1 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:13,800 When civilisations meet one another for the first time, 2 00:00:13,800 --> 00:00:16,080 there is always the danger of conflict. 3 00:00:18,160 --> 00:00:23,000 A global era of many first encounters began 500 years ago. 4 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:28,160 It was the dawn of a new age of discovery. 5 00:00:30,280 --> 00:00:32,880 Some encounters were peaceful. 6 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:34,960 Others incredibly destructive. 7 00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:40,960 But time and again, these momentous meetings sparked 8 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:43,360 great artistic energy 9 00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:47,920 and the clashing and the jostling of cultures impacted both sides. 10 00:00:50,480 --> 00:00:52,920 As a historian, I believe that in art 11 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:56,160 we find profound truths about these encounters. 12 00:00:57,440 --> 00:01:00,040 In the masterpieces of 17th-century Holland... 13 00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:03,520 ..in great works from Japan, 14 00:01:03,520 --> 00:01:06,560 in the paintings of late Mughal India 15 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:08,360 and other artistic treasures... 16 00:01:09,520 --> 00:01:12,840 ..we discover the destruction and creation combined 17 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:15,080 to forge new art and culture... 18 00:01:16,440 --> 00:01:18,720 ..in the first age of globalisation. 19 00:02:04,280 --> 00:02:06,720 In the last years of the 19th century, 20 00:02:06,720 --> 00:02:11,320 thousands of people came to London to see an intriguing new exhibit. 21 00:02:15,240 --> 00:02:18,680 They came to marvel at the art of an alien culture, 22 00:02:18,680 --> 00:02:21,440 produced by a supposedly savage people. 23 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:26,720 The very existence of these works of art represented 24 00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:30,120 a challenge to the dominant ideas of the time. 25 00:02:30,120 --> 00:02:32,480 Ideas that underpinned an empire. 26 00:02:35,880 --> 00:02:40,360 The public were fascinated, but also troubled by what they saw. 27 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:45,800 What bothered them was that this was the work of an African society 28 00:02:45,800 --> 00:02:48,440 and almost everybody in the 19th century believed that 29 00:02:48,440 --> 00:02:51,920 Africans lacked the technical skills needed to produce great art 30 00:02:51,920 --> 00:02:55,640 and the cultural sophistication needed to appreciate it. 31 00:02:55,640 --> 00:02:58,320 It was, in fact, widely believed that the people 32 00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:01,840 of the Dark Continent had no history and no culture 33 00:03:01,840 --> 00:03:06,480 and were incapable of generating this thing called civilisation. 34 00:03:11,240 --> 00:03:14,440 These reliefs that so disturbed the Victorians 35 00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:16,000 are the Benin Bronzes. 36 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:20,480 They're now regarded as one of Africa's greatest treasures. 37 00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:25,520 Created from the 16th century onwards in the ancient 38 00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:29,560 West African kingdom, they record Benin's great kings, 39 00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:32,360 her wealth, her military power 40 00:03:32,360 --> 00:03:35,440 and the history that Africans were supposed to lack. 41 00:03:37,640 --> 00:03:41,080 I've been coming to see these works of art my whole life. 42 00:03:41,080 --> 00:03:42,320 I was first brought to see them 43 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,040 when I was just a little boy by my family. 44 00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:48,600 I've spent hours and hours over the years standing here 45 00:03:48,600 --> 00:03:51,160 looking at them and, as someone born in Africa, 46 00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:54,520 feeling a strong sense of connection to them. 47 00:03:55,600 --> 00:03:57,080 But despite all their beauty, 48 00:03:57,080 --> 00:03:59,840 they are to me tragic works of art, 49 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:02,840 because they are loaded with a sense of loss. 50 00:04:02,840 --> 00:04:06,960 And that's because today they're not in Nigeria among the people whose 51 00:04:06,960 --> 00:04:11,280 ancestors made them, they're here in London, in the British Museum. 52 00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:17,960 The Benin Bronzes came to Britain as the spoils of an act of plunder. 53 00:04:19,320 --> 00:04:23,360 In 1897, British colonial forces attacked Benin City. 54 00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:27,240 It was an act of revenge for the ambush of an earlier 55 00:04:27,240 --> 00:04:28,360 British expedition. 56 00:04:30,040 --> 00:04:34,480 They deposed the King, the Oba Ovonramwen, sent him into exile 57 00:04:34,480 --> 00:04:36,480 and burned his palace to the ground. 58 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:40,120 They looted the brass plaques 59 00:04:40,120 --> 00:04:43,400 and statues that once decorated the palace walls, 60 00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:45,760 took them back to London and sold them off. 61 00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:50,680 Some were put on display in the British Museum. 62 00:04:52,760 --> 00:04:56,280 Yet many of the Victorians who puzzled over the existence 63 00:04:56,280 --> 00:04:59,760 of the bronzes had forgotten that they were not the first 64 00:04:59,760 --> 00:05:02,240 outsiders to see the art of Benin. 65 00:05:04,360 --> 00:05:05,680 Centuries earlier, 66 00:05:05,680 --> 00:05:10,800 Portuguese explorers had encountered the bronzes in their original home 67 00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:13,960 on the walls of Benin's Royal Palace. 68 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:18,600 It stood at the heart of a vast city, ringed by one of the largest 69 00:05:18,600 --> 00:05:20,480 earthwork walls in the world. 70 00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:27,880 These early European travellers came not to conquer, but to trade. 71 00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:32,840 Before the prejudices of later centuries, they had no trouble 72 00:05:32,840 --> 00:05:37,360 recognising Benin as a powerful, sophisticated civilisation, 73 00:05:37,360 --> 00:05:40,200 one that was capable of producing great art. 74 00:05:42,640 --> 00:05:45,760 And it's in the art that we find evidence of these first 75 00:05:45,760 --> 00:05:49,320 relationships between West Africans and Europeans... 76 00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:54,040 ..evidence that shows the faces of early Portuguese traders, 77 00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:57,560 complete with beards and long European noses. 78 00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:03,840 This is art that reveals a very different civilisation 79 00:06:03,840 --> 00:06:06,160 to the one the Victorians imagined - 80 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:07,920 not an isolated kingdom, 81 00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:12,160 but one shaped by centuries of contact with the wider world. 82 00:06:21,480 --> 00:06:24,480 Today the kingdom of Benin is part of Nigeria. 83 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:32,480 Yet its ancient culture has not vanished, but adapted 84 00:06:32,480 --> 00:06:35,240 and survived its many encounters with others. 85 00:06:38,520 --> 00:06:41,880 The people of Benin still pay homage to an Oba. 86 00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:45,920 Ewuare II is the 39th ruler in a line that stretches 87 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:47,760 back to the 12th century. 88 00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:50,240 Oba. 89 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:56,840 And the artworks that we call Benin Bronzes, in fact made of brass 90 00:06:56,840 --> 00:07:00,440 alloys, are still created by the people of Benin, 91 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:03,840 using the same ancient metal-casting technique. 92 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:09,800 Mr Ine is part of a long artistic tradition. 93 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:11,720 He learnt his skills from his father, 94 00:07:11,720 --> 00:07:13,480 who learnt them from his father, 95 00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:17,360 so this artistic form has been passed down over the centuries, 96 00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:19,920 family by family, generation by generation, 97 00:07:19,920 --> 00:07:23,240 and today the bronze-casters of Benin, like their predecessors, 98 00:07:23,240 --> 00:07:25,800 are members of an exclusive guild, 99 00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:29,120 and they still use the same methods to produce their art - 100 00:07:29,120 --> 00:07:31,360 the lost wax method - and almost every 101 00:07:31,360 --> 00:07:34,840 stage in that process is performed today as it was centuries ago. 102 00:07:39,920 --> 00:07:42,120 Yet despite their ancient heritage, 103 00:07:42,120 --> 00:07:46,720 Benin's craftsmen were not the first West Africans to use the technique. 104 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:54,240 In the 13th century, the people of Ife cast lifelike heads 105 00:07:54,240 --> 00:07:58,560 in metal that are thought to represent now long-forgotten rulers. 106 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:06,920 They achieved such a sophisticated level of realism that 107 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:09,280 Europeans would later suggest the heads 108 00:08:09,280 --> 00:08:12,840 were evidence of the lost civilisation of Atlantis. 109 00:08:16,120 --> 00:08:18,920 This was the indigenous artistic tradition 110 00:08:18,920 --> 00:08:21,680 inherited by the Benin Empire, 111 00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:24,080 who used it to honour their obas. 112 00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:28,600 In the hands of Benin's craftsmen, 113 00:08:28,600 --> 00:08:30,680 the style became more abstract, 114 00:08:30,680 --> 00:08:33,760 imbued with magical, symbolic power. 