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(MUSIC) Virelai C'est La Fin

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I'm in the Gothic world.

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The world of chivalry, courtesy and romance.

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A world in which serious things
were done with a sense of play.

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Where even war and theology
could become a sort of game.

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And when architecture reached a point of
extravagance unequalled in history.

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After all the great unifying convictions
of the 12th century,

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high Gothic art
can look fantastic and luxurious -

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what Marxists call "conspicuous waste".

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And yet, these centuries produced some of the
greatest spirits in the whole history of man,

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amongst them St Francis of Assisi and Dante.

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Behind all the fantasies of Gothic imagination,

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there remained, on two different planes,
a sharp sense of reality.

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Medieval man could see things very clearly.

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But he believed that these appearances
should be considered

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as nothing more than symbols
or tokens of an ideal order

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which was the only true reality.

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The fantasy strikes us first.

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A charming example is this series of tapestries
known as the Lady With The Unicorn,

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one of the last and most seductive examples
of the Gothic spirit.

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It is poetical, fanciful and profane.

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Its ostensible subject is the four senses,

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but its real subject is the power of love,

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which can enlist and subdue
all the forces of nature -

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including these two emblems
of lust and ferocity,

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the unicorn and the lion.

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They kneel before this embodiment of chastity,

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and even hold up the corners of her tent.

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These fierce beasts have become
in the heraldic sense, her supporter's.

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And all round this allegorical scene

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is what the scholastic medieval philosophers
used to call nature naturing,

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natura naturans".

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Birds

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trees

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flowers, leaves galore.

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And those rather obvious symbols
of nature naturing - rabbits.

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There is even nature domesticated
sitting on a cushion.

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What an image of worldly happiness
at its most refined

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what the French call the "douceur de vivre"

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which is often confused with civilisation.

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(MUSIC) Basse Dance: Alta

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We've come a long way
from the powerful convictions

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that induced knights and ladies
to draw carts of stone up the hill

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for the building of Chartres Cathedral.

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And yet, the notion of ideal love,

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and the irresistible power
of gentleness and beauty,

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which is emblematically conveyed by
the homage of these fierce beasts,

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can be traced back for three centuries

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and we may even begin to look for it
in the north portal of Chartres.

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This portal, the north portal,

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was decorated about the year 1220.

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It seems to have been commissioned by
that formidable lady, Blanche of Castile,

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the mother of St Louis.

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Perhaps, for that reason, or simply because
it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary,

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many of the figures are of women.

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And several of the stories on the arches
concern Old Testament heroines.

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And at the corner is one of the first consciously
graceful women in Western art.

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Only a very few years before,

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women were thought of as like this.

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And those were the women who accompanied
the Norsemen to Iceland.

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Now, look at this embodiment of chastity,

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lifting her mantle, raising her hand, 
turning her head, 

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with rhythms of self-conscious refinement
that were to become mannered

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but here are genuinely modest.

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In fact, she represents a saint
called Saint Modeste.

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But she might be Dante's Beatrice.

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Of the two or three faculties

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that have been added to the European mind
since the civilisation of Greece and Rome

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none seems to me stranger
and more inexplicable

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than the sentiment of ideal or courtly love.

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This was entirely unknown in antiquity.

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Passion, yes. Desire, yes, of course.

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Steady affection, yes.

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But this state of utter subjection to the will of
some almost unapproachable woman.

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This belief that no sacrifice was too great,

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that a whole lifetime might properly be spent
in paying court to a disdainful lady,

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or suffering on her behalf.

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This would have seemed to the Romans
or to the Vikings,

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not only absurd but unbelievable.

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And yet for hundreds of years
it passed unquestioned.

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It inspired a vast literature,
from Chrétien de Troyes to Shelley,

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most of which l find completely unreadable.

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And even up to 1945, we still retained
a number of chivalrous gestures.

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We raised our hats to ladies
and let them pass first through doors,

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and in America, pushed in their seats at table.

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We still subscribed to the fantasy
that they were chaste and pure beings,

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in whose presence we couldn't tell
certain stories or pronounce certain words.

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Well, that's all over now.

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But it had a long run,
and there was much to be said for it.

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How did it begin?

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The truth is that nobody knows.

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Most people think that, like the pointed arch,
it came from the East

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that pilgrims and Crusaders found in the
Muslim world a tradition of Persian literature

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in which women were the subject of
extravagant compliment and devotion.

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l don't know enough about Persian literature
to say if this is true.

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But l do think that the Crusades
had another, less-direct influence

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on the concept of courtly love.

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The lady of a castle must always
have had a peculiar position.

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Cooped up with so many
unoccupied young men,

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who couldn't spend all their time fighting.

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And when the lord was away for a year or two,

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the lady was left in charge.

