1 00:00:06,022 --> 00:00:07,740 You're a painter. 2 00:00:07,822 --> 00:00:10,541 What's the worst thing that can happen to you? 3 00:00:10,622 --> 00:00:13,580 Disgrace? Derision? 4 00:00:14,982 --> 00:00:19,498 No, the worst thing is to have to cut up your masterpiece. 5 00:00:25,622 --> 00:00:31,299 What had brought Holland's greatest painter to this moment of artistic suicide? 6 00:00:32,422 --> 00:00:38,657 Once, Rembrandt had been cock of the walk in a city that couldn't get enough of him. 7 00:00:38,782 --> 00:00:43,060 Glittering, fat, prosperous Amsterdam, 8 00:00:43,702 --> 00:00:45,499 but that was then. 9 00:00:45,582 --> 00:00:48,654 Now, he's living opposite an amusement park, 10 00:00:48,742 --> 00:00:53,611 drunks throwing up on his doorstep, knife fights every Friday night. 11 00:00:54,182 --> 00:00:57,219 But why is he mutilating his painting? 12 00:00:58,662 --> 00:01:02,940 It had been hanging on the walls of the Amsterdam town hall, 13 00:01:03,022 --> 00:01:05,252 but then a decision was made. 14 00:01:05,342 --> 00:01:10,018 Take it down, get something else to fill the space. 15 00:01:10,982 --> 00:01:16,181 So now what's he supposed to do with it? This B-movie flop of a picture? 16 00:01:18,422 --> 00:01:20,731 Maybe, if he can cut it down a little, 17 00:01:20,822 --> 00:01:24,701 there'll be someone out there who might like the centre of the painting, 18 00:01:24,782 --> 00:01:27,250 the bit with the people in. 19 00:01:27,742 --> 00:01:30,495 So under the knife it goes. 20 00:01:31,542 --> 00:01:34,818 It's a brutal punishment, the worst. 21 00:01:34,902 --> 00:01:37,860 And for what exactly is Rembrandt being punished? 22 00:01:37,942 --> 00:01:43,141 For being out of step with modern taste, for painting like a barbarian. 23 00:01:45,222 --> 00:01:49,852 But then he isn't interested in refinement and beauty. It bores him. 24 00:01:49,942 --> 00:01:53,093 He does us, flesh and blood, you and me. 25 00:01:53,182 --> 00:01:56,731 Art that exists to tell the truth about the human condition. 26 00:01:59,142 --> 00:02:01,861 That's his everlasting glory, 27 00:02:01,942 --> 00:02:05,730 but in the end, that's also going to be his problem. 28 00:02:31,262 --> 00:02:35,494 Amsterdam in the 1630s, Rembrandt's on a roll. 29 00:02:35,582 --> 00:02:38,858 Everything he touches seems to come up trumps. 30 00:02:39,102 --> 00:02:43,061 He knows what the patrons want even before they know it themselves 31 00:02:43,142 --> 00:02:46,691 and there's nothing, I mean nothing, he can't turn his hand to. 32 00:02:46,782 --> 00:02:49,216 Great action-packed histories, 33 00:02:49,302 --> 00:02:53,056 heart-pumping stories with pop-eyed bystanders, 34 00:02:53,142 --> 00:02:58,535 books which seem to breathe and lift with the breath of God. 35 00:02:59,462 --> 00:03:03,660 And portraits, spectacular portraits. 36 00:03:19,022 --> 00:03:22,094 They were made for each other, the painter and the city. 37 00:03:22,182 --> 00:03:25,572 Just as no one had ever seen paintings like Rembrandt's, 38 00:03:25,662 --> 00:03:29,701 the world had never seen a place quite like Amsterdam. 39 00:03:32,262 --> 00:03:36,380 In 1600, it had been a backwater fishing port. 40 00:03:36,462 --> 00:03:41,855 Thirty years later, when Rembrandt arrived, the docks were unloading Chinese silks, 41 00:03:41,942 --> 00:03:43,580 Swedish iron and copper, 42 00:03:43,662 --> 00:03:48,611 and the new mass-market addictions, sugar and tobacco. 43 00:03:48,702 --> 00:03:52,695 In one generation, the place had gone from provincial also-ran 44 00:03:52,822 --> 00:03:55,382 to economic lord of the world. 45 00:03:57,142 --> 00:04:00,054 Whatever you wanted, Amsterdam had it, 46 00:04:00,142 --> 00:04:04,579 the discount supermarket of the 17th century. 47 00:04:10,942 --> 00:04:15,493 So, fortunes were made, quick and spectacular. 48 00:04:15,582 --> 00:04:18,779 And those who made them were not shy of showing them off. 49 00:04:18,862 --> 00:04:22,093 So they built elegant houses on these canals, 50 00:04:22,182 --> 00:04:25,970 and into those houses went all the good things. 51 00:04:26,062 --> 00:04:29,896 Gold-stamped leather wall coverings, Delft tiles, 52 00:04:29,982 --> 00:04:35,010 fine mirrors in rich frames, maps of the worlds they were conquering, 53 00:04:35,102 --> 00:04:39,971 and, of course, pictures, especially pictures of themselves. 54 00:04:47,542 --> 00:04:51,899 This is Nicolaes Ruts, and his business is fur. 55 00:04:51,982 --> 00:04:56,294 Russian sable, in fact, the priciest of the lot. 56 00:04:56,382 --> 00:05:01,172 Was it his idea, I wonder, or Rembrandt's, that he should brand himself 57 00:05:01,262 --> 00:05:03,457 by wearing his stock in trade? 58 00:05:03,542 --> 00:05:08,855 In any event, it's a stroke of genius, for this is the hairiest painting imaginable. 59 00:05:10,462 --> 00:05:16,173 All that soft fall of fur dropping down his body, like a river of luxury, 60 00:05:16,262 --> 00:05:20,460 the hairs standing up in a gentle charge of electrostatic, 61 00:05:20,542 --> 00:05:25,252 as if a hand has just sensuously travelled through them. 62 00:05:29,542 --> 00:05:31,260 Yet for all the sumptuousness, 63 00:05:31,342 --> 00:05:36,541 Rembrandt has managed to avoid any impression of idle opulence. 64 00:05:37,182 --> 00:05:40,731 With his fastidiously combed whiskers and sharp eyes, 65 00:05:40,822 --> 00:05:45,452 almost as sharp as those of the animals from whom the pelts were taken, 66 00:05:45,542 --> 00:05:50,662 Ruts' glance is that of a slightly impatient intelligence. 67 00:05:50,742 --> 00:05:54,974 We almost want to say, ''Thanks for giving us a moment. '' 68 00:06:00,462 --> 00:06:02,214 But he's also solid. 69 00:06:02,302 --> 00:06:06,454 The deep shadow cast by the side of his head makes him thoughtful. 70 00:06:07,382 --> 00:06:09,657 The slightly pinked inner eyelids, 71 00:06:09,742 --> 00:06:14,418 as though he'd sacrificed his sleep for the good of the investors. 72 00:06:14,502 --> 00:06:17,733 No wonder JP Morgan bought the picture, 73 00:06:17,822 --> 00:06:22,691 for has there ever been a better portrait of the businessman as hero? 74 00:06:39,782 --> 00:06:43,252 Rembrandt not only understood his rich clients 75 00:06:43,342 --> 00:06:46,379 and the image they wanted to project of themselves, 76 00:06:46,462 --> 00:06:50,694 he was also a virtuoso manipulator of paint. 