous amount of money.
41:32My idea was truly monumental.
41:35And Julius is greatly pleased with these plants.
41:39Nothing on this scale had been built before since Roman times and maybe a thousand years.
41:45It was unbelievably large.
41:52It was at least three stories with some 40 life-size marble figures.
42:03I would build a Christian monument to rival the ancient wonders of the world.
42:09It was also a chance for me to outshine every artist in Rome.
42:13I would write my name into history.
42:20Michelangelo spends almost a year just sourcing marble and preparing the design for the eventual tomb.
42:31And he literally quarries a mountain of marble and moves it to Rome.
42:35And Michelangelo, of course, is immediately excited and he starts sculpting right away.
42:39But suddenly he now needs money to pay the transport for all this marble, he has to pay the marble quarrying, he has to get paid himself.
42:51But he keeps going to the Pope and asking for payment and the Pope keeps putting him off and putting him off.
43:00Because at this point the Pope has gone to war.
43:02Determined to reclaim lands previous Popes have lost, Julius aggressively expands his campaigns.
43:11He triggers a peninsula wide war and is forced to channel more and more money away from art and into military conquest.
43:19When I tried to appeal to the Pope, I realized I'd been sold a lie.
43:31Rome was not a place of devotion and art in the service of the glory of God.
43:37It was an ignorant backstabbing wilderness of tigers.
43:44When I looked at Rome, I knew I had to accept a harsh truth that every road to virtue here was closed.
43:58Indignant at his treatment, Michelangelo takes decisive and reckless action.
44:03I'd never been treated with such disrespect.
44:09I told him if he wanted me, he must look for me elsewhere.
44:13So I took my horse and I rode away from him and from Rome.
44:17Michelangelo is really declaring himself to be not just some craftsman for hire, that he is someone who deserves the respect of an equal.
44:31And up to that moment, he felt that he had a kind of mutual respect with the Pope that was all of a sudden shattered.
44:37This is a huge risk for Michelangelo.
44:42People talk of quaking, of being in the very presence of Julius II.
44:47Julius must have been absolutely outraged.
44:51This man is in his employ.
44:53This man is his servant.
44:55So he sends out horsemen to just bring him back.
44:57But my talent was also a curse.
45:02Pope sent his lackeys after me.
45:05I'd been treated like a slave.
45:07Now I was being hunted like a rogue for my defiance.
45:11Michelangelo is probably riding the fastest he's ever ridden in his life in order to get to cross the border into Florentine territory.
45:20And the soldiers catch up to him and he says, I'm sorry, I'm under the jurisdiction now of the Florentines and you have no jurisdiction over me.
45:28I should have been afraid.
45:30But I wasn't.
45:33I told him if they tried anything, I'd have him murdered.
45:37They begged me to return.
45:42I refused.
45:48Julius brings in an even bigger show of power.
45:52He goes to the government of Florence and tells them to stop harbouring Michelangelo like he's a fugitive.
45:59Julius threatens to raise an army.
46:02Everything now hangs in the balance for Michelangelo.
46:05The Pope could have him executed for his defiance.
46:10He could even declare war on Florence.
46:13I could not go on.
46:16I realised my friends in Florence could only protect me for so long.
46:22I went into a deep melancholy.
46:25Thought of all I could lose.
46:27I had no choice.
46:28I was forced to go with a rope round my neck to beg his pardon.
46:46As Michelangelo waits anxiously for the Pope's judgment, a wily bishop tries to curry favour with Julius by belittling the artist, calling him an ignorant workman.
47:02But to the Pontiff's credit, he wouldn't stand for that kind of insult against me.
47:08Only the Pope could command me, not his cardinal, nor his soldiers, nor anyone.
47:15That meant something.
47:18Showed how greatly he valued me.
47:20This is really a pivotal moment in the relationship between an artist and a patron.
47:29The Pope is in a way in front of all of his entourage showing there was a mutual respect between these two individuals.
47:36This is just utterly unprecedented.
47:40It's the result of hundreds of years, really, of the rivalry between artists and also artists and patrons that's been going on in Italy,
47:50where increasingly the artist gets more and more authority, more and more leeway to do what they want.
47:55The patron suddenly realises they can push this person, take their money away, maybe even kill them, but they do need them.
48:02Art is a way in which you represent what's happening and how politics is being played out.
48:09Is it propaganda to some extent? Yes.
48:13They need the art. Art is central to how messages are disseminated.
48:18With the Pope's forgiveness, Michelangelo hopes he can resume work on the tomb.
48:33But Julius has other ideas.
48:36The Pope, instead, has thought maybe a mausoleum is not such a good idea.
48:42It is frivolous, unnecessary, expensive.
48:47So rather than build a mausoleum to myself, I am going to build a church for God.
48:54With his wars going badly, Julius needs to reaffirm his position as God's representative on earth.
49:02He sets about rebuilding Rome as the religious centre of Christianity.
49:06Michelangelo is given an extraordinary task, one that will push him to the limits of his ability and his sanity.
49:17The artist is to repaint the ceiling of the most important church in Rome, the Sistine Chapel.
49:25This is the site of papal election. This is the site of the most prominent papal masses.
49:32This is the most important venue for the Pope in Rome.
49:37The ceiling was already painted in the traditional manner that many chapels are, painted as a sky with stars.
49:45But Pope Julius imagines that maybe it lacks the kind of appropriate decoration for the centre of Christendom.
49:52It's therefore of huge importance for Julius II.
49:57He recognises Michelangelo's ability and genius and trusts that he's going to be able to execute something huge.