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She took on his functions

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and received the kind of homage
that was accepted in a feudal society.

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And the wandering knight who visited her,

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did so with the mixture of deference and hope
that one gets in the troubadour poems.

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(MUSIC) Retrovenge: Pour Mon Coeur

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In support of this theory is the subject
of the siege of the Castle of Love,

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which appears on mirror cases and caskets

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and other domestic objects of the 14th century.

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l ought perhaps to add that the idea of marriage
doesn't come into the question at all.

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Medieval marriages
were entirely a matter of property.

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Well, as everybody knows,

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marriage without love means
Love without marriage.

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And then, l suppose, one must admit that the
cult of the Virgin had something to do with it.

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In this context, it sounds rather blasphemous.

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But the fact remains

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that one often hardly knows if a medieval love
lyric is addressed to the poet's mistress

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or to the Virgin Mary.

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The greatest of all writings about ideal love,
Dante's Vita Nuova - the New Life -

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is a quasi-religious work.

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And in the end, it is Beatrice
who introduces Dante to paradise.

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So, for all these reasons

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l think one can associate the cult of ideal love
with the ravishing beauty and delicacy

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that one finds in the madonnas
of the late-13th century.

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Courtly love was not only the subject of lyrics,

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but of long - very long - stories
in prose and verse.

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And this reminds me of something else

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that the Gothic centuries added
to the European consciousness.

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That cluster of ideas and sentiments

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which surrounds the words
"romantic" and "romance".

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One can't really say that romance
was a Gothic invention.

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l suppose that, as the word suggests,
it was Romanesque,

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and grew up in those
southern districts of France

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where the memories of Roman civilisation
had not been quite obliterated

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when they were overlaid by the more fantastic
imagery of the Saracens.

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But the chivalrous romance of the Gothic time

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from Chrétien de Troyes of the 13th century
to Mallory in the 15th,

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with their allegories and personifications,

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their endless journeys and night-long vigils,
their spells and mysteries,

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had a special appeal to the medieval mind.

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For two hundred years,

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the Roman De La Rose was probably
the most read book in Europe...

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..except for Boethius and the Bible.

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Well, it's not much read today,
except in order to pass examinations.

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But, of course, the effect of these romances
on 19th-century literature was decisive,

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whether as a quarry or as an imaginative
escape, especially in England.

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The Eve Of St Agnes, the Belle Dame
Sans Merci, The Idylls Of The King,

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to say nothing of that crucial masterpiece
of the late-19th century,

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Wagner's Tristan And Isolde.

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One can't say that Gothic romance
hasn't played a part in our experience,

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if only at second-hand.

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(MUSIC) Ja Nun Hons Pris

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The summit of court civilisation was reached
in the late-14th century in France,

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under the patronage of the Duc de Berry.

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He built a series of fabulous filigree castles,

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of which the painter de Limbourg has left us
an apparently accurate record.

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He filled them with jewels
and jewelled contraptions,

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paintings and tapestries.

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This warlike scene is only a tapestry.

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The Duke wasn't fond of war.

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The Duke's artists have given us
a vivid account of his court.

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Here he is giving a grand dinner
to celebrate the New Year.

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There are no ladies present, which is curious,

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because the Duke
who was an amiably self-indulgent man,

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is reported to have said of women,

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"The more the merrier, and never tell the truth."

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But we can see some of his famous collection
of fifteen hundred dogs.

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Which is too many even for me.

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They seem to have had the run of the table.

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Behind him is his chamberlain
saying to some bashful suitor,

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"Approache, approche."

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And his courtiers, including a cardinal, 

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are raising their hands in astonishment
at such condescension.

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The castles, pictures, tapestries
have vanished with the dogs.

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But a few of the treasures remain.

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This gold cup is one, which seems
to have been owned by the Duke,

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and one of the few objects
from which can still catch

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the flavour of this fanciful, luxurious world.

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And this, nominally a reliquary, 

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but actually an extravagant, but charming, toy.

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It's supposed to have held a thorn
from Christ's crown at the Crucifixion.

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There were many patrons of art
and collectors at that time

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but the Duke was peculiar
in that the arts were his whole life.

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And to pay for his collections,
he taxed his subjects mercilessly,

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and they wouldn't have agreed with this
miniature where St Peter admits him to heaven

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without the usual formalities.

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It was a colder world for peasants.

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The manuscripts illustrate
another capacity of the human mind,

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which had grown up in the preceding century -

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the delighted observation of natural objects,
leaves and flowers, animals and birds.

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Birds were a medieval obsession.

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They're the subject of
one of the earliest medieval sketch books

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and they fill the borders of manuscripts.