115 00:08:42,360 --> 00:08:45,160 Benin's art would continue to evolve after 116 00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:49,200 the arrival in the late 1400s of Portuguese traders, 117 00:08:49,200 --> 00:08:51,760 the first Europeans to reach West Africa. 118 00:08:56,160 --> 00:09:00,080 Within Benin's art is evidence that the Portuguese were more than 119 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:01,440 just trading partners. 120 00:09:03,040 --> 00:09:07,280 This brass statue, made by Africans for Africans, 121 00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:09,520 is of a Portuguese soldier. 122 00:09:13,920 --> 00:09:16,720 He is quite possibly one of the mercenaries who 123 00:09:16,720 --> 00:09:18,880 fought in the Oba's army. 124 00:09:18,880 --> 00:09:22,640 A statue like this could well have adorned the Oba's palace. 125 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:28,080 And one of the greatest of all Benin's art treasures gives us 126 00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:31,240 an insight into the way Benin saw the Portuguese. 127 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:35,480 Made not of metal, but carved ivory, 128 00:09:35,480 --> 00:09:37,280 it's believed to show the face of 129 00:09:37,280 --> 00:09:41,320 a 16th-century queen mother - Idia. 130 00:09:41,320 --> 00:09:44,120 It's an expression of elegance and power. 131 00:09:50,280 --> 00:09:53,200 But most intriguing is her crown. 132 00:09:53,200 --> 00:09:56,440 It's a row of tiny bearded faces, 133 00:09:56,440 --> 00:09:59,240 symbolising the seafaring Portuguese. 134 00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:04,400 They were said to be messengers of Benin's water god Olokun, 135 00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:08,680 so their images reinforced the authority of the Queen. 136 00:10:17,160 --> 00:10:19,640 Trade with the Portuguese meant that the kingdom of Benin, 137 00:10:19,640 --> 00:10:21,560 like a number of African societies, 138 00:10:21,560 --> 00:10:24,480 was drawn into a new Atlantic world. 139 00:10:25,760 --> 00:10:28,960 African traders loaded locally produced goods onto European 140 00:10:28,960 --> 00:10:31,680 ships that sailed up African rivers. 141 00:10:31,680 --> 00:10:34,720 They traded in cloth and in pepper, in gold and ivory, 142 00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:38,600 and also in slaves, though at this point, in very small numbers. 143 00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:43,320 But Africans also exported the work of African artists, 144 00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:45,960 who found new customers in Europe. 145 00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:54,240 The craftsmen of Benin carved elaborate salt cellars from ivory, 146 00:10:54,240 --> 00:10:58,360 in the process creating a new Afro-Portuguese style. 147 00:10:59,360 --> 00:11:02,440 With their Christian crosses and distinctive clothes, 148 00:11:02,440 --> 00:11:06,600 these figures are unmistakably 16th-century Europeans. 149 00:11:12,080 --> 00:11:16,280 The lid is crowned with a tiny Portuguese sailing ship, 150 00:11:16,280 --> 00:11:17,840 topped with a crow's nest. 151 00:11:19,200 --> 00:11:22,360 As a witty flourish, we see a sailor peeping out. 152 00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:28,360 These luxury items were all destined for Portugal's 153 00:11:28,360 --> 00:11:30,640 great port city - Lisbon. 154 00:11:38,320 --> 00:11:42,080 By the late 1400s, contact with the world beyond Europe was 155 00:11:42,080 --> 00:11:45,160 transforming the way the Portuguese saw themselves... 156 00:11:46,320 --> 00:11:48,680 ..as more inquisitive and more outward-looking. 157 00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:58,360 The fortified tower of Belem, built to protect Lisbon harbour, 158 00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:00,840 boasted ornate braided details 159 00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:04,680 thought by some to be influenced by African carvings, 160 00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:06,480 like the ivory salt-cellar ship. 161 00:12:10,880 --> 00:12:12,440 On one corner of the tower 162 00:12:12,440 --> 00:12:15,680 is a celebrated trophy of Portuguese globalism. 163 00:12:17,080 --> 00:12:21,920 It's a rhinoceros, modelled on a real animal sent by an Indian 164 00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:25,000 prince as a gift to the King of Portugal. 165 00:12:25,000 --> 00:12:28,520 Brought by ship around Africa and paraded through the docks 166 00:12:28,520 --> 00:12:33,120 of Lisbon, it was the first rhino seen in Europe since the Romans. 167 00:12:35,080 --> 00:12:38,440 The same animal was famously immortalised by the German 168 00:12:38,440 --> 00:12:39,840 artist Albrecht Durer. 169 00:12:41,080 --> 00:12:42,960 He never saw the beast himself, 170 00:12:42,960 --> 00:12:48,360 but transformed someone else's sketch into an engraved masterpiece, 171 00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:52,720 which he reproduced and sold in thousands of woodcut prints. 172 00:12:55,480 --> 00:12:57,560 This is the image that helped establish 173 00:12:57,560 --> 00:13:02,160 Durer as a master of the new medium of mass communication... 174 00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:04,800 ..the printing press. 175 00:13:14,920 --> 00:13:16,440 By the 16th century, 176 00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:19,880 Lisbon had become perhaps Europe's most cosmopolitan city. 177 00:13:26,640 --> 00:13:30,520 A reality that was captured in a uniquely revealing painting... 178 00:13:33,080 --> 00:13:34,200 ..the King's Fountain. 179 00:13:36,680 --> 00:13:38,960 It's believed that the artist who produced this, 180 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:41,640 whose name has been lost, was from the Netherlands, 181 00:13:41,640 --> 00:13:45,840 but this is not a picture of Delft or Amsterdam, this is Lisbon. 182 00:13:45,840 --> 00:13:47,720 This is Lisbon in the 16th century, 183 00:13:47,720 --> 00:13:51,040 at the very height of Portugal's global trading empire. 184 00:13:51,040 --> 00:13:53,240 It's a part of the city called the king's fountain 185 00:13:53,240 --> 00:13:54,960 and the fountain is shown here. 186 00:13:56,440 --> 00:13:59,760 What's striking about this picture is the people. 187 00:14:02,280 --> 00:14:06,400 Lisbon in this painting looks more like a 21st-century capital, 188 00:14:06,400 --> 00:14:09,400 because as Portugal's trading empire expanded 189 00:14:09,400 --> 00:14:13,400 around the world, people from across that empire came to Lisbon. 190 00:14:13,400 --> 00:14:15,440 Incredibly, it's believed that 10%, 191 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:20,040 one in 10, of Lisbon's population were Africans. 192 00:14:20,040 --> 00:14:22,920 The Africans in this painting are existing at every 193 00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:25,200 level of the social strata. 194 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:27,920 There are the aguaderos, these are water carriers. 195 00:14:27,920 --> 00:14:29,840 They are almost certainly slaves. 196 00:14:29,840 --> 00:14:32,400 But there were white slaves as well as black slaves. 197 00:14:34,280 --> 00:14:37,680 There's a criminal who has been arrested here. 198 00:14:37,680 --> 00:14:41,200 There are the boatmen, who are ferrying people across the river, 199 00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:44,600 but there's also figures like this, this is a black knight, 200 00:14:44,600 --> 00:14:47,240 a man of the Order of Santiago, 201 00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:50,840 on his horse, with his sword and his cloak and all his finery. 202 00:14:53,400 --> 00:14:57,560 And it's a snapshot of a world that we've forgotten about - 203 00:14:57,560 --> 00:15:00,320 Lisbon at the centre of a global empire, 204 00:15:00,320 --> 00:15:03,400 Lisbon at the centre of the first age of globalisation. 205 00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:13,080 This is art that captures a moment when the balance of military 206 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:15,560 and economic power meant that Europeans 207 00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:20,320 and Africans encountered one another on terms of relative equality. 208 00:15:24,680 --> 00:15:28,360 Yet other art plundered from Central America just decades 209 00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:31,320 later tells of a very different encounter. 210 00:15:32,600 --> 00:15:36,120 An encounter that would prove to be one of the most cataclysmic 211 00:15:36,120 --> 00:15:38,280 events in all human history. 212 00:15:57,360 --> 00:15:59,280 On the eve of Spain's arrival, 213 00:15:59,280 --> 00:16:02,720 Central America was dominated by the Aztecs. 214 00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:09,600 They had their own writing system 215 00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:12,280 and a sophisticated cyclical calendar. 216 00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:22,200 Their complex beliefs demanded sacrificial victims in vast 217 00:16:22,200 --> 00:16:26,760 numbers to appease the gods and ensure the continuation of life. 218 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:32,560 The Aztecs also honoured their gods 219 00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:36,920 and their rulers in exquisite artefacts fashioned from gold. 220 00:16:38,680 --> 00:16:41,680 Gold that would prove an irresistible temptation 221 00:16:41,680 --> 00:16:43,640 to the first European arrivals. 222 00:16:45,520 --> 00:16:50,440 On 8 November 1519, one of the most momentous meetings in all 223 00:16:50,440 --> 00:16:54,560 of history took place in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. 224 00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:01,000 And this meeting between two worlds, 225 00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:02,560 the old and the new, 226 00:17:02,560 --> 00:17:05,240 came down to a meeting between two men, 227 00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:08,400 Hernan Cortes and the Aztec emperor Montezuma. 228 00:17:08,400 --> 00:17:11,600 And these were two men who occupied positions of radically 229 00:17:11,600 --> 00:17:14,480 different status in their respective societies. 