77 00:06:51,622 --> 00:06:56,377 No one looked harder at the topography of a middle-aged eyelid, 78 00:06:56,462 --> 00:06:59,977 the oiliness of a prosperous nose, 79 00:07:00,062 --> 00:07:04,340 the wateriness of the eye's vitreous membrane, 80 00:07:04,422 --> 00:07:09,974 the shiny tightness of a forehead pulled back into a linen cap. 81 00:07:12,742 --> 00:07:17,532 Look at this, Rembrandt's portrait of an 83-year-old woman 82 00:07:17,622 --> 00:07:19,852 in the National Gallery in London. 83 00:07:19,942 --> 00:07:23,332 Look at the translucent fabric of her bonnet wings, 84 00:07:23,422 --> 00:07:26,698 their edges painted with a single stroke. 85 00:07:26,782 --> 00:07:31,936 Look at her eyebrow and droopy eyelid, done with jabbing strokes, 86 00:07:32,022 --> 00:07:35,059 the slightly unfocused melancholy, 87 00:07:35,142 --> 00:07:37,610 the mood of poignant vulnerability, 88 00:07:37,702 --> 00:07:41,297 everything softening the face of a tough old bird, 89 00:07:41,382 --> 00:07:43,020 wistful in the certainty 90 00:07:43,102 --> 00:07:47,778 it's not long now before she gets to meet the great accountant in the sky. 91 00:07:49,702 --> 00:07:55,538 Not just a painter, then, but a psychologist of the human condition, don't you think? 92 00:07:59,382 --> 00:08:05,412 What's the job of the other big hitters, Velázquez, Rubens, van Dyck? 93 00:08:06,462 --> 00:08:11,775 To paint masks, the studied look of princes and popes. 94 00:08:12,982 --> 00:08:16,816 They know in advance, pretty much, the mask of the day.; 95 00:08:17,022 --> 00:08:20,458 martial resolution, regal care, 96 00:08:20,542 --> 00:08:22,578 pensive melancholy. 97 00:08:26,582 --> 00:08:30,495 But Rembrandt looks behind the pose, 98 00:08:30,582 --> 00:08:35,053 and this is what makes his portraits touch us like nobody else's. 99 00:08:35,142 --> 00:08:40,011 We can see people putting on their faces to the world. 100 00:08:40,102 --> 00:08:44,254 But it doesn't make us less, but more sympathetic to them. 101 00:08:56,342 --> 00:08:58,173 You'd think that with his perfect pitch 102 00:08:58,262 --> 00:09:00,822 for understanding what the rich of Amsterdam wanted, 103 00:09:01,182 --> 00:09:03,138 Rembrandt would have grown up with them. 104 00:09:03,222 --> 00:09:07,613 But he hadn't. He'd grown up in Leiden, a textiles and university town 105 00:09:07,702 --> 00:09:11,092 about 25 miles southwest of Amsterdam, 106 00:09:11,182 --> 00:09:16,256 packed with piety, learning and profit from the cloth trade. 107 00:09:17,222 --> 00:09:22,660 Rembrandt's family were millers. The river Rhine flowed past their mill, 108 00:09:22,782 --> 00:09:26,218 giving the painter his name, Rembrandt van Rijn. 109 00:09:30,622 --> 00:09:34,251 Rembrandt was the bright one in a family of nine children, 110 00:09:34,342 --> 00:09:38,574 the one who went to Latin school and the local university. 111 00:09:38,662 --> 00:09:44,817 So dropping out at 14 to become a painter was, I suppose, an act of faith. 112 00:09:51,662 --> 00:09:56,736 Mind you, no time for teenage masterpieces. 113 00:09:56,822 --> 00:10:00,861 Too busy doing what apprentices had to, 114 00:10:00,942 --> 00:10:05,572 mixing primer, grinding pigment, 115 00:10:05,662 --> 00:10:08,893 suspending it in meaty-smelling linseed oil. 116 00:10:11,942 --> 00:10:18,017 No one, thank God, robbed graves anymore to make black pigment from charred skeletons. 117 00:10:19,342 --> 00:10:21,333 They used soot instead. 118 00:10:29,542 --> 00:10:34,491 All his life, Rembrandt seemed to love the filmy muck of oil paint. 119 00:10:35,542 --> 00:10:39,820 No one in his century ever explored its texture, 120 00:10:39,902 --> 00:10:45,101 from thick and crusty to thin and fluid, more lovingly. 121 00:11:00,062 --> 00:11:03,816 You can see this plunge into the materials of his craft 122 00:11:03,902 --> 00:11:10,091 in this little portrait of himself, done in his studio in Leiden in his twenties. 123 00:11:11,862 --> 00:11:17,380 Here he is in his work clothes, all around him the tools of the trade. 124 00:11:17,462 --> 00:11:19,293 But just look at this place. 125 00:11:19,382 --> 00:11:21,134 The plank floor is cracking, 126 00:11:21,222 --> 00:11:26,137 the plaster in the corner of the room is peeling, and that, of course, is the point. 127 00:11:26,342 --> 00:11:29,379 It's an old place, a dump really, 128 00:11:29,462 --> 00:11:33,899 but it's still the place where a young man connects with an old thing, 129 00:11:33,982 --> 00:11:36,416 the making of art. 130 00:11:36,502 --> 00:11:39,141 And that's why it moves us strangely, 131 00:11:39,222 --> 00:11:42,976 the little gingerbread man in his oversize housecoat, 132 00:11:43,062 --> 00:11:45,974 mantled in the trappings of painting. 133 00:11:52,942 --> 00:11:57,060 But look at him. He isn't painting at all, he's just staring 134 00:11:57,142 --> 00:11:59,576 at something he's hidden from us. 135 00:12:00,262 --> 00:12:06,497 A mystery whose only feature is that intense golden light at the edge of the picture frame. 136 00:12:07,942 --> 00:12:10,172 The fire of an idea. 137 00:12:15,982 --> 00:12:18,416 What we're looking at, the picture seems to say, 138 00:12:18,502 --> 00:12:21,699 is nothing less than a pocket manifesto. 139 00:12:21,862 --> 00:12:27,459 The idea that art is the marriage of craft and imagination. 140 00:12:42,862 --> 00:12:47,697 No wonder, then, that with all this cleverness, Rembrandt was talent-spotted, 141 00:12:47,862 --> 00:12:50,854 singled out by Constantijn Huygens, 142 00:12:50,942 --> 00:12:53,979 the most influential patron in all of Holland, 143 00:12:54,062 --> 00:12:57,134 as the coming man, a diamond in the rough. 144 00:12:57,822 --> 00:12:59,892 And what Huygens saw in Rembrandt 145 00:12:59,982 --> 00:13:02,450 was a superlative storyteller. 146 00:13:13,862 --> 00:13:17,059 Take the story of Samson and Delilah. 147 00:13:17,142 --> 00:13:23,456 Most artists did Samson as a naked hulk, slumped in post-coital slumber. 148 00:13:27,102 --> 00:13:30,094 This is what Rembrandt does. 149 00:13:30,182 --> 00:13:33,538 Instead of nude beefcake, he dresses him. 150 00:13:33,622 --> 00:13:39,299 And, amazingly, makes him seem more, not less, vulnerable. 