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If you'd asked a 14th-century cleric
to account for all these birds

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he would probably have said
that they represented souls,

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because they can fly up to God.

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But this doesn't really explain why artists drew
them with such obsessive accuracy.

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And l think the reason is that they had become
symbols of freedom.

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Under feudalism
men and animals were tied to the land.

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Very few people could move about.

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Only artists...

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and birds.

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They were cheerful,
hopeful, impudent and mobile.

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And, in addition, had the kind of markings
that fitted in with medieval heraldry.

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The Duke's earliest manuscripts had shown an
isolating and symbolising approach to nature.

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But in the middle of his career
he discovered an artist

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or a group of artists called de Limbourg,

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who by some stroke of original genius
saw nature as we see it -

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as part of a complete visual experience.

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No doubt much of their work's been lost.

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But one book remains

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The Very Rich Hours,

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which is one of the miracles of art history.

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Here are men and women cultivating the fields,

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harrowing, sowing -
there's a scarecrow in the background -

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haymaking and harvesting.

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And suddenly we realise
that all this had been going on

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in the same places, more or less unchanged,

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all through the Dark Ages.

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And went on in the same way
right up to the last war.

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In the foreground,

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a party of nobles out hawking
indulge in a little mild courtship.

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So called because it was only in courts that one
had time for these agreeable preliminaries,

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instead of getting down to business immediately.

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Then, in May, everyone puts on crowns
of leaves and goes out riding.

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What a dream.

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No society has ever been more elegant,
more debonair, more dainty.

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Those French and Burgundian courts were
the model of fashion and good manners

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all over Europe.

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Many people, when you mention to them
the word civilisation

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think of something like this.

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Well, it isn't to be sneezed at.

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But it isn't enough to keep a civilisation alive.

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Because it depends on a small static society

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that never looks outside or beyond.

237
00:19:32,028 --> 00:19:33,980
And we know from many examples

238
00:19:34,068 --> 00:19:37,019
that such societies become petrified,

239
00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:40,548
anxious only to hold on
to their own social order.

240
00:19:41,588 --> 00:19:45,058
The great, indeed the unique,
merit of European civilisation

241
00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:48,190
has been that it has never ceased to develop.

242
00:19:49,269 --> 00:19:53,098
Even the idea of courtesy
could take on an unexpected form.

243
00:19:54,269 --> 00:19:57,298
In the years when the north portal of Chartres
was being decorated,

244
00:19:57,960 --> 00:20:03,788
a rich young dandy named Francesco
Bernadone suffered a change of heart.

245
00:20:04,640 --> 00:20:07,710
He was, and always remained,
the most courteous of men.

246
00:20:08,588 --> 00:20:11,660
He was deeply influenced
by French ideals of chivalry.

247
00:20:11,750 --> 00:20:15,098
And one day, when he had fitted himself up
in his best clothes

248
00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:17,759
in preparation for some chivalrous campaign,

249
00:20:17,828 --> 00:20:21,660
he met a poor gentleman whose needs
seemed to be greater than his own,

250
00:20:21,750 --> 00:20:23,700
and gave him his cloak.

251
00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:30,750
That night he dreamed that
he should rebuild the Celestial City.

252
00:20:33,200 --> 00:20:35,868
Later, he gave away his possessions so liberally

253
00:20:35,960 --> 00:20:41,028
that his father, who was a rich businessman
in the Italian town of Assisi

254
00:20:41,108 --> 00:20:43,058
decided to disown him.

255
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:47,828
Whereupon Francesco
took off his remaining clothes

256
00:20:47,920 --> 00:20:51,269
and said that he would possess nothing,
absolutely nothing.

257
00:20:52,348 --> 00:20:54,298
The Bishop of Assisi hid his nakedness,

258
00:20:54,400 --> 00:20:56,348
and afterwards gave him a cloak,

259
00:20:56,440 --> 00:20:59,868
and Francesco went off into the woods
singing a French song.

260
00:21:01,108 --> 00:21:03,740
The next three years he spent in abject poverty,

261
00:21:03,828 --> 00:21:07,220
looking after lepers, who were very much
in evidence in the Middle Ages

262
00:21:07,308 --> 00:21:10,380
and rebuilding with his own hands
abandoned churches.

263
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:14,308
In all his actions
he took the words of the Gospels literally.

264
00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:18,019
And he translated them
into the language of chivalric poetry.

265
00:21:19,308 --> 00:21:22,778
He said that he had taken poverty for his lady.

266
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:26,500
And when he achieved
some still more drastic act of self-denial

267
00:21:26,588 --> 00:21:29,298
he said that it was to do her a courtesy.