230 00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:23,840 It's difficult to know what Montezuma, the god emperor, 231 00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:27,520 made of Cortes, the ruthless, ambitious conquistador. 232 00:17:29,320 --> 00:17:33,160 Was Cortes the embodiment of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, 233 00:17:33,160 --> 00:17:35,640 whose imminent return had been prophesied? 234 00:17:37,080 --> 00:17:40,800 Or was he a dangerous enemy to be treated with caution? 235 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:45,760 Either way, Montezuma decided to lavish upon the Spaniard 236 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:49,760 some of the most beautiful artefacts Aztec society could produce. 237 00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:54,760 It's believed that this spectacular object was one of them. 238 00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:02,360 It is known today as the Double-Headed Serpent. 239 00:18:02,360 --> 00:18:06,280 It's a piece of carved wood that's been covered in a mosaic made 240 00:18:06,280 --> 00:18:10,360 up of hundreds and hundreds of tiny pieces of turquoise, 241 00:18:10,360 --> 00:18:13,640 each of them very precisely fitted into place. 242 00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:18,560 And it's believed that it's a representation of the Aztec 243 00:18:18,560 --> 00:18:22,520 god Quetzalcoatl, who was sometimes shown as a snake 244 00:18:22,520 --> 00:18:25,000 covered in the shimmering feathers of the quetzal bird. 245 00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:30,880 What we don't know is why. 246 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:34,360 Why did Montezuma perhaps give this to Cortes? 247 00:18:34,360 --> 00:18:39,240 It could've been as an act of tribute or perhaps Montezuma 248 00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:41,320 believed that he could, with this 249 00:18:41,320 --> 00:18:44,160 and other gifts, appease the Spanish 250 00:18:44,160 --> 00:18:46,080 and save the Aztec Empire. 251 00:18:50,360 --> 00:18:52,760 But the conquistadors weren't interested 252 00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:56,320 in the aesthetic value of Montezuma's gifts. 253 00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:58,080 They wanted only gold. 254 00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:03,000 So with horses, weapons 255 00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:07,200 and a great deal of help from Montezuma's enemies, they attacked. 256 00:19:09,280 --> 00:19:12,640 Yet the truth is it was the unexpected, devastating 257 00:19:12,640 --> 00:19:17,880 power of European diseases that finally broke Aztec resistance 258 00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:21,560 and wiped out perhaps as much as 90% of the population. 259 00:19:23,800 --> 00:19:27,600 When Spain displayed the spoils of its conquest back in Europe, 260 00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:32,520 it took an artist's eye to really appreciate their beauty - 261 00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:34,320 none other than Durer, 262 00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:37,280 the engraver of Lisbon's Indian rhino. 263 00:19:37,280 --> 00:19:40,200 He saw the Aztec works and wrote, 264 00:19:40,200 --> 00:19:44,360 "All the days of my life I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart 265 00:19:44,360 --> 00:19:47,560 "so much as these wonderful works of art." 266 00:19:49,800 --> 00:19:53,320 But that didn't stop the Spanish from melting down almost 267 00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:56,080 every gold object for its commercial value. 268 00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:06,960 In Mexico, the Aztecs who survived faced a new onslaught. 269 00:20:06,960 --> 00:20:08,520 Catholic missionaries came, 270 00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:12,400 determined to eradicate Aztec beliefs. 271 00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:16,840 Especially the bloody, despised practice of human sacrifice. 272 00:20:18,840 --> 00:20:21,960 To break the bond between the people and the gods, 273 00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:26,360 they set about the wholesale obliteration of the Aztec religion. 274 00:20:26,360 --> 00:20:28,880 Hundreds of temples were destroyed, 275 00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:30,640 and on their ruins churches 276 00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:33,920 were raised - sometimes they were built from the same stones - 277 00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:38,120 and thousands of statues to the Aztec gods were toppled and burnt. 278 00:20:44,080 --> 00:20:47,720 The conversion of hundreds of thousands of Aztec people to 279 00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:52,080 Catholicism was surprisingly swift and thorough. 280 00:20:53,200 --> 00:20:55,000 The Spanish unquestionably used 281 00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:59,400 force, but crucial, too, were similarities between the faiths. 282 00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:04,320 Aztec ideas about blood sacrifice 283 00:21:04,320 --> 00:21:07,680 and resurrection chimed with the story of Christ's 284 00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:11,400 crucifixion, enabling the fusion of the two faiths. 285 00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:18,400 And even this encounter, one of the most violent 286 00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:21,760 destructions of one civilisation by another, 287 00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:23,640 would produce great art. 288 00:21:34,520 --> 00:21:38,320 In a monumental work known today as the Florentine Codex, 289 00:21:38,320 --> 00:21:39,960 one Franciscan missionary, 290 00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:45,120 Father Bernardino de Sahagun, employed the skills of Aztec artists 291 00:21:45,120 --> 00:21:49,240 to help him create a detailed record of their civilisation. 292 00:21:51,200 --> 00:21:54,400 Sahagun believed that in order to convert people, you first 293 00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:57,960 had to understand them, their gods, their way of life, 294 00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:00,400 even their rituals of sacrifice. 295 00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:07,960 The text is written in both Spanish and the Aztec language Nahuatl. 296 00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:12,800 But it's the images, painted by Aztecs, that most vividly 297 00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:16,040 portray a conquered people, immortalising 298 00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:20,000 their own culture at the very moment it was being destroyed. 299 00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:23,920 And it wasn't only on the page. 300 00:22:23,920 --> 00:22:27,520 Through the fusion of the two faiths, aspects of Aztec 301 00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:33,120 culture survived into the modern world in the form of a festival. 302 00:22:33,120 --> 00:22:36,000 MARIACHI BAND PLAYS 303 00:22:39,320 --> 00:22:43,040 The annual Day of the Dead is actually a synthesis 304 00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:45,120 of the Catholic All Saints' Day 305 00:22:45,120 --> 00:22:49,480 and rituals inherited from the Aztec religion. 306 00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:53,120 It's a day when families gather together to remember those 307 00:22:53,120 --> 00:22:54,240 who have passed away. 308 00:22:56,160 --> 00:23:01,680 Dona Josefina lost her husband Don Abram three months ago. 309 00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:04,920 But until midnight, surrounded by family and friends, 310 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:09,360 she is here to welcome her husband as she did when he was alive. 311 00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:14,120 To guide Don Abram home, 312 00:23:14,120 --> 00:23:16,840 Dona Josefina has built an altar, 313 00:23:16,840 --> 00:23:19,680 laden with offerings of bread and fruit. 314 00:23:20,960 --> 00:23:25,880 There are layers to represent heaven, earth and the underworld. 315 00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:30,240 And alongside them, the Aztec symbol of death... 316 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:32,160 the calavera, 317 00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:33,200 the human skull. 318 00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:39,600 I've come here, bringing with me all my western presumptions 319 00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:43,600 and I'm imposing my western view of death as something tragic, 320 00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:45,040 to be lamented and mourned, 321 00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:46,560 onto what's happening here. 322 00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:49,720 That's not at all how these people are regarding 323 00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:53,960 this celebration of the passing of one of their number. 324 00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:55,920 It's my problem, not their problem, 325 00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:59,640 that I see death as macabre and tragic. 326 00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:01,240 They see it quite differently. 327 00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,800 There is a striking irony in the fact that 500 years after 328 00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:12,600 Cortes and the conquistadors arrived, the element of Aztec 329 00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:17,560 culture that is most alive is their festival to the goddess of death. 330 00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:28,640 There was no society, whether victim or victor, 331 00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,040 that emerged from the Age of Exploration unchanged. 332 00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:36,000 Spain, too, was transformed. 333 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,120 Vast amounts of silver and gold 334 00:24:38,120 --> 00:24:42,240 seized from the New World made her the richest nation in Europe. 335 00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:46,480 The church justified Spain's 336 00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:50,680 conquests on the grounds that they helped spread the Christian message. 