50:06But Michelangelo in his mind is just absolutely distraught.
50:11He says, painting is not my art.
50:13The Sistine ceiling is approximately 600 square metres. So that's roughly speaking three tennis courts worth of paint.
50:27For anyone who has ever had to paint a ceiling, that is just a tremendous amount of physical labour.
50:33But Michelangelo takes this opportunity. He's up for the challenge.
50:40This was his chance to prove that he was better than anyone else.
50:45By attempting this and succeeding, he would effectively prove that he was far superior to any other artist.
50:53We know from Michelangelo's poetry that struggle is something that drives him, whether he's struggling with his spiritual side or whether he's struggling in his art.
51:04Michelangelo was always trying to push himself beyond what others expected of him.
51:09I think everything he did was beyond brave.
51:16Michelangelo was striving to somehow perfect perfection.
51:23There's a level of masochism in Michelangelo. He lived for his art.
51:30I think Michelangelo thought of himself as a continuation of God's work.
51:35Part of his greatness is that he wasn't sure that he was fulfilling that command, that internal need, that internal drive.
51:50To fail would have been the end. I was no painter.
51:55Yet here was a chance for my work to adorn the inner sanctum of God's house.
52:03Even though he's not a painter, once he starts drawing, he knows how to draw.
52:09But very quickly, this is an artist whose projects, once they begin, tend to grow and aggrandize.
52:16And Michelangelo begins to think on a much larger and more ambitious scale.
52:20Michelangelo is initially asked to paint the Twelve Apostles.
52:23He, however, approaches the Pope and says, perhaps we could do something more grand.
52:26It really becomes about the origin of the world down to the Pope himself.
52:32He has the ambition now to not make just twelve apostles, but how about hundreds of figures?
52:38It's totally insane. And he does raise the stakes for himself. He makes life ever more difficult.
52:54In 1509, while Michelangelo labours away on the punishing task of the Sistine ceiling,
53:08Julius invites a host of additional artists to Rome to work on his vision for rebuilding the city.
53:14Every one of them is a threat to Michelangelo's status as the Pope's favourite. Among them, the young pretender, Raphael.
53:27Raphael wangled himself and smaller commission, painting the walls of the Pope's apartments.
53:34Raphael originally would have been one among the many. There was so much competition, he seemed to thrive on that.
53:46He singles himself out, he puts himself forward as the leading artist in this group,
53:52and essentially takes over the commission and ends up painting the room as the leading artist.
53:56Raphael makes a play to become the Pope's favourite, by painting a fresco in his most prized state room, the Stanza della Segnatura.
54:10This is where Julius holds his most important meetings with foreign dignitaries.
54:14In the disputation, you have the absolute fundamental basis of Christianity, is shown in this strong, amazing way.
54:38We have the celestial zone at the top, and the earthly zone at the bottom.
54:45And this is very important for a Pope like Julius II, because it is about the authority that comes from on high to the earthly sphere.
54:55He is, of course, God's representative on earth.
55:00Raphael was a brilliant colourist. His art seduces the viewer.
55:06And one of the things that makes the disputation come alive is the idea of including recognisable figures.
55:17Raphael paints Julius into the disputation, emphasising this warrior Pope's devotion and faith.
55:25Raphael is always eager to think about great ways of making those thoughts, desires of his patrons come alive.
55:36For the young Raphael, he obviously wants to please the Pope. Of course, as an artist, he also wants to demonstrate his own abilities in painting.
55:46This is his big come out piece. He's only just arrived in Rome.
55:49What's taking place in the Vatican during those years is two very profound elements needed for great art.
55:59You need the great artists who have been trained within an inch of their life, who really wanted to get better and be better than the other person they were painting with.
56:09And then you need the great patrons, men who have vision, possibly even for quite megalomaniac reasons, to do something that hasn't been done before.
56:20That is a pressure cooker of great work being produced at this moment.
56:28The applause for Raphael's flattery irked me.
56:32He was talented all right.
56:35And only I could see through his shallow charm.
56:38No doubt he would produce something graceful.
56:43It would be no match for my plans though.
56:48The presence of Raphael in the near proximity to Michelangelo absolutely affects how Michelangelo thinks about his work.
56:58He believes that Raphael is going to steal his legacy and steal his ideas.
57:07Michelangelo realizes that he needs to do his bit.
57:11He absolutely needs to be better.
57:13You have two of the greatest artists.
57:17One already absolutely renowned and another one earning his spurs so fast.
57:22And it obviously must have created an atmosphere of creative intensity.
57:29Everybody knows Michelangelo is a sculptor, but not a fresco painter.
57:34He has almost no training in fresco whatsoever.
57:38He knows that this is the moment he has to do something in order to prove himself to create the greatest fresco of all time.
57:45And so the potential for him to fail is very, very high.
57:49I thought I was creating a masterpiece.
57:57Perhaps that chapel was going to be my ruin.
58:05Next time, a critical mistake on the Sistine ceiling leaves Michelangelo facing utter disaster.
58:11He finds himself caught in the chaos of the Reformation, witnessing death and destruction that leaves him questioning everything he once believed.
58:22What will my legacy be? What will I bequeath to the world?
58:28What will I make for you to the world?
58:29That's the fin and the end without tienes?
58:30What the rest of the world?
58:31History.
58:32History.
58:33History.
58:34History.
58:35History.
58:36History.
58:37슬Intense.
58:38History.
58:39History.
58:40History.
58:53The.
58:54History.
58:55History.
58:56Nature.
58:57History.
58:58You