268
00:21:30,108 --> 00:21:34,058
It was partly because he saw that
wealth corrupts and is the cause of war,

269
00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:37,028
but partly because
he felt that it was discourteous

270
00:21:37,108 --> 00:21:40,140
to be in the company
of anyone poorer than oneself.

271
00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:46,700
I've so far illustrated the story of St Francis
by the work of the Sienese painter Sassetta,

272
00:21:46,788 --> 00:21:49,940
because although he painted so much later,

273
00:21:50,509 --> 00:21:54,778
the chivalric Gothic tradition lingered on in Siena
as nowhere else in Italy,

274
00:21:54,880 --> 00:21:59,868
and gave to Sassetta's sprightly images
a lyric, even a visionary quality

275
00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:03,910
more Franciscan than
the ponderous images of Giotto.

276
00:22:06,720 --> 00:22:09,068
But l must now change to Giotto.

277
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:13,390
Not only because he lived 150 years earlier
than Sassetta

278
00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:17,470
that's to say much nearer
the time of St Francis

279
00:22:17,548 --> 00:22:22,900
but because he was chosen to decorate
the great church where I'm now standing,

280
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:24,950
the Church of St Francis

281
00:22:25,028 --> 00:22:27,180
built very shortly after his death.

282
00:22:28,680 --> 00:22:34,230
How many of these frescoes are really
by Giotto's own hand is an open question.

283
00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:38,630
Modern English scholars
have taken it into their heads to say

284
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:41,588
that Giotto practically never went to Assisi at all.

285
00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:44,950
Italian scholars think
that he painted nearly all of them.

286
00:22:45,960 --> 00:22:50,028
I'm inclined to think that Giotto
was one of those artists, like Raphael,

287
00:22:50,108 --> 00:22:55,180
who attached much more importance
to invention than to execution.

288
00:22:55,828 --> 00:22:58,980
He was quite prepared to let his pupils -

289
00:22:59,068 --> 00:23:01,420
there must have been a small army of pupils -

290
00:23:01,509 --> 00:23:03,220
carry out his ideas.

291
00:23:03,308 --> 00:23:08,460
The ones here above my head
l am pretty sure he painted himself,

292
00:23:08,548 --> 00:23:13,490
because they have all his weight
and dramatic power.

293
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:16,348
Where he seems to me to fall short

294
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:19,190
is in his actual image of the saint.

295
00:23:20,269 --> 00:23:22,220
It's too grave and commanding.

296
00:23:22,308 --> 00:23:25,660
It has none of that sprightliness, almost -

297
00:23:25,750 --> 00:23:31,019
that sense of joy which St Francis valued
almost as much as courtesy itself.

298
00:23:32,068 --> 00:23:35,298
Incidentally, we don't know
what St Francis looked like.

299
00:23:36,750 --> 00:23:39,900
The best known early painting
is attributed to Cimabue.

300
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:42,548
It looks quite convincing, 

301
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,068
but I'm afraid that it's entirely repainted

302
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:50,180
and only shows us what the 19th century
thought St Francis ought to have looked like.

303
00:23:53,269 --> 00:23:58,420
From the first, everyone recognised
that St Francis was a religious genius,

304
00:23:58,509 --> 00:24:01,660
the greatest, l believe,
that Europe has ever produced.

305
00:24:01,750 --> 00:24:03,700
Although he was only a layman,

306
00:24:03,788 --> 00:24:07,858
the Pope gave him permission
to found an order, here at Assisi.

307
00:24:16,750 --> 00:24:20,578
St Francis died in 1226 at the age of 43,

308
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:23,028
worn out by his austerities.

309
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:31,660
On his deathbed, he had asked forgiveness
of "poor brother donkey, my body"

310
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,548
for the hardships he had made it suffer.

311
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:40,710
He had seen his order go from
a group of humble companions

312
00:24:40,788 --> 00:24:42,740
and become a great institution,

313
00:24:42,828 --> 00:24:44,778
a power in church politics.

314
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:51,230
And at a certain point, he had quite naturally
and simply relinquished control.

315
00:24:52,108 --> 00:24:54,140
He knew that he was no administrator.

316
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,990
Within two years, only two years of his death,

317
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,028
he was canonised

318
00:25:02,108 --> 00:25:07,618
and his companions began to build
this great church to his memory.

319
00:25:08,788 --> 00:25:13,338
A masterpiece of Gothic architecture,
also an incredible piece of engineering.

320
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,150
Two churches, one on top of the other,

321
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:29,778
a huge monastery, all built on arcades,

322
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:34,710
and of such hard stone
that it's almost impossible to believe

323
00:25:34,788 --> 00:25:37,170
that it's original 13th-century work.

324
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:41,348
l think it must have been built
by a castle architect.