337 00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:56,280 But while the Inquisition ruthlessly defended the purity of the Catholic 338 00:24:56,280 --> 00:25:00,960 faith, the exchange of ideas and influences was unstoppable. 339 00:25:05,120 --> 00:25:07,600 Spain's aggressive exporting of her culture 340 00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:10,360 and her faith to other parts of the world didn't render 341 00:25:10,360 --> 00:25:15,480 her immune to the inflow of cultural influences from abroad. 342 00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:19,360 Here in Toledo, the spiritual heart of the Spanish church, 343 00:25:19,360 --> 00:25:21,440 cultures met and mixed and, in doing so, 344 00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:25,400 some of the very greatest European art of all time was created. 345 00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:27,600 It was the work of a visionary, 346 00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:32,280 a man whose style and intensity was centuries ahead of its time. 347 00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:35,960 He'd been born in Crete as Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 348 00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:39,320 but he was known here in Spain as El Greco - the Greek. 349 00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:47,040 El Greco brought to Spain the traditions of Greek Orthodox 350 00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:51,720 art as well as the strange distortions of Italian Mannerism. 351 00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,160 But his great achievement was combining those 352 00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:59,560 influences in a way that expressed the fanatical 353 00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:04,080 intensity of the religious culture of 16th-century Toledo. 354 00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:07,200 In 1596, he began work on 355 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:09,240 a dramatic view of the city. 356 00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:16,560 It's starkly lit, beneath a stormy sky, a vision of a holy citadel 357 00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:21,160 where God's authority was made manifest through the Spanish church. 358 00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:26,120 Rising up from the skyline is the spire of Toledo Cathedral. 359 00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,360 It was for this Cathedral that El Greco painted 360 00:26:30,360 --> 00:26:32,840 one of his greatest masterpieces. 361 00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:42,120 El Greco's painting still hangs in the space for which it was created. 362 00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:47,200 This is the sacristy, where the priests 363 00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:49,800 put on their robes before performing mass. 364 00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:54,240 So it's fitting that El Greco chose as his subject 365 00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:55,680 the disrobing of Christ. 366 00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,920 What we see is the moment just before Christ's 367 00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:04,240 clothes are ripped from his body, before the crucifixion. 368 00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:09,800 No other artist more vividly captured Catholic Spain's 369 00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:15,040 intense fascination with the brutal horror of Christ's sacrifice. 370 00:27:18,120 --> 00:27:20,240 Now, there's no blood in this painting, 371 00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:23,880 but we are symbolically reminded of the violence that's to be done 372 00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:29,240 to the body of Christ through the deep, intense red of the robe. 373 00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:33,960 It reminds us that the crucifixion was a blood sacrifice. 374 00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:38,800 A strange echo of the human sacrifices that were at 375 00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:42,520 the heart of the religion of the people who Spain had conquered, 376 00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:43,600 the Aztecs. 377 00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:52,280 El Greco made Christ's 378 00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:54,160 blood sacrifice explicit 379 00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:56,080 when he painted his battered, 380 00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:58,480 distorted body hanging on the cross. 381 00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:01,680 The bloodstains trailing down 382 00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:03,280 towards a view not of the 383 00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:05,480 Holy Land, but of Toledo, the 384 00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,320 beating heart of the Spanish empire. 385 00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:17,920 But Spain's conquests in the New World were not 386 00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:20,240 the norm in the 16th century. 387 00:28:20,240 --> 00:28:22,880 They were, in a sense, the exception. 388 00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:28,120 When European explorers first reached the shores of more 389 00:28:28,120 --> 00:28:31,360 powerful empires, like India and China, 390 00:28:31,360 --> 00:28:34,560 they initially found themselves marginal players. 391 00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:41,960 In Japan, they encountered 392 00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:44,440 a feudal society too robust 393 00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:45,720 to be conquered. 394 00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:52,360 Although the details are vague, it's believed that the very first 395 00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:56,480 Europeans to reach Japan arrived by accident. 396 00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:00,440 They were a group of Portuguese merchants on board a Chinese ship 397 00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:05,000 that was driven ashore by a storm around the year 1543. 398 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,960 The Japanese were fascinated by these new arrivals, 399 00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:11,400 who they regarded as little more than exotic novelties. 400 00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:12,880 But within just a few years, 401 00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:16,800 the Portuguese began to arrive in these waters in their own ships, 402 00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,200 and from the very beginning it was obvious to them that the Japanese 403 00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,480 were not a people who they could treat the way the Spanish 404 00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:24,920 had treated the Aztecs. 405 00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:29,160 Japan was extremely wealthy, she had an enormous population, a highly 406 00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:31,960 sophisticated culture and militarily, 407 00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:33,920 she was a formidable power. 408 00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:37,160 This was not a country in which Europeans could even 409 00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,240 dream of being conquistadors, 410 00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,880 so the Portuguese instead became Japan's trading partners. 411 00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:50,040 Portuguese traders brought new goods 412 00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:53,480 and technologies from every corner of their trading empire. 413 00:29:56,120 --> 00:30:00,440 Though Japan believed firmly in the superiority of her own ancient 414 00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:05,160 culture, to begin with at least, she opened her doors to the traders 415 00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:08,840 and a whole new art form emerged to depict their arrival. 416 00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:17,680 Folding screens like these were one of the innovations of Japanese 417 00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:19,840 art in the 16th century. 418 00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:22,000 They're called Nanban screens 419 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:25,520 because Nanban was the Japanese word for Europeans. 420 00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:28,120 And what it means, rather unflatteringly, 421 00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,120 is southern barbarians. 422 00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,160 Southern because the Portuguese always seemed 423 00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:33,960 to arrive in Japan from the south, 424 00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:37,360 and that's because they were coming up from their trading bases in India 425 00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:41,280 and China, and barbarians because the Japanese were not at all 426 00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:45,960 impressed by European standards of hygiene or European table manners. 427 00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:50,240 What these screens tend to show are the great black oceangoing ships 428 00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:54,840 of the Portuguese empire, loaded with exotic trading goods. 429 00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:57,000 All of these goods are being lowered onto boats 430 00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:01,440 and ferried ashore, and then they're being taken on almost 431 00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:03,720 a ceremonial procession through the town. 432 00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:10,000 Now, the Japanese artists who produced these screens were very 433 00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,520 careful to pick out the most exotic 434 00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:14,600 and the most valuable products. 