151 00:13:39,382 --> 00:13:42,818 All his paint wizardry is used on that knot, 152 00:13:42,902 --> 00:13:47,612 which seems to tie Samson to his lover and to his fate. 153 00:13:49,662 --> 00:13:54,372 Delilah lifts a lock of Samson's copper hair, ready to be shorn away, 154 00:13:54,462 --> 00:13:59,536 but as she does so, her other hand idly strokes his tresses. 155 00:14:00,102 --> 00:14:04,892 So in one gesture, Rembrandt gets to the heart of the story, 156 00:14:05,022 --> 00:14:11,655 the tragic inseparability of amorous tenderness and brutal betrayal. 157 00:14:19,582 --> 00:14:25,737 Good as he was, Huygens thought his protégé could be even better if he went to Italy. 158 00:14:25,822 --> 00:14:31,021 But Rembrandt wasn't going to put in time sketching statues, he had bigger fish to fry. 159 00:14:31,102 --> 00:14:34,572 This was, after all, the republic of money, 160 00:14:34,662 --> 00:14:38,655 and Amsterdam whispered to him, ''Come and get it.'' 161 00:15:01,582 --> 00:15:05,336 So here he was, doing very nicely, thank you, 162 00:15:05,422 --> 00:15:09,700 turning out stunning story paintings and portraits to order. 163 00:15:09,782 --> 00:15:13,855 And not just a painter either, but also a partner in the art business, 164 00:15:13,942 --> 00:15:15,933 Rembrandt Uylenburgh Inc. 165 00:15:16,022 --> 00:15:21,938 Pupils taken in for a fee, copies made, original paintings commissioned. 166 00:15:37,102 --> 00:15:42,301 So what was it about his partner's niece, young Saskia van Uylenburgh, 167 00:15:42,382 --> 00:15:46,933 with her butterball chins and lopsided, crinkly grin? 168 00:15:47,022 --> 00:15:50,139 A nice girl, certainly, a catch, one would assume, 169 00:15:50,222 --> 00:15:54,932 being the orphaned daughter of a burgomaster of northern Friesland. 170 00:15:56,782 --> 00:16:02,618 She met Rembrandt when she was 21, blessed with a portion of her father's estate. 171 00:16:04,862 --> 00:16:08,650 If Rembrandt could have written poems to Saskia, he would have. 172 00:16:11,062 --> 00:16:16,216 But, instead, he did this precious little drawing to mark their betrothal. 173 00:16:16,302 --> 00:16:21,217 She's a child of nature, the straw hat, the wildflowers. 174 00:16:21,342 --> 00:16:26,621 Only Rembrandt could have done that dangling broken stalk and thought it was perfect. 175 00:16:30,142 --> 00:16:34,579 Whenever he can, he paints her with flowers. She's his flower child. 176 00:16:43,582 --> 00:16:47,416 Mind you, the relatives up north don't like it very much. 177 00:16:47,502 --> 00:16:52,212 They hear stories of Rembrandt and Saskia showing off their jewels 178 00:16:52,382 --> 00:16:54,532 and fur and fancy outfits 179 00:16:54,622 --> 00:16:57,216 and they nod their heads and say, ''Told you so. 180 00:16:57,302 --> 00:17:02,296 ''Always knew he was after her money, and now they're spending it like there's no tomorrow.'' 181 00:17:04,262 --> 00:17:07,413 For Rembrandt has become a shopaholic. 182 00:17:07,502 --> 00:17:10,255 Oh, a shopaholic in the best possible taste. 183 00:17:10,342 --> 00:17:13,334 He buys paintings by old masters at auctions, 184 00:17:13,422 --> 00:17:17,461 but every so often, he hits the Amsterdam equivalent of the Portobello Road, 185 00:17:17,542 --> 00:17:20,261 and he just can't stop buying. 186 00:17:20,342 --> 00:17:22,981 Japanese armour, Indonesian daggers, 187 00:17:23,062 --> 00:17:25,530 plaster busts of Roman emperors, 188 00:17:25,622 --> 00:17:29,217 and he tells himself it's all for art. 189 00:17:37,942 --> 00:17:39,455 Here's another impulse buy, 190 00:17:39,542 --> 00:17:44,570 a pricey four-storey house in one of the more elegant streets in Amsterdam. 191 00:17:44,662 --> 00:17:48,780 Not your usual artist's modest residence, then. 192 00:17:50,982 --> 00:17:53,542 But then, why shouldn't he be extravagant? 193 00:17:53,622 --> 00:17:57,581 Rembrandt is, after all, the most successful painter in Holland, 194 00:17:57,662 --> 00:18:03,134 and his paintings are hanging in the houses of the richest, most powerful men in the world. 195 00:18:14,182 --> 00:18:18,778 What makes Rembrandt's later falling-out with his patrons so surprising 196 00:18:18,862 --> 00:18:21,740 is that in his salad days in the 1630s, 197 00:18:21,822 --> 00:18:25,531 no one could beat him for grasping exactly what it was 198 00:18:25,622 --> 00:18:30,457 the first generation of Amsterdam moneymen really wanted. 199 00:18:30,542 --> 00:18:34,091 What they wanted were two contradictory things. 200 00:18:34,182 --> 00:18:38,175 On the one hand, the portraits of course had to say, ''We are rich. '' 201 00:18:38,262 --> 00:18:39,980 On the other hand, they had to say, 202 00:18:40,062 --> 00:18:44,738 ''But we are also God-fearing, plain, simple folk 203 00:18:44,822 --> 00:18:47,256 who know that riches never last. '' 204 00:18:48,102 --> 00:18:51,890 Every Sunday in church they heard their preachers say to them, 205 00:18:51,982 --> 00:18:55,133 ''Do not forget the humble place from which you have come. 206 00:18:55,222 --> 00:18:57,941 Do not forget that today's worldly pomp 207 00:18:58,022 --> 00:19:01,059 will be tomorrow's dust and ashes.'' 208 00:19:01,222 --> 00:19:06,296 So the paintings had to show them off without making them show-offs. 209 00:19:11,942 --> 00:19:17,175 Rembrandt had this rich-but-modest line down stone-cold. 210 00:19:17,262 --> 00:19:20,060 So, of course, they're lining up for him. 211 00:19:20,142 --> 00:19:23,737 Not just merchants on the make but the créme de la créme, 212 00:19:23,822 --> 00:19:26,336 the family Trip, for example. 213 00:19:28,422 --> 00:19:30,617 You don't get much richer than the Trips, 214 00:19:30,702 --> 00:19:34,092 who had a global empire of iron, copper and guns 215 00:19:34,182 --> 00:19:38,937 and were doing very nicely, thank you, in the endless wars against Spain. 216 00:19:40,742 --> 00:19:43,381 But Elias Trip, head of the dynasty, 217 00:19:43,462 --> 00:19:47,296 thought of himself as a pillar of Protestant society. 218 00:19:47,382 --> 00:19:52,092 Your old-fashioned, sober-sided, church-going arms trader. 