325
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:46,630
It was decorated by all the chief Italian,painters
of the 13th and 14th centuries

326
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:48,670
from Cimabue onwards

327
00:25:48,750 --> 00:25:54,338
so that it has become the richest
and most evocative church in Italy.

328
00:25:55,108 --> 00:25:57,058
(Plainsong)

329
00:27:48,750 --> 00:27:54,660
A strange memorial to the little poor man
whose favourite saying was,

330
00:27:54,750 --> 00:27:57,980
"Foxes have holes
and the birds of the air have nests

331
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,670
but the Son of Man hath
not where to lay his head."

332
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,390
Of course, St Francis's cult of poverty
couldn't survive him.

333
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:15,430
It didn't even last his lifetime.

334
00:28:16,108 --> 00:28:18,338
It was officially rejected by the Church

335
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:22,868
because the Church had already become
part of the international banking system

336
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:24,990
that originated in the 13th century.

337
00:28:25,068 --> 00:28:30,009
Those of St Francis's disciples who clung
to his doctrine of poverty, called fraticelli,

338
00:28:30,108 --> 00:28:32,940
were denounced as heretics
and burnt at the stake.

339
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:41,028
And for 700 years, capitalism has continued
to grow to its present monstrous proportions.

340
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,750
It may seem that St Francis
has had no influence at all.

341
00:28:44,828 --> 00:28:51,460
Even those humane reformers of the
19th century who sometimes invoked him,

342
00:28:51,548 --> 00:28:56,298
didn't wish to exalt or sanctify poverty
but to abolish it.

343
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:32,098
And yet, his belief that in order to free the spirit
we must shed our earthly possessions

344
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:36,990
is the belief that all great religions
have in common - East and West.

345
00:29:37,068 --> 00:29:39,019
Almost without exception.

346
00:29:39,108 --> 00:29:43,660
And by enacting that truth,
with such simplicity and grace,

347
00:29:44,509 --> 00:29:47,420
he made it a part of European consciousness.

348
00:29:47,509 --> 00:29:50,858
An ideal to which, however impossible
it may be in practice,

349
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:54,230
the finest spirits will always return.

350
00:29:55,308 --> 00:29:59,088
And, by freeing himself
from the pull of possessions,

351
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:03,910
St Francis achieved a state of mind
which has been of great value to us'.

352
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:07,670
l mean his belief in the unity of creation

353
00:30:07,750 --> 00:30:09,700
and the possibility of universal love.

354
00:30:09,788 --> 00:30:11,858
It was only because he possessed nothing

355
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:16,230
that St Francis could feel sincerely
a brotherhood with all created things.

356
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:19,990
Not only living creatures, like Brother Pig, 

357
00:30:20,828 --> 00:30:22,778
but Brother Fire and Sister Wind.

358
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:28,750
This philosophy inspired his hymn
to the unity of creation,

359
00:30:28,828 --> 00:30:30,778
known as the Canticle Of The Sun.

360
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:34,308
It's expressed with irresistible naivety

361
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:38,630
in a collection of legends known as the Fioretti -
the little flowers.

362
00:30:39,308 --> 00:30:42,930
Not many people can make their way through
the polemics of Abelard

363
00:30:43,028 --> 00:30:46,538
or the definitions of St Thomas Aquinas,

364
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,630
but everyone can enjoy these holy folk tales,

365
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:53,259
which, after all, may not be completely untrue.

366
00:30:54,000 --> 00:31:00,028
They are, in contemporary jargon, amongst
the first examples of popular communication.

367
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:02,990
At any rate, since the Sermon on the Mount.

368
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:08,348
And they tell us, for instance,
how St Francis persuaded a fierce wolf

369
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:11,670
that terrified the people of Gubbio,
to make a pact

370
00:31:11,750 --> 00:31:16,180
by which, in return for regular meals,
he will leave the citizens alone.

371
00:31:16,788 --> 00:31:18,740
"Give me your paw, " said St Francis.

372
00:31:18,828 --> 00:31:20,778
And the wolf gave his paw.

373
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,630
Most famous of all, of course
is the sermon to the birds.

374
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:29,578
Those creatures which, as I've said
seemed to the Gothic mind singularly privileged.

375
00:31:30,068 --> 00:31:34,980
Seven centuries haven't impaired
the naive beauty of that episode.

376
00:31:37,028 --> 00:31:38,980
(Bell tolls)

377
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,108
St Francis is a figure of the pure Gothic time.

378
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,390
The age of Crusades and castles
and the great cathedrals.

379
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:53,430
Although he put it to strange
and barbarous uses

380
00:31:53,509 --> 00:31:56,019
he belonged to the age of chivalry.

381
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,670
Well, however much one loves that world

382
00:32:00,750 --> 00:32:04,098
l think it remains for us infinitely strange
and remote.