435 00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:18,120 Here is a folding Chinese chair of huge value. 436 00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:21,120 There's exotic animals, 437 00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,040 rare or unknown to the Japanese, 438 00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:24,640 being brought ashore in cages. 439 00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,560 But just as exotic and just as exciting as any of these 440 00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:32,800 goods are the people coming off these Portuguese ships. 441 00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,280 Africans, both free and enslaved, but there's also Indians, 442 00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:39,240 there's Malays, there's Arabs. 443 00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:48,800 Almost like a mirror image of the Aztec Florentine Codex, 444 00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:52,880 these Nanban screens show us how a host nation recorded 445 00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,080 the arrival of visitors. 446 00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:59,360 Except here it's very firmly on the terms of that host nation. 447 00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:04,080 But there's also a hint here that Japan's perception 448 00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:06,840 of the newcomers as relatively harmless 449 00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:08,960 was about to change radically. 450 00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:14,640 New arrivals are greeted by Jesuit missionaries, 451 00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,680 who had come to Japan not to trade, but to save souls. 452 00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:26,320 By 1600, European missionaries 453 00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:30,600 had won nearly a quarter of a million local converts. 454 00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:35,160 So when a powerful new dynasty took control of Japan, the Tokugawas, 455 00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:39,440 they decided to make a stand against this threat to their culture. 456 00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:41,880 They executed converts, 457 00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:43,280 exiled the missionaries 458 00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:45,080 and banned the Christian faith. 459 00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,080 Their change of policy was undoubtedly 460 00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:51,800 influenced by reports from the New World, 461 00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:54,760 where Christian missionaries had tried to obliterate 462 00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:57,360 the local religions. 463 00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:01,200 But the Tokugawa warlords, the shoguns, went much further. 464 00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:05,800 They sealed Japan off from the outside world, 465 00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:08,600 attempting to turn it into a closed society. 466 00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,480 Almost all foreigners, not just the missionaries, were ejected, 467 00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,720 and Japanese people themselves were prevented from travelling abroad. 468 00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:24,040 The shoguns then promoted a sort of Japanese cultural renaissance, 469 00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:27,040 one that looked not outwards to other civilisations, 470 00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:31,000 but inwards, to Japan's own cultural traditions. 471 00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:34,040 And they used Japan's artistic traditions as a way 472 00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:35,960 of tightening their grip on power 473 00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:40,200 and creating a new sense of what it meant to be Japanese. 474 00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:54,240 The shoguns promoted Japan's older religions, 475 00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:57,160 in particular the Zen school of Buddhism, 476 00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,040 which emphasised self-discipline. 477 00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:05,560 In Buddhist temples, the samurai, the warrior nobles, 478 00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:07,640 now studied refined arts... 479 00:34:08,680 --> 00:34:12,080 ..the controlled rituals of the tea ceremony, 480 00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:13,720 as well as poetry, 481 00:34:13,720 --> 00:34:17,960 calligraphy and the business of serving the shogun state. 482 00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:25,160 It is tempting today to look at Japan's long age of isolation 483 00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:29,120 and conclude that this country's distinctive culture must have 484 00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,120 developed in something of a vacuum, 485 00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:37,440 but the idea that the Japanese were ever completely isolated is a myth. 486 00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:41,400 It was official policy that Japan should be a closed country, 487 00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:45,400 but the Japanese were never completely cut off from the outside 488 00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:50,120 world or from the influences and the ideas of other civilisations. 489 00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:58,320 The Japanese became instead the masters of controlled contact, 490 00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:02,280 permitting only modest exchanges with a few favoured nations. 491 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:07,920 Tiny Dejima island in the middle of Nagasaki harbour 492 00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:09,880 was home to Dutch merchants, 493 00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:13,560 the only Europeans permitted to trade with Japan. 494 00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:18,200 The Dutch were tolerated partly 495 00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:20,800 because they were far more interested in trade 496 00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:22,760 than religious conversion, 497 00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:26,400 but also because they willingly bowed the knee to the Shogun, 498 00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:28,960 acknowledging him as their master. 499 00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,560 This relationship allowed the Dutch to import European 500 00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:37,000 innovations in art and science 501 00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:38,480 into mainland Japan. 502 00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:50,480 One popular scientific curiosity would have an unexpected 503 00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:52,520 impact upon Japanese art. 504 00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:57,520 An optical device which the Japanese called Dutch glasses 505 00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:01,160 was at first considered a frivolous western plaything. 506 00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:05,280 When viewed through its convex lens, 507 00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,080 specially painted landscapes, 508 00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:11,760 using European rules of perspective, would appear more three-dimensional. 509 00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:16,360 Especially when compared with the flat, decorative 510 00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,800 style of Japan's dominant, state-sanctioned school of art. 511 00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:26,000 One painter of Dutch glass landscapes called 512 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:31,440 Maruyama Okyo shrewdly focused on revered Japanese subjects, 513 00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,920 like the medieval Hollyhock Festival, infusing them 514 00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:36,400 with a new sense of depth. 515 00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,000 Soon his reputation grew. 516 00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:51,960 Okyo began to win more serious commissions. 517 00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:03,720 On a pair of temple screens, he painted bamboo with more 518 00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:08,200 delicately observed naturalism than anything yet seen in Japanese art. 519 00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,080 On one side, buffeted by the wind... 520 00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:17,160 ..on the other, in the rain, 521 00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,320 heavily laden and still. 522 00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:37,280 But it was for his masterpiece that Okyo combined everything he knew 523 00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,080 from both eastern and western traditions 524 00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:44,360 in one of the most breathtakingly beautiful of all Japanese works. 525 00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:57,840 It's so subtle, 526 00:37:57,840 --> 00:37:59,600 so minimal a work of art 527 00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:01,240 that it almost feels 528 00:38:01,240 --> 00:38:02,880 like it isn't there, 529 00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:06,520 and everything about it feels ephemeral and frail. 