219 00:19:56,142 --> 00:19:59,771 So when Rembrandt was hired to paint his hugely rich 220 00:19:59,862 --> 00:20:02,740 and marriageable daughter, Maria Trip, 221 00:20:02,822 --> 00:20:07,691 he knew that the display of wealth had to be crushingly subtle. 222 00:20:08,582 --> 00:20:12,211 The money, then, was in the detail. 223 00:20:12,622 --> 00:20:16,820 Below that milky pud face, with its artless little smile, 224 00:20:16,902 --> 00:20:20,019 is a waterfall of stunning lace. 225 00:20:20,942 --> 00:20:24,457 Just a hint of the Trip millions. 226 00:20:28,902 --> 00:20:35,137 Now, the relationship between the painter and the painted is a devilishly subtle business. 227 00:20:35,422 --> 00:20:39,415 But Rembrandt seemed to be in perfect sync with the money classes, 228 00:20:39,502 --> 00:20:44,053 understanding precisely what they wanted, because he wanted it, too. 229 00:20:44,142 --> 00:20:46,736 And how he wanted it. 230 00:20:46,822 --> 00:20:51,213 He must have thought that this mutual admiration would go on forever. 231 00:20:56,542 --> 00:21:00,330 Here he is in 1640, 34 years old, 232 00:21:00,422 --> 00:21:04,813 dressed to the nines, as if he's one with the greatest past masters. 233 00:21:05,542 --> 00:21:09,455 He's seen Titian's portrait of the Italian poet, Ariosto, 234 00:21:09,542 --> 00:21:12,659 and he's gone and put himself in the same pose. 235 00:21:12,742 --> 00:21:18,055 The oversize, silky, mutton-chop sleeve on the aristocratic stone ledge, 236 00:21:18,142 --> 00:21:22,533 a picture which would be creamy with self-congratulation, 237 00:21:22,622 --> 00:21:26,092 were it not for a trace of wistfulness about his face, 238 00:21:26,182 --> 00:21:29,538 as if he can't quite believe all this success. 239 00:21:33,022 --> 00:21:36,935 Whatever you think about Rembrandt, you've got to admit, he's got nerve. 240 00:21:37,022 --> 00:21:39,058 I mean, just look at him, 241 00:21:39,142 --> 00:21:43,772 from provincial nobody to the cheekiest painter in the history of art. 242 00:21:44,142 --> 00:21:48,420 Always on the edge, Mr Clever Clogs. 243 00:21:56,502 --> 00:22:00,097 But you couldn't rightly call yourself a success in Amsterdam 244 00:22:00,182 --> 00:22:05,097 if you just did single-person portraits, no matter how rich the sitters. 245 00:22:05,182 --> 00:22:07,901 Amsterdam was a corporate town, 246 00:22:07,982 --> 00:22:12,976 a beehive of capitalism, ruled not from palaces but from boardrooms. 247 00:22:14,662 --> 00:22:17,335 So what did the corporate sitters want? 248 00:22:17,422 --> 00:22:21,097 Well, first of all, of course, a good likeness of themselves, 249 00:22:21,182 --> 00:22:26,973 and then they wanted the artist to get their complicated pecking order just right. 250 00:22:28,622 --> 00:22:31,455 The former has to get everyone in, 251 00:22:31,542 --> 00:22:34,295 squeeze, squeeze,jostle, nudge. 252 00:22:34,382 --> 00:22:36,020 What are the choices? 253 00:22:36,102 --> 00:22:40,141 Well, either elasticate the rectangle until everyone's in 254 00:22:40,222 --> 00:22:43,931 or double up the rows so one lot is on top of the other. 255 00:22:44,022 --> 00:22:46,775 Result, the rugby first 1 5. 256 00:22:48,062 --> 00:22:53,182 You could, as Rembrandt's most astute pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten put it, 257 00:22:53,262 --> 00:22:55,856 behead them all with a single blow. 258 00:23:00,422 --> 00:23:04,938 Now, with his insatiable instinct for stripping off social masks, 259 00:23:05,022 --> 00:23:07,490 Rembrandt wasn't going to settle for that. 260 00:23:07,582 --> 00:23:11,336 So, he says, ''Okay let's throw away the boardroom line-up. 261 00:23:11,422 --> 00:23:14,539 ''Let's just forget about the stale formula 262 00:23:14,622 --> 00:23:18,456 ''and turn cardboard cutouts into real events, 263 00:23:18,542 --> 00:23:20,817 ''social dramas.'' 264 00:23:24,622 --> 00:23:28,012 And here's the result, The Night Watch. 265 00:23:28,102 --> 00:23:34,860 It was commissioned in 1642 by a company of cloth merchants and part-time militia men. 266 00:23:35,022 --> 00:23:40,574 And as with so many of his paintings at this time, Rembrandt had done the impossible, 267 00:23:41,182 --> 00:23:46,051 made something heroic out of the world of merchants and money. 268 00:23:49,422 --> 00:23:54,655 Now, everyone knew the militia men in this painting weren't real soldiers. 269 00:23:54,742 --> 00:23:59,691 The real war was being slogged out somewhere beyond the frontiers. 270 00:23:59,782 --> 00:24:04,094 These were toy soldiers, Amsterdam's dad's army. 271 00:24:04,902 --> 00:24:09,817 Still, they like to preserve the fiction of the citizen soldier. 272 00:24:09,902 --> 00:24:14,498 They like to think they'd be there to defend the freedom of Amsterdam. 273 00:24:18,262 --> 00:24:21,174 Rembrandt's great idea is flattery. 274 00:24:21,262 --> 00:24:24,413 Now, it's not the kind of flattery that's going to make them younger 275 00:24:24,502 --> 00:24:26,891 or better-looking, it's much more important than that. 276 00:24:26,982 --> 00:24:31,897 It's the flattery of the entire fairytale idea behind the painting. 277 00:24:31,982 --> 00:24:35,099 The idea that a bunch of overdressed textile men 278 00:24:35,182 --> 00:24:38,936 playing at toy soldiers on Sundays were the real thing, 279 00:24:39,022 --> 00:24:42,856 that they were actually alive with martial energy. 280 00:24:42,942 --> 00:24:48,221 So instead of having them pose, Rembrandt has them in action. 281 00:24:48,862 --> 00:24:52,218 He transforms them in that way from mere human ornaments 282 00:24:52,302 --> 00:24:55,897 into marching, shooting, drumming guardsmen. 283 00:25:10,422 --> 00:25:13,698 So just how do you capture that instant 284 00:25:13,782 --> 00:25:17,138 when your pulse goes whoosh with excitement? 285 00:25:17,222 --> 00:25:21,579 Well, Rembrandt takes a deep breath, he has a what-the-hell moment 286 00:25:21,662 --> 00:25:23,254 and he goes for it. 287 00:25:23,342 --> 00:25:29,611 He changes the usual side-by-side format into a back-to-front action, 288 00:25:30,102 --> 00:25:34,971 so that the company of the officers and men are coming right at us, 289 00:25:35,102 --> 00:25:38,174 3-D from the deep, dark doorway, 290 00:25:38,262 --> 00:25:42,335 right up to the picture frame and into our own space, 291 00:25:42,422 --> 00:25:44,174 blazing with light. 