383
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,670
It's as enchanting, as luminous,
as transcendental

384
00:32:07,750 --> 00:32:09,818
as the stained glass that is its glory.

385
00:32:10,588 --> 00:32:13,420
And in the ordinary meaning of the word,
as unreal.

386
00:32:21,588 --> 00:32:27,058
But already, during the lifetime of St Francis,
another world was growing up,

387
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:31,108
which, for better or worse
is the ancestor of our own'.

388
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:34,910
The world of trade, of banking, of cities.

389
00:32:35,828 --> 00:32:38,900
Full of hard-headed men whose aim in life
was to grow rich

390
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,150
without ceasing to be respectable.

391
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:48,710
Cities, citizens, civilians, civic, civic life.

392
00:32:48,788 --> 00:32:53,420
l suppose all this ought to have a direct bearing
on what we mean by civilisation.

393
00:32:55,640 --> 00:33:00,348
Behind me is the town hall of Siena
looking very much as it did in the 14th century.

394
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:03,108
In fact, the city architect told me

395
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:09,068
that the population is two less
than it was in the 13th century.

396
00:33:09,750 --> 00:33:11,700
Historians sometimes maintain

397
00:33:11,788 --> 00:33:16,910
that civilisation began
in these Italian republics of the 14th century.

398
00:33:17,588 --> 00:33:22,608
Civilisation, as l understand it
can be created in a monastery or a' court

399
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,390
just as well as in a city -
perhaps rather better.

400
00:33:26,068 --> 00:33:32,940
All the same, the social and economic system
that grew up in the 13th century had a point.

401
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:37,828
It was a manageable human unit.

402
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:42,670
As opposed to the system -
if you can call it a system - of chivalry,

403
00:33:42,750 --> 00:33:44,700
it was realistic.

404
00:33:45,588 --> 00:33:49,019
And the proof is that it has survived.

405
00:33:49,108 --> 00:33:54,048
Of course, Siena remained to some extent
medieval, compared with Florence.

406
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:58,430
There industrial and banking conditions
in the time of Dante

407
00:33:58,509 --> 00:34:03,450
were surprising similar
to those that exist in Lombard Street today.

408
00:34:03,548 --> 00:34:08,018
Except that double entry wasn't invented
till the 14th century, in Genoa, l believe.

409
00:34:09,110 --> 00:34:12,860
Of course, the Italian republics
weren't in the least democratic.

410
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:18,710
As those pre-Marxist innocents,
the liberal historians, used to think they were.

411
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:24,230
Exploitation was in the hands
of a few powerful families,

412
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:27,750
who managed to operate
within the framework of a guild system

413
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:31,070
in which the workers had no say at all.

414
00:34:32,670 --> 00:34:36,539
The Italian merchant of the 14th century
isn't a sympathetic figure.

415
00:34:37,230 --> 00:34:40,300
Less so, really, than that old reprobate
Jean de Berry.

416
00:34:41,230 --> 00:34:47,619
The stories of Florentine thrift are like the stories
that Jews used to tell about each other.

417
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:52,429
But - and here the parallel with Lombard Street
is not so close -

418
00:34:52,510 --> 00:34:56,130
the new merchant classes
as patrons of the art of their own time,

419
00:34:57,190 --> 00:35:00,260
were at least as intelligent as the aristocracy.

420
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:06,550
And just as their economic system was capable
of expansion, it has lasted till today,

421
00:35:06,630 --> 00:35:11,750
so the painting they commissioned
had a kind of solid reality

422
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:16,110
that was to be the dominant aim of art
up to the time of Cézanne.

423
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:22,789
The first, and in some ways the greatest,
painter of this new reality was Giotto.

424
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:35,110
This is one of Giotto's frescos
in the Arena Chapel in Padua.

425
00:35:35,190 --> 00:35:40,018
As l look at it l realise that to anyone whose eye
has been conditioned by realism

426
00:35:40,110 --> 00:35:45,179
as it has existed in European art
from the Renaissance to the Cubists

427
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,579
this will not look very realistic.

428
00:35:47,670 --> 00:35:50,300
Perhaps no more so than Gothic tapestry.

429
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:52,670
But this much is clear.

430
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:59,789
Instead of a decorative jumble, it concentrates
on a few simple, solid-looking forms

431
00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:01,829
arranged in space.

432
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:09,699
Giotto had, more than any artist before him,
the ability to make his figures look solid.

433
00:36:10,230 --> 00:36:15,900
He manages to simplify them into large,
comprehensible, apprehensible shapes,

434
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:18,230
and it gives one a profound satisfaction

435
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:21,268
to feel that one can grasp his figures
so completely.