530 00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:09,720 It's painted on paper, not canvas as in the west, 531 00:38:09,720 --> 00:38:13,080 and great expanses of it are just white, 532 00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:16,680 blank areas that seem almost untouched by the artist, 533 00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:19,040 and yet all of that belies the fact 534 00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:21,960 that this is one of the most sophisticated 535 00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:24,800 works of cultural synthesis that I know. 536 00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,240 It shows a sheet of ice, 537 00:38:29,240 --> 00:38:31,360 presumably on a lake, 538 00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:36,960 and these broken, jagged cracks in the ice disappear into the mist. 539 00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:41,920 The effect is three-dimensional space. 540 00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,320 Now, that is European vanishing-point perspective, 541 00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,840 and yet this, one of Okyo's masterworks, just could not 542 00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:50,320 be more Japanese, 543 00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:53,320 because it's a philosophical contemplation of two 544 00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:56,000 concepts fundamental to Buddhism - 545 00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:58,200 imperfection and impermanence. 546 00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:02,360 Imperfection because these lines are uncontrolled 547 00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:04,520 and irregular, and impermanence because, 548 00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:06,800 of course, the ice will melt. 549 00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,640 And those two concepts are just as fundamental 550 00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:12,560 to Japanese art as the classical Greek-Roman 551 00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:15,120 ideas of beauty and perfection are 552 00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:18,480 to European art, so this is Okyo incorporating 553 00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:20,520 European ideas into his art, 554 00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,040 but in ways that are in keeping with 555 00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:25,560 Japanese philosophy and Japanese tastes. 556 00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:39,000 This synthesis of east and west was only possible because of 557 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,920 the tiny trading bottleneck between Japan and Holland. 558 00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:51,280 Yet from the Dutch point of view, 559 00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,800 it was just one of many global trading partnerships. 560 00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,080 It gave the tiny Dutch Republic an influence 561 00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:05,920 that was way out of proportion with its size. 562 00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:12,200 Dutch merchants grew rich supplying their clients abroad 563 00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:15,440 and back home with the goods they wanted, as well as with 564 00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,760 new and exotic goods they hadn't even known they wanted. 565 00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:23,560 At the very centre of this vast, intercontinental network 566 00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:27,080 of trading bases and this web of shipping routes 567 00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,040 lay the city of Amsterdam. 568 00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:31,680 In the Dutch golden age of the 17th century, 569 00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:33,920 Amsterdam was one enormous market - 570 00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:37,480 everything and anything was being bought and sold here. 571 00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:41,080 When the French philosopher Descartes arrived in the 1630s, 572 00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:44,120 he described it as a city where all of the commodities 573 00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:48,480 and all of the curiosities that one could wish for could be bought. 574 00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:53,040 So, whereas the Japanese had tried to block out the wider world, 575 00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:55,960 their Dutch trading partners couldn't get enough of it. 576 00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:14,560 In Amsterdam, the Republic's wealthy merchants built their grand, 577 00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:19,080 canalside villas and filled them with the fruits of global trade. 578 00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:22,520 Blue and white Chinese pottery. 579 00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:29,480 Japanese lacquerware, shipped from Nagasaki. 580 00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:40,360 Their fine clothes were made of silk from Persia. 581 00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:46,640 Their exquisite tableware, crafted from New World gold and silver... 582 00:41:48,720 --> 00:41:51,200 ..or exotic shells and coconuts. 583 00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:57,960 And to serve the Dutch their fine wines, enslaved African boys, 584 00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:02,400 who became one of the great fashions of the age among the rich. 585 00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:10,640 Amsterdam was the testing ground for modern capitalism. 586 00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:13,320 Through its stock exchange, 587 00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:16,520 the Dutch East India Company became the world's first 588 00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:18,160 publicly traded company. 589 00:42:19,720 --> 00:42:23,680 Now anyone could own shares in Holland's global enterprise. 590 00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:29,120 And in this frenzy of moneymaking, Dutch art too was commodified. 591 00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:34,240 The modern art market was born, 592 00:42:34,240 --> 00:42:36,480 supplying whatever subjects the new, 593 00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:38,720 aspirational merchant class wanted. 594 00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:45,120 And what they wanted in their art 595 00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:49,680 was not the pomp of monarchy or the flamboyance of the Catholic faith. 596 00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:55,600 Instead, they wanted to see a reflection of themselves. 597 00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:58,120 Proud republicans, who had worked hard 598 00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:00,360 for the new wealth they enjoyed. 599 00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:12,960 As ordinary Dutch citizens went about their ordinary lives, 600 00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:17,240 it's difficult to know how connected they felt to their overseas empire. 601 00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:21,800 While thousands of men and women set sail 602 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:25,720 with the Dutch trading companies to seek their fortunes abroad, 603 00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:28,000 most never left their native soil. 604 00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:35,320 As far as we know, the artist Jan Vermeer hardly ventured further 605 00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:37,960 than the small, Dutch city of Delft. 606 00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:46,640 Vermeer is not an artist known for wide horizons. 607 00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:50,200 Most of his paintings are famously intimate. 608 00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:52,960 They're set within the neat, ordered, 609 00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:56,320 almost claustrophobic world of the Dutch home. 610 00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:03,000 What Jan Vermeer specialised in was the art of everyday life. 611 00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,240 And his world was an interior world. 612 00:44:06,240 --> 00:44:10,040 What he captured on canvas was simple, fleeting moments. 613 00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:14,000 A young girl laughing when an officer leans towards her. 614 00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:16,760 A woman reading a letter by an open window. 615 00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,240 Another woman in the middle of a music lesson. 616 00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:24,640 And each of those scenes is bathed in a delicate light 617 00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,640 that pours in from a side window. 618 00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,240 But that only serves to emphasise the fact that 619 00:44:30,240 --> 00:44:33,840 we're in an enclosed room, and that the rest of the world is 620 00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,040 hidden from sight, that it's somewhere out there. 621 00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:42,080 But if you look a little more closely at the details, 622 00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,280 at the objects that have been placed on the tables, 623 00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:47,840 at the maps that hang on the walls, 624 00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:52,440 what you realise is that Vermeer's seemingly interior, 625 00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:58,080 domestic space is infused with the globalism of the Dutch golden age. 626 00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:04,280 You see it in the Chinese pottery 627 00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:07,280 that the artisans of Delft learned to copy. 628 00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:11,920 And on the rugs from the Orient that were highly regarded. 