292 00:25:51,422 --> 00:25:54,698 Look at that spear poking into our space. 293 00:25:54,782 --> 00:25:56,898 Rembrandt knows that rough painting 294 00:25:56,982 --> 00:26:00,941 can actually convey the illusion of a three-dimensional object 295 00:26:01,022 --> 00:26:04,139 better than any literal description. 296 00:26:11,782 --> 00:26:15,172 The captain's name is Frans Banning Cocq. 297 00:26:15,342 --> 00:26:19,733 Next to him is his lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch. 298 00:26:20,862 --> 00:26:25,094 It's the lieutenant who gets the more dazzling costume. 299 00:26:25,182 --> 00:26:31,212 Somehow, though, his showiness only strengthens the sense of command of his captain, 300 00:26:31,342 --> 00:26:35,779 costumed in black, but ablaze with a fiery red sash. 301 00:26:38,582 --> 00:26:41,699 Banning Cocq is giving the signal to move. 302 00:26:41,782 --> 00:26:46,902 So his order falls as a shadow on the coat of his lieutenant. 303 00:26:46,982 --> 00:26:51,851 They're off, already in motion, the tassels are flying. 304 00:27:03,822 --> 00:27:08,259 At first sight, The Night Watch seems merely chaotic, doesn't it? 305 00:27:08,342 --> 00:27:14,099 But actually it's a hymn to noisy energy contained by discipline. 306 00:27:14,182 --> 00:27:18,573 Freedom and order, miraculously held together, 307 00:27:18,662 --> 00:27:22,541 much as I think Rembrandt thought the Dutch themselves did. 308 00:27:22,622 --> 00:27:28,652 That's the secret of their success. That is the glory of Amsterdam. 309 00:27:35,822 --> 00:27:39,531 But did they see it, the Sunday soldiers? 310 00:27:42,822 --> 00:27:47,452 Did the men who actually paid for the picture get beyond vanity, 311 00:27:47,542 --> 00:27:51,774 beyond their need for a realistic depiction of themselves? 312 00:27:56,142 --> 00:27:59,930 According to Rembrandt's pupil, van Hoogstraten, 313 00:28:00,022 --> 00:28:02,900 some of the sitters were less than thrilled. 314 00:28:03,502 --> 00:28:07,575 Not outraged, just a bit bewildered. You can almost hear them saying, 315 00:28:07,742 --> 00:28:11,451 ''Well, it's got to be good, it's a Rembrandt, after all,'' 316 00:28:11,542 --> 00:28:16,855 and, ''What do I know about art? But to me it does look a bit of a mishmash.'' 317 00:28:20,462 --> 00:28:25,490 Let's just say that the climate went from warm to tepid. 318 00:28:25,582 --> 00:28:29,177 Perhaps Rembrandt felt it, perhaps not. 319 00:28:29,262 --> 00:28:33,540 But for the first time since becoming the golden boy of Dutch painting, 320 00:28:33,622 --> 00:28:38,013 one of Rembrandt's patrons is so unhappy with the painting, 321 00:28:38,102 --> 00:28:40,900 he simply refused to pay. 322 00:28:43,862 --> 00:28:46,501 And not just any old patron either, 323 00:28:46,582 --> 00:28:52,339 but Andries de Graeff, a man from whom jobs and prestige flowed. 324 00:28:54,822 --> 00:28:59,054 We don't know exactly what it was that offended de Graeff so much, 325 00:28:59,142 --> 00:29:02,976 but we can guess, with Rembrandt painting ever more freely, 326 00:29:03,062 --> 00:29:07,055 it didn't quite match de Graeff's stately self-image. 327 00:29:11,222 --> 00:29:14,851 To recover his money, Rembrandt had to resort to something 328 00:29:14,942 --> 00:29:18,617 he must have found deeply humiliating. 329 00:29:18,702 --> 00:29:21,341 An arbitration committee of his peers, 330 00:29:21,422 --> 00:29:25,381 who sat in judgement on the quality of his painting. 331 00:29:27,182 --> 00:29:32,939 Two years later, Rembrandt took revenge in a crude but eloquent little drawing. 332 00:29:33,702 --> 00:29:37,581 It features a bunch of connoisseurs peering at pictures, 333 00:29:37,902 --> 00:29:42,259 one of whom, whose features aren't 100 miles away from de Graeff, 334 00:29:42,502 --> 00:29:44,970 has sprouted ass's ears. 335 00:29:47,022 --> 00:29:49,490 Another figure, surely the artist, 336 00:29:49,582 --> 00:29:53,780 lets us know in no uncertain terms, with his trousers down, 337 00:29:53,862 --> 00:29:56,854 just what he thinks of their judgement. 338 00:30:00,982 --> 00:30:05,692 But it was Rembrandt who all of a sudden seemed to be giving off a bad smell. 339 00:30:05,782 --> 00:30:10,810 The smell of someone from whom the fickle goddess fortune was shying away. 340 00:30:10,902 --> 00:30:12,858 Have you ever felt, at the top of your form, 341 00:30:12,942 --> 00:30:14,534 at the height of your powers, 342 00:30:14,622 --> 00:30:19,093 an odd but distinct sense that the winds just change direction, 343 00:30:19,222 --> 00:30:21,782 that it's blowing a bit chillier now? 344 00:30:26,822 --> 00:30:30,895 Rembrandt's troubles came to him unremarkably, 345 00:30:31,022 --> 00:30:35,459 like the first heavy drops of rain striking a window pane. 346 00:30:35,662 --> 00:30:40,019 A mild disturbance, but then a downpour. 347 00:30:42,342 --> 00:30:47,735 The portrait commissions dry up, the house is loaded with debt 348 00:30:48,222 --> 00:30:52,010 and, inside the house, Saskia is deathly ill with TB, 349 00:30:52,302 --> 00:30:56,534 her body wracked by spasms of bloody coughing. 350 00:31:00,062 --> 00:31:03,134 Death was no stranger to their family. 351 00:31:03,222 --> 00:31:07,135 Saskia and Rembrandt had already buried three of their children. 352 00:31:07,222 --> 00:31:10,020 Only the boy, Titus, was alive. 353 00:31:13,302 --> 00:31:15,770 On the fifth of June, 1642, 354 00:31:15,862 --> 00:31:20,652 a notary was called to the house to record Saskia's will. 355 00:31:20,742 --> 00:31:23,131 Nine days later, she was dead. 356 00:31:29,422 --> 00:31:32,300 Her body was wrapped in a simple cloth 357 00:31:32,422 --> 00:31:37,701 and in a silent little procession it was taken to the outer kirk for burial. 358 00:31:46,142 --> 00:31:50,340 Somewhere in this house, Rembrandt pulled out a portrait of her 359 00:31:50,422 --> 00:31:55,974 that he'd begun many years before, at the playful start of their life together. 360 00:31:56,062 --> 00:31:58,292 It's unusual for many reasons. 361 00:31:58,382 --> 00:32:03,058 One of the only paintings in which there's not a trace of a smile. 362 00:32:08,262 --> 00:32:10,696 Her head is turned in profile, 363 00:32:10,782 --> 00:32:15,492 the outline un-Rembrandtian in its enamel-like sharpness. 