436
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,710
He needs to make his figures
more vividly credible

437
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:32,268
because he wishes us to feel more intensely
the human drama in which they are involved.

438
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:35,670
Once we have learnt Giotto's language

439
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:41,829
we can recognise him as one of the greatest
masters of painted drama that has ever lived.

440
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:57,110
How did Giotto evolve this very personal
and original style?

441
00:36:58,110 --> 00:37:02,460
When he was a young man -
he was born in Tuscany in about 1265 -

442
00:37:02,550 --> 00:37:07,409
Florentine painting was really only
a less polished form of Byzantine painting.

443
00:37:07,510 --> 00:37:10,699
It was flat, flowing, linear, 

444
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:15,070
based on traditional concepts,
which had changed very little for 500 years.

445
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:22,429
For Giotto to break away from it
and evolve this solid space-conscious style

446
00:37:22,510 --> 00:37:24,860
was one of those feats of original creation

447
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:29,389
that have occurred only two or three times
in the history of art.

448
00:37:30,550 --> 00:37:36,139
When such drastic changes do take place
one can usually find certain points of departure -

449
00:37:36,230 --> 00:37:38,579
models, predecessors...

450
00:37:38,670 --> 00:37:40,780
But not with Giotto.

451
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:46,630
We know absolutely nothing about him
till the year 1305

452
00:37:46,710 --> 00:37:52,260
when he decorated a small, plain building
in Padua known as the Arena Chapel,

453
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,789
and made it, to anyone who cares for painting,

454
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,230
one of the holy places of the world.

455
00:38:01,670 --> 00:38:05,139
It was commissioned by a moneylender
named Enrico Scrovegni,

456
00:38:05,230 --> 00:38:09,139
whose father had actually been in prison
for usury,

457
00:38:09,230 --> 00:38:12,659
that is to say, for charging
an extortionate rate of interest

458
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:16,710
because moderate rates of interest
were unofficially countenanced.

459
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:21,099
It's one of the first instances of the new rich

460
00:38:21,190 --> 00:38:24,420
commissioning works of art
as a kind of atonement.

461
00:38:24,510 --> 00:38:30,849
A practice that has benefited the world
almost as much as vanity and self-indulgence.

462
00:38:32,110 --> 00:38:36,969
Here he is. Perhaps the earliest painted portrait
that is obviously a genuine likeness,

463
00:38:37,070 --> 00:38:41,139
presenting a model of his chapel
to three angels,

464
00:38:41,230 --> 00:38:44,900
and for that reason placed among the blessed
in the Last Judgement.

465
00:38:51,150 --> 00:38:56,659
Giotto is the supreme dramatist of human life
in all its diversity.

466
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:59,630
He can depict a scene like this,
the marriage at Cana,

467
00:38:59,710 --> 00:39:02,739
which is almost Chaucerian.

468
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:04,789
(MUSIC) Medieval music

469
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:33,750
Behind the pots stands the pot-bellied host

470
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:38,389
who tastes with astonishment the wine
that has been created out of water.

471
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,590
But Giotto is greatest
when the human drama is greatest.

472
00:39:44,670 --> 00:39:48,018
As in this scene of the betrayal
in the Garden of Gethsemane.

473
00:39:49,670 --> 00:39:54,340
What a marvellous invention -
that Judas should put his cloak round our Lord.

474
00:39:56,670 --> 00:40:02,300
Everything - heads, gestures,
the explosive pattern of the spears

475
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:06,869
is a crescendo of feeling, tension and violence.

476
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,789
But he can also achieve the lyrical beauty
of the Virgin's wedding procession.

477
00:40:22,070 --> 00:40:24,018
(MUSIC) Early Medieval music

478
00:40:40,030 --> 00:40:42,059
The tenderness of the noli me tangere

479
00:40:42,150 --> 00:40:46,739
with its marvellously subtle relationship
between the figures.

480
00:41:19,670 --> 00:41:23,739
And finally, the lamentation
over Christ's dead body.

481
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,179
It's a masterpiece of pictorial construction,

482
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:30,429
a sort of model for high academic painting
for 500 years.

483
00:41:30,510 --> 00:41:34,210
But this technical aspect is soon forgotten.

484
00:41:35,230 --> 00:41:38,380
Look at the gestures
and the heads of the mourning women.

485
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:40,429
They need no words from me.

486
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:34,309
Although l think that Giotto
was one of the supreme painters of the world,

487
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:36,550
he has equals.

488
00:42:36,630 --> 00:42:39,460
But in the year of his birth
and in the same district

489
00:42:39,550 --> 00:42:41,500
was born a man who is unequalled.

490
00:42:42,190 --> 00:42:46,739
The greatest philosophical poet
that has ever lived: Dante.