629 00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,400 A hat made from North American beaver fur. 630 00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,800 A geographer, wearing a fashionable Japanese robe, 631 00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:24,960 pores over his charts. 632 00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,840 There's a globe perched on his cupboard. 633 00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:32,040 Though Vermeer never shows us the view out of the window, 634 00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:37,120 he constantly hints at the rich, complex universe that lies beyond. 635 00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:42,320 While Vermeer's window offers us glimpses of the wider world, 636 00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:47,200 another artist takes us through that window on a journey of discovery. 637 00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:54,680 The name Maria Sibylla Merian is now largely forgotten. 638 00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:57,480 Yet she was one of the greatest biologists of her time. 639 00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:01,120 As a German immigrant to Amsterdam, 640 00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:03,120 she benefited from its freedoms, 641 00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,480 in particular its freedoms for women. 642 00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:09,480 In Amsterdam, she was able to promote 643 00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:14,040 her ground-breaking studies of insects and their life cycles, 644 00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:16,840 illustrated with exquisite works of art. 645 00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:21,680 At the time, many people believe that insects emerged 646 00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:24,080 fully formed, spontaneously, from the Earth. 647 00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:27,320 That somehow they were born out of the mud. 648 00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:31,560 But Maria explained and painted their life cycle. 649 00:46:31,560 --> 00:46:35,200 Their metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. 650 00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:40,840 She not only explained that process, she showed which plant species 651 00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:43,480 each butterfly species was dependent upon. 652 00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:49,520 This book revolutionised the study of insects in Europe. 653 00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:53,280 But it also helped Maria raise the funds to embark upon 654 00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,200 a journey to study the more exotic creatures that she knew 655 00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,720 she would find in the tropical regions of the Dutch empire. 656 00:47:05,720 --> 00:47:07,640 Seduced, like so many others, 657 00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:10,680 by the Dutch Republic's connections to faraway lands... 658 00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,280 ..in 1699, Maria Sibylla set sail for South America 659 00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:18,640 and the Dutch colony of Suriname, 660 00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:21,120 on the tropical Caribbean coast. 661 00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:26,640 Maria Sibylla spent two years exploring Suriname, 662 00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:29,760 sketching and painting local plants and animals. 663 00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:37,920 Many of them were previously unknown to Europeans. 664 00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:42,560 Her work encapsulates the spirit of curiosity 665 00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:45,440 that helped fuel the scientific revolution. 666 00:47:56,560 --> 00:48:00,720 Just like the Dutch in Japan, the story of the British in India 667 00:48:00,720 --> 00:48:04,440 began with their merchants operating very much on the margins... 668 00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,240 ..obliged to flatter the local princes 669 00:48:08,240 --> 00:48:10,200 and the Mughal emperors who ruled then. 670 00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:16,240 But this story would mark a profound shift 671 00:48:16,240 --> 00:48:20,360 from the age of discovery to a new, 19th-century age, 672 00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:24,280 where Europe's imperial ambitions came to dominate the globe. 673 00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:30,120 That shift from trade to rule was captured in the work 674 00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:33,400 of two artists from different sides of the encounter. 675 00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:36,200 Ghulam Ali Khan, 676 00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:39,840 resident painter in the royal court of India's Mughal dynasty... 677 00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:44,840 ..and Johan Zoffany, who came to India after making his name 678 00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:46,880 painting for the British royal court. 679 00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:52,040 For German-born Zoffany, India was an escape 680 00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:53,800 and a chance for a fresh start. 681 00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:57,800 In Britain, he'd wrecked his glittering career 682 00:48:57,800 --> 00:48:59,840 by offending the royal family 683 00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:03,720 with his cavalier approach to a royal commission. 684 00:49:03,720 --> 00:49:06,880 In 1783, he arrived in Kolkata, 685 00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:10,480 the main trading post of the British East India Company. 686 00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:16,640 Zoffany's come here to rebuild his career and to make some money. 687 00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:19,360 He's not exactly fallen on hard times, 688 00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:23,040 but he's alienated a swathe of London society. 689 00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:26,840 So this is a place where he can make a lot of money. 690 00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:28,560 That's what he's here to do. 691 00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:32,320 He's described by a contemporary of setting out to come to India 692 00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:34,400 to roll in gold dust. 693 00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,360 Fortunes are being made, everybody in London knows that 694 00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:39,800 huge amounts of money are being made here. 695 00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:43,800 And that this is a place where you can start again. 696 00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:45,200 You can rewrite your story. 697 00:49:49,240 --> 00:49:51,040 Within a year of his arrival, 698 00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,400 Zoffany produced one of the most astonishing insights into the early 699 00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:58,440 relationship between the British traders and their Indian clients. 700 00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:04,200 This is a painting that depicts an event that actually took place. 701 00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:08,040 A cockfight organised by Colonel John Mordaunt 702 00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:10,800 of the East India Company, in 1784, 703 00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:15,760 in the city of Lucknow for his client, the Nawab of Oudh - 704 00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:17,920 two men who were almost living metaphors 705 00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:21,920 for what was happening in India in the late 18th century. 706 00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:24,800 Colonel John Mordaunt was the illegitimate son 707 00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:26,320 of a British aristocrat. 708 00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:30,520 He was a man on the make, trying to build his fortune. 709 00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:32,600 The Nawab of Oudh was a playboy. 710 00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:35,320 He'd already signed away much of his authority 711 00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:38,200 and some of his wealth to the East India Company. 712 00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,840 And Zoffany hints at the direction that he thinks 713 00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,160 the relationship between the British and the Nawab is heading, 714 00:50:45,160 --> 00:50:48,480 by the fact that he has the British cockerel on the verge 715 00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:50,240 of killing the Indian bird. 716 00:50:51,240 --> 00:50:55,520 The painting is full of little, subversive details. 717 00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:57,000 There's gambling. 718 00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:00,000 The men are trying to seduce the women. 719 00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:03,600 There is a British redcoat, right on the edge of frame, 720 00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:07,120 slinking off into the distance with his Indian mistress. 721 00:51:08,240 --> 00:51:13,360 This is the British and the Indians, enjoying one another's company. 722 00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:18,160 Socialising, interacting together in easy informality. 