364 00:32:16,702 --> 00:32:21,253 But for the last time, he's loaded her with fabric and jewels. 365 00:32:22,342 --> 00:32:25,095 It's as if he can't stop draping her. 366 00:32:27,822 --> 00:32:30,814 But Saskia pulls the fur cape around her, 367 00:32:30,902 --> 00:32:34,338 as if to ward off the chill of mortality. 368 00:32:36,062 --> 00:32:38,212 But it's too late. 369 00:32:59,542 --> 00:33:02,295 Well, then, Saskia had gone 370 00:33:02,382 --> 00:33:06,421 and it was as though a peal of bells had abruptly stopped. 371 00:33:07,182 --> 00:33:12,051 It's too easy, we're told, to say that in that year, 1642, 372 00:33:12,142 --> 00:33:14,895 everything changed for Rembrandt, for his work. 373 00:33:14,982 --> 00:33:19,419 That's the sentimental, romantic version to read art from life. 374 00:33:20,542 --> 00:33:23,420 But, you know, something really had happened to Rembrandt, 375 00:33:23,502 --> 00:33:25,299 an end to flamboyance, 376 00:33:25,382 --> 00:33:30,376 an end to his theatrical mastery of the outward, noisy show of life. 377 00:33:31,542 --> 00:33:35,057 It was as though he'd turned down the volume of the world 378 00:33:35,142 --> 00:33:38,817 and switched on an inner quiet radiance. 379 00:33:52,622 --> 00:33:55,375 The big gestures melt away 380 00:33:55,462 --> 00:33:58,659 and are replaced by a tender simplicity. 381 00:33:58,742 --> 00:34:02,371 Instead of a portrait gallery of the rich and powerful, 382 00:34:02,462 --> 00:34:05,659 a maidservant leaning on a sill, 383 00:34:05,742 --> 00:34:10,862 caught between inside and outside, innocence and sex. 384 00:34:18,422 --> 00:34:21,380 Look at the highlight on her lower lip, 385 00:34:21,462 --> 00:34:24,181 the left hand toying with her necklace. 386 00:34:31,422 --> 00:34:34,061 Here, too, in his drawings, 387 00:34:34,142 --> 00:34:37,452 just a few summary lines here and there 388 00:34:37,542 --> 00:34:40,852 that manage to conjure up an entire scene. 389 00:34:53,702 --> 00:34:59,538 It's a huge compliment, don't you think, making us his partner in completion, 390 00:34:59,622 --> 00:35:02,216 giving us the benefit of the doubt 391 00:35:02,302 --> 00:35:06,580 that we wouldn't want anything so boring as the literal details. 392 00:35:18,262 --> 00:35:24,371 The problem though was that Rembrandt's critics didn't see him as offensively avant-garde. 393 00:35:24,462 --> 00:35:28,899 They saw him as offensively old-fashioned. 394 00:35:28,982 --> 00:35:32,372 Why? Because of a cultural sea change. 395 00:35:33,542 --> 00:35:38,491 For the first time in Holland, sophistication seemed far more important 396 00:35:38,582 --> 00:35:43,212 than simplicity and piety, the qualities the Dutch like to think 397 00:35:43,302 --> 00:35:46,499 had brought them through their war against Spain. 398 00:35:48,382 --> 00:35:50,532 But now, peace had been declared 399 00:35:50,622 --> 00:35:55,742 and by the 1650s there was a perceptible sigh of relief. 400 00:35:56,542 --> 00:36:00,057 So just as Rembrandt's paintings were getting darker, 401 00:36:00,142 --> 00:36:04,420 the mood of Amsterdam was lightening and brightening. 402 00:36:09,982 --> 00:36:14,578 The founding fathers and mothers, modestly dressed in millstone ruffs, 403 00:36:14,662 --> 00:36:17,893 had given way to their children. 404 00:36:17,982 --> 00:36:24,854 The peacock generation, gorgeous in screaming scarlets and coiffed to the nines. 405 00:36:27,462 --> 00:36:31,057 Many of them had been sent abroad as part of their education 406 00:36:31,142 --> 00:36:35,693 and had come back eager to import cosmopolitan stylishness 407 00:36:35,782 --> 00:36:38,296 to the homespun republic. 408 00:36:38,382 --> 00:36:43,410 They weren't interested in austerity, they wanted to be like the Italians, 409 00:36:43,502 --> 00:36:45,333 they wanted pillars. 410 00:36:46,862 --> 00:36:49,660 All Rembrandt's murky browns and golds, 411 00:36:49,742 --> 00:36:54,054 those garter marks and flabby breasts were a downer. 412 00:36:57,462 --> 00:36:59,657 We all know this story, don't we? 413 00:36:59,742 --> 00:37:04,133 The second generation, the inheritors, the trust-fund brats, 414 00:37:04,422 --> 00:37:09,576 so embarrassed by their parents who are so old-fashioned, so parochial, 415 00:37:10,062 --> 00:37:14,135 and all they care about is church and business, business and church. 416 00:37:14,222 --> 00:37:18,773 And what a business, too, trade, my dear, so tawdry. 417 00:37:18,862 --> 00:37:21,979 So off they go and buy themselves country villas, 418 00:37:22,062 --> 00:37:26,419 while some inky-fingered clerk manages the family investment. 419 00:37:27,022 --> 00:37:32,176 This leaves them to concentrate on what they really care about, cultivation. 420 00:37:32,262 --> 00:37:37,382 For art, they think, is not just a report unedited from nature, 421 00:37:37,462 --> 00:37:41,455 and it's certainly not about dwelling indiscriminately on ugliness 422 00:37:41,542 --> 00:37:43,339 just because it happens to be there. 423 00:37:43,902 --> 00:37:47,895 No, art is the divine road to harmony. 424 00:37:47,982 --> 00:37:51,019 It's purity, it's clarity. 425 00:37:51,102 --> 00:37:52,933 Away with the misshapen, 426 00:37:53,022 --> 00:37:56,298 bring on the age of refinement. 427 00:38:04,942 --> 00:38:09,015 And here's Rembrandt. No culture props. 428 00:38:09,102 --> 00:38:13,254 Just those big, meaty hands stuck in his belt. 429 00:38:13,342 --> 00:38:16,459 Everything is starting to look heroically worn. 430 00:38:17,222 --> 00:38:21,454 The coat itself, the eyes pink-rimmed, 431 00:38:22,182 --> 00:38:25,379 the eyes of a man who never stops looking. 432 00:38:27,022 --> 00:38:29,900 And just look at the sketchiness of the whole thing. 433 00:38:29,982 --> 00:38:33,531 He just doesn't care about finish anymore. 434 00:38:33,622 --> 00:38:36,614 In fact, Rembrandt's in the process of doing something 435 00:38:36,702 --> 00:38:39,421 which horrified the classical academicians. 436 00:38:40,102 --> 00:38:44,937 He's abolishing the difference between a sketch and a painting. 437 00:38:45,342 --> 00:38:49,335 And he does it for the subjects he cares most about. 