491
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,510
Since they were contemporaries
and compatriots,

492
00:42:50,590 --> 00:42:55,300
one feels that it should be possible
to illustrate Dante by Giotto.

493
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:59,869
They seem to have known each other
and Giotto may have painted Dante's portrait.

494
00:42:59,960 --> 00:43:05,079
In fact, their imaginations
moved on very different planes.

495
00:43:05,150 --> 00:43:08,900
Giotto was, above all, interested in humanity.

496
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:11,349
He sympathised with human beings,

497
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:15,469
and his figures, by their very solidity,
remain on Earth.

498
00:43:16,070 --> 00:43:18,139
Of course, there is humanity in Dante.

499
00:43:18,230 --> 00:43:20,690
He lived in the thick of Florentine politics.

500
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,670
All the characters he had pitied or hated
or admired appear in his poem,

501
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:30,429
not only as representatives of good and evil,
but with the vividness of real people.

502
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:36,400
But Giotto lacked Dante's philosophic power
and moral indignation.

503
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,949
That heroic contempt for baseness,

504
00:43:40,030 --> 00:43:42,179
that was to come again in Michelangelo.

505
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:46,030
Above all, that vision of a heavenly order

506
00:43:46,110 --> 00:43:49,179
and the intellectual power
to make it comprehensible.

507
00:43:58,070 --> 00:44:03,059
In a way, the poet and the painter
stand at the junction of two worlds.

508
00:44:03,150 --> 00:44:07,619
Giotto belonged to the new world
of solid realities.

509
00:44:07,710 --> 00:44:11,380
The world created by the bankers
and merchants for whom he worked.

510
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:17,070
Dante - as has often been observed -
belonged to the earlier Gothic world,

511
00:44:17,150 --> 00:44:20,420
to the world of St Thomas Aquinas
and the great cathedrals.

512
00:44:20,510 --> 00:44:22,969
One isn't as close to Dante in the Arena Chapel

513
00:44:23,070 --> 00:44:27,539
as one is here
in the Romanesque Baptistry at Pisa.

514
00:44:28,230 --> 00:44:35,420
The pulpit by Nicola Pisano was executed
five years before Dante was born,

515
00:44:35,510 --> 00:44:37,969
yet it has all his sense of horror,

516
00:44:38,070 --> 00:44:41,940
even some of the elements of the grotesque
that come into The Inferno.

517
00:44:42,030 --> 00:44:45,300
Combined with much
that is derived from antiquity.

518
00:44:46,150 --> 00:44:49,179
It has the same keen eye for truthful details.

519
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:55,550
Although, of course, we can no longer believe
in these rather ridiculous monsters.

520
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:09,380
Nicola's son Giovanni
about fifteen years older than Dante and Giotto,

521
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:12,429
and deeply influenced by
the Gothic art of the North

522
00:45:12,510 --> 00:45:15,780
seems to me perfectly to reflect
the Dantesque spirit.

523
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:21,309
Giovanni Pisano was one of the great
tragic dramatists of sculpture.

524
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:25,030
The pulpits he carved at Pisa
and nearby Pistoia

525
00:45:25,110 --> 00:45:27,900
depict a terrible world.

526
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:32,750
Here is the grief-filled suffering
of the Massacre of the Innocents.

527
00:45:33,230 --> 00:45:35,179
(MUSIC) Worldes Blis

528
00:46:55,230 --> 00:46:58,739
But Giovanni Pisano's
feeling of tragic indignation

529
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:00,789
was only one side of Dante.

530
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:03,750
In the second half of his great poem,

531
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:06,190
from the middle of the Purgatorio onwards,

532
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:12,829
there are moments of disembodied bliss
to which no artist of the time did justice.

533
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:18,469
Nor were the painters of the 14th century
ready to reflect Dante's feeling for light.

534
00:47:19,110 --> 00:47:21,219
Like all the heroes of this series

535
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:25,099
Dante thought of light
as the symbol of civilised life.

536
00:47:25,190 --> 00:47:29,980
And in his poem he describes
accurately and economically

537
00:47:30,070 --> 00:47:32,018
light in all its varying effects.

538
00:47:32,710 --> 00:47:35,619
The light of dawn, light on the sea,

539
00:47:35,710 --> 00:47:37,659
light on leaves in spring...

540
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:43,949
But all these beautiful descriptions,
which are the part of Dante that we like best,

541
00:47:44,030 --> 00:47:45,980
are only similes.

542
00:47:46,070 --> 00:47:49,300
They're introduced by the words "as when".

543
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:56,590
They're intended to illustrate and make
comprehensible to our Earthbound senses

544
00:47:56,670 --> 00:47:59,900
the vision of divine order and heavenly beauty.

561
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:01,949
(MUSIC) Early Medieval music