723 00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:21,880 What there is no hint of whatsoever, in this painting, 724 00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:25,280 is the sort of deeply distrustful 725 00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,920 and highly racialised relationship that was going to develop 726 00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:33,160 between the British and the Indians later on in the 19th century. 727 00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:45,080 By 1800, India was a land in transition. 728 00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,280 As dissent and poor leadership had eroded the Mughal dynasty's power, 729 00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:53,560 the British East India Company had wasted no time 730 00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:55,600 in increasing its influence. 731 00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:01,800 On the throne in Delhi sat the blind puppet emperor Shah Alam, 732 00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:05,480 described by one poet as merely a chessboard king. 733 00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:12,120 Yet he was heir to a lavish court, and a centuries-old tradition 734 00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:16,480 of Mughal art, painted in vivid, jewel-like colours. 735 00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:18,920 To this court came William Fraser, 736 00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:22,440 a young, Scottish representative of the East India Company. 737 00:52:24,160 --> 00:52:28,280 Fraser was not himself a painter, but a patron of art. 738 00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:31,400 And though he was surrounded by the decaying remains 739 00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:36,120 of a royal city in decline, he was also dazzled by the art, 740 00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:39,480 the poetry and, above all, the people of Delhi. 741 00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:49,080 The more Fraser learned about the culture around him, 742 00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:50,920 the more he himself changed. 743 00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:54,640 He began to wear Indian clothes. 744 00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:56,840 He grew his beard in an Indian style 745 00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:59,640 and he fathered children with Indian women. 746 00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,760 He had, in the parlance of the day, gone native. 747 00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:13,640 Fraser was one of several company men who commissioned 748 00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:17,880 Indian artists to document the country's rich, complex culture. 749 00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:27,320 Known as company paintings, 750 00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:32,000 they depict scenes and characters from every level of Indian society. 751 00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,920 It is not quite clear how we should view this art. 752 00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,360 Because we often see it through a very British 753 00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:47,840 and rather colonial point of view. 754 00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,000 The fact that we call these works company paintings 755 00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,920 gives the impression that it was an entirely new genre 756 00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:57,560 that was invented by company men, like William Fraser. 757 00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:06,720 But the real inventors were the Indian artists themselves. 758 00:54:06,720 --> 00:54:11,160 And the greatest of them all was the celebrated Ghulam Ali Khan. 759 00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:16,360 Ghulam Ali Khan was not just a master painter, 760 00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:19,480 he was part of a long tradition of Mughal artists. 761 00:54:19,480 --> 00:54:22,680 And he was one of the few who signed his own work. 762 00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:25,040 He was the patriarch of a school of painters. 763 00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:28,440 But he was also the member of a family that, for centuries, 764 00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,640 had proudly served as painters to the Mughal court. 765 00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:36,920 The impoverished Mughals could no longer afford 766 00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:38,840 the services of Ghulam Ali Khan. 767 00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:43,600 So he offered his skills not only to the British, but others too. 768 00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,600 He combined Mughal and European painting traditions to depict 769 00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,160 an astonishing range of subjects. 770 00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:57,000 A portrait of the eminent Colonel James Skinner - a mixed-race, 771 00:54:57,000 --> 00:55:00,040 Anglo-Indian offspring of the two cultures. 772 00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:03,960 Commissions from regional rulers, 773 00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:05,440 like the Nawab of Jhajjar, 774 00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:08,560 who now answered not to the Emperor, but to the British. 775 00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,800 And he painted many of India's great architectural treasures, 776 00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:18,200 capturing the life of the country at that last moment, 777 00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:21,000 just before British rule changed it for ever. 778 00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:34,440 The signs of Britain's shifting relationship with India 779 00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:36,040 were already emerging. 780 00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:41,840 A new choice of architecture made it clear that company men 781 00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:44,920 were no longer content simply to pursue profit. 782 00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:50,600 When the company's Governor general commissioned 783 00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:52,560 his new Kolkata headquarters, 784 00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,760 it was obvious he saw himself as an empire builder. 785 00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:01,520 Government House was completed in 1803, 786 00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:05,960 designed with no regard whatsoever for the spectacular architecture 787 00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:07,680 of the Indian traditions. 788 00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:12,080 Instead, its creators turned to the reference books 789 00:56:12,080 --> 00:56:15,240 which they had brought with them from their mother country. 790 00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:20,720 These are published plans and architectural drawings 791 00:56:20,720 --> 00:56:23,360 of the finest stately homes in Britain. 792 00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:25,560 And what you get from books like this is 793 00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:29,160 a picture of Britain at the height of the neoclassical revival - 794 00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:31,680 the age when Greek and Roman designs 795 00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:35,000 were the height of taste and fashion. 796 00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:39,120 Government House was based on an aristocratic English mansion - 797 00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:40,760 Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. 798 00:56:41,760 --> 00:56:44,800 Its wings, corridors, columns and porticos 799 00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:47,760 were transplanted onto the subcontinent. 800 00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,520 To build stately homes like this in the British countryside 801 00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:55,040 merely said that the families that lived there were 802 00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,680 people of education and taste and respectability. 803 00:56:58,680 --> 00:57:02,440 To build an enormous, neoclassical palace on Indian soil 804 00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:04,840 said something completely different. 805 00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:09,560 What this building was intended to say was that European reason 806 00:57:09,560 --> 00:57:13,600 and rationality was superior and had triumphed over what the 807 00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:18,200 British increasingly regarded as Oriental superstition and despotism. 808 00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:22,240 This building is political theatre. 809 00:57:22,240 --> 00:57:25,560 It is shock and awe in marble and stucco. 810 00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:41,040 Other British neoclassical buildings soon followed, 811 00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:42,720 changing the face of Kolkata. 812 00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:48,280 From church to town hall, 813 00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:49,760 bank to Post Office. 814 00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:54,600 These were not just the buildings, 815 00:57:54,600 --> 00:58:00,720 they were evidence that one age had passed and another had begun. 816 00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:04,200 The age of European global domination. 817 00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:14,520 The Open University has produced a free poster that explores 818 00:58:14,520 --> 00:58:18,120 the history of different civilisations through artefacts. 819 00:58:18,120 --> 00:58:20,880 To order your free copy, please call... 820 00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:25,560 ..or go to the address on screen 821 00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:28,520 and follow the links for the Open University.