438 00:38:52,102 --> 00:38:55,458 He cares a lot about her. 439 00:38:56,262 --> 00:39:00,858 She's Hendrickje Stoffels, the soldier's girl from the sticks, 440 00:39:00,942 --> 00:39:05,333 who came into Rembrandt's house seven years after Saskia's death. 441 00:39:08,102 --> 00:39:13,813 Rembrandt had already taken his son's nurse, Geertje Dircx, as his mistress, 442 00:39:13,902 --> 00:39:18,612 but then Hendrickje arrived, and it wasn't long before he wanted 443 00:39:18,702 --> 00:39:21,933 her in his bed and Geertje out of it. 444 00:39:25,422 --> 00:39:28,937 Here's Hendrickje looking down into the water, 445 00:39:29,022 --> 00:39:33,732 the break of her legs through its surface a little tour de force of illusionism. 446 00:39:36,302 --> 00:39:42,059 Rembrandt now isn't choosing his way of handling paint just as the fancy takes him, 447 00:39:42,142 --> 00:39:46,101 but to convey sensuous experience. 448 00:39:46,182 --> 00:39:50,494 So Hendrickje's shift pulled scandalously high, 449 00:39:50,582 --> 00:39:55,098 her neckline scandalously low, are painted thickly, 450 00:39:55,182 --> 00:39:59,175 while her skin tones are as liquid as the water itself. 451 00:40:11,502 --> 00:40:16,371 And the way Rembrandt has painted her hands as just an unmodelled smear 452 00:40:16,462 --> 00:40:19,579 almost dares the critics to make an issue of it. 453 00:40:20,742 --> 00:40:22,619 You can hear them, can't you? 454 00:40:22,782 --> 00:40:28,175 ''Rembrandt van Rijn? Oh, yes, yes. Very talented, but my God, so difficult." 455 00:40:28,262 --> 00:40:33,575 "He never finishes a painting. I think his best years are behind him, don't you?" 456 00:40:33,662 --> 00:40:37,940 "And what he's doing rattling around in that big old house with his, excuse me, 457 00:40:38,022 --> 00:40:40,297 woman, I really don't know." 458 00:40:40,462 --> 00:40:43,340 "You have heard she's with child, haven't you?" 459 00:40:43,422 --> 00:40:45,219 "The church deacon's quite shocked." 460 00:40:45,302 --> 00:40:47,577 "It's just a bit squalid, don't you think?" 461 00:40:47,662 --> 00:40:51,860 "That might explain why he does those rather peculiar etchings." 462 00:40:51,942 --> 00:40:55,901 "'Just who's going to buy them, I've really no idea. '' 463 00:41:00,422 --> 00:41:03,892 Running out of favours, running out of time, 464 00:41:03,982 --> 00:41:06,940 late with his loan repayments on the house, 465 00:41:07,022 --> 00:41:11,379 the coils of Rembrandt's ruin began to rope themselves around him 466 00:41:11,462 --> 00:41:13,373 ever more tightly. 467 00:41:15,582 --> 00:41:21,373 Finally, in July 1656, Rembrandt filed for bankruptcy. 468 00:41:23,902 --> 00:41:29,056 This is where Rembrandt would have come, to the Chamber of Insolvency. 469 00:41:29,142 --> 00:41:34,136 Passing through this door with its frieze of worthless stock certificates 470 00:41:34,222 --> 00:41:40,058 and rats scuttling through empty money chests of the profligate debtor. 471 00:41:40,142 --> 00:41:45,216 You just can't beat the Dutch for wagging their fingers at your wicked ways. 472 00:41:52,022 --> 00:41:57,699 Auction by auction, hammer blow by hammer blow, everything was taken. 473 00:41:58,462 --> 00:42:01,374 This wasn't just furniture, household stuff, 474 00:42:01,462 --> 00:42:06,013 it was also Rembrandt's own personal archive of art. 475 00:42:06,102 --> 00:42:11,301 The drawings and paintings, all the strange, fabulous stuff he'd collected, 476 00:42:11,382 --> 00:42:13,896 all gone. 477 00:42:13,982 --> 00:42:16,098 Then, the house itself. 478 00:42:25,302 --> 00:42:27,975 One thing he did manage to hold on to, 479 00:42:28,062 --> 00:42:31,975 and that was a great mirror in the finest ebony wood frame. 480 00:42:32,142 --> 00:42:35,896 Titus, his son, found a bargeman who said, for a sum of money, 481 00:42:35,982 --> 00:42:39,099 sure, he'd carry it to their new house. 482 00:42:39,182 --> 00:42:42,094 So, up on the bargeman's head it went, 483 00:42:42,182 --> 00:42:47,415 and off through the jostle of Amsterdam, over cobbled streets and bridges. 484 00:42:47,502 --> 00:42:50,653 And at some point, the bargeman begins to sweat. 485 00:42:50,902 --> 00:42:54,099 His hands get slippery, his grip gets shaky, 486 00:42:54,182 --> 00:42:59,256 and then, as the bargeman was stepping off a bridge... 487 00:43:06,742 --> 00:43:09,859 Witnesses who came forward to testify for the bargeman 488 00:43:09,942 --> 00:43:13,378 said he hadn't bumped into anyone, he hadn't fallen down, 489 00:43:13,462 --> 00:43:17,296 the mirror must just have broken all by itself. 490 00:43:18,182 --> 00:43:23,097 But there it was, on the ground, a thousand shards and slivers, 491 00:43:23,182 --> 00:43:29,098 leaving Titus to carry home to his father just a frame with an empty centre. 492 00:43:35,662 --> 00:43:40,053 It's 1658. Rembrandt has lost everything. 493 00:43:40,142 --> 00:43:42,258 So how does he paint himself? 494 00:43:42,342 --> 00:43:48,372 Like a king, like a god, full frontal, mantled in lustrous gold. 495 00:43:48,462 --> 00:43:54,412 And it's the paint, that thick, luxurious paint, which gives him his power, his magic. 496 00:43:56,702 --> 00:43:59,899 No bankrupt's downcast eyes, either, 497 00:43:59,982 --> 00:44:03,099 but a stare coming right at us little people 498 00:44:03,182 --> 00:44:06,174 who fancy we know something about art. 499 00:44:06,582 --> 00:44:10,336 A suggestion of lordly amusement playing about his eyes. 500 00:44:12,142 --> 00:44:18,251 His barrel chest soaks up the light, the belly swelling in front of us like a genie. 501 00:44:18,342 --> 00:44:21,618 The whole body pressing against the picture plane, 502 00:44:21,702 --> 00:44:25,615 challenging it to contain his massive authority. 503 00:44:27,302 --> 00:44:31,693 And if Rembrandt thinks that his way of painting has been part of the problem, 504 00:44:31,782 --> 00:44:34,933 he's certainly not going to abandon it now. 505 00:44:35,742 --> 00:44:40,338 Just the opposite, in fact. This is a painting that bellows defiance 506 00:44:40,422 --> 00:44:43,732 at the apostles of crisp clarity and contour. 507 00:44:43,822 --> 00:44:48,338 ''So you think that stuff was a bit much, do you?'' he seems to be saying. 508 00:44:48,422 --> 00:44:51,414 ''Just get a load of this.'' 509 00:45:08,222 --> 00:45:11,055 You'd think that with painting this free and this rough, 510 00:45:11,142 --> 00:45:15,101 it would be downhill all the way for Rembrandt, but it wasn't. 511 00:45:15,182 --> 00:45:19,095 With almost everything gone, reputation, possessions, house, 512 00:45:19,222 --> 00:45:25,013 he still had a chance for a comeback, the comeback to end all comebacks. 513 00:45:25,422 --> 00:45:31,019 This, the new town hall, had just been built and the cream of Amsterdam painters 514 00:45:31,102 --> 00:45:34,412 were asked to supply pictures for its interior. 515 00:45:34,542 --> 00:45:38,376 Against all odds, Rembrandt was one of them. 516 00:45:45,342 --> 00:45:48,732 ''Town hall'' doesn't quite describe this place, does it? 517 00:45:48,822 --> 00:45:52,576 It's something more than clerks and marriage licences. 518 00:45:52,662 --> 00:45:55,495 Though The Hague is officially the seat of government, 519 00:45:55,582 --> 00:45:59,461 everyone knows Amsterdam is where the money is. 520 00:45:59,542 --> 00:46:03,581 So the new town hall is a shameless brag to the world 521 00:46:03,662 --> 00:46:05,698 about the great metropolis, 522 00:46:05,782 --> 00:46:10,651 built on a scale that makes the Doges Palace in Venice look skimpy. 523 00:46:14,742 --> 00:46:19,020 In this solemnly beautiful setting, tone was all-important. 524 00:46:19,102 --> 00:46:24,051 Any new paintings were going to have to be restrained, severely classical, 525 00:46:24,142 --> 00:46:26,451 pictorially well-behaved, 526 00:46:26,542 --> 00:46:29,500 which doesn't exactly spell Rembrandt, does it? 527 00:46:29,582 --> 00:46:32,574 In fact, anyone but Rembrandt. 528 00:46:34,942 --> 00:46:39,857 So, of course, at first, the job went to someone far more reliable, 529 00:46:39,942 --> 00:46:42,695 the painter Govert Flinck. 530 00:46:42,782 --> 00:46:45,376 It was only when Flinck suddenly died, 531 00:46:45,502 --> 00:46:49,893 that someone in the council chamber dared to say the R word. 532 00:46:50,062 --> 00:46:55,056 No doubt greeted by silence, and then, perhaps, a, ''Why not? 533 00:46:55,342 --> 00:46:58,857 ''He's broke, he needs the work, he'll behave." 534 00:46:58,942 --> 00:47:02,617 ''When has he not delivered the goods when it really counted?'' 535 00:47:06,022 --> 00:47:09,810 So, after getting the commission by the back door, 536 00:47:09,902 --> 00:47:13,212 Rembrandt set about work on the painting. 537 00:47:13,302 --> 00:47:19,491 The results would be, I think, the greatest triumph of his visual imagination, 538 00:47:19,582 --> 00:47:23,177 but it would also be his most shocking disaster. 539 00:47:23,662 --> 00:47:26,381 The painting was supposed to hang here, 540 00:47:26,462 --> 00:47:30,978 in one of the great arched spaces by the main hall. 541 00:47:31,062 --> 00:47:36,853 And what the burgomasters wanted was a stirring depiction of a legendary story 542 00:47:36,942 --> 00:47:39,900 of how the Dutch nation came to be born. 543 00:47:40,742 --> 00:47:45,532 It was a history that every child in the Dutch Republic would have known, 544 00:47:45,622 --> 00:47:49,854 as important to them as Boudicca is to us. 545 00:47:50,582 --> 00:47:53,779 The ancient Dutch, known as the Batavians, 546 00:47:53,862 --> 00:47:56,740 had their rebellion against the Romans, too. 547 00:47:56,822 --> 00:48:00,178 And their leader was called Claudius Civilis. 548 00:48:03,502 --> 00:48:06,300 The story goes like this. 549 00:48:06,382 --> 00:48:11,058 Claudius had been fighting on the side of the Romans against his own people. 550 00:48:11,742 --> 00:48:14,814 But, at some point, he has a change of heart. 551 00:48:14,902 --> 00:48:18,258 He decides there's been one tax too many, 552 00:48:18,342 --> 00:48:20,810 his country bled white. 553 00:48:21,542 --> 00:48:27,253 So he switches sides. He summons a meeting of tribal chiefs, 554 00:48:27,342 --> 00:48:31,620 declares a revolt and swears them to join him. 555 00:48:31,702 --> 00:48:36,981 They take the oath, the die is cast, blood happens. 556 00:48:45,342 --> 00:48:49,779 It's a stirring story, but remember who commissioned it. 557 00:48:49,862 --> 00:48:51,375 The Establishment. 558 00:48:51,462 --> 00:48:56,217 Oh, yes, honour rebellion but only when it was a long time ago 559 00:48:56,302 --> 00:48:59,851 and only in the most respectable way. 560 00:48:59,942 --> 00:49:04,220 The assumption was they'd get a respectable painting. 561 00:49:04,302 --> 00:49:06,532 What they got was this. 562 00:49:13,662 --> 00:49:17,052 Ugliness, deformity, barbarism. 563 00:49:17,142 --> 00:49:21,738 A bunch of cackling louts, onion-chewers, bloody-minded rebels. 564 00:49:21,822 --> 00:49:24,495 The paint slashed and stabbed, 565 00:49:24,582 --> 00:49:28,052 caked on like the make-up of warriors. 566 00:49:31,022 --> 00:49:34,173 But that's what rebellion is all about, Rembrandt thought. 567 00:49:34,262 --> 00:49:37,060 He didn't think rebels were gentlemen. 568 00:49:37,142 --> 00:49:41,897 Here's the rebel leader, with a wound in his face where his eye used to be. 569 00:49:41,982 --> 00:49:46,294 So what if the rules of art said you had to hide a blind eye 570 00:49:46,382 --> 00:49:48,816 behind some decorous profile. 571 00:49:49,062 --> 00:49:54,341 Rembrandt says, ''No, I'm gonna stick this blind eye right in the middle of your face.'' 572 00:49:54,422 --> 00:49:58,654 That was what wild, rough and free painting did. 573 00:49:58,742 --> 00:50:04,977 Goes together with a sword from hell and a cup, maybe of wine, maybe of blood. 574 00:50:13,342 --> 00:50:19,099 Needless to say, it seems hardly likely that the grand unveiling went down at all well. 575 00:50:20,422 --> 00:50:22,219 I mean,just look at it. 576 00:50:22,302 --> 00:50:25,817 This is a painting drunk on its own wildness. 577 00:50:25,902 --> 00:50:27,574 Nothing refined about this. 578 00:50:36,262 --> 00:50:41,052 So down it came, deposed, disgraced, expelled. 579 00:50:41,902 --> 00:50:46,020 And down on his knees went Rembrandt, chopping up his masterpiece, 580 00:50:46,102 --> 00:50:50,573 hoping against hope that someone would buy a piece of it. 581 00:50:50,662 --> 00:50:52,015 Fat chance. 582 00:51:02,462 --> 00:51:07,616 The Claudius Civilis would not just be the ruin of Rembrandt's comeback, 583 00:51:07,702 --> 00:51:12,059 it would also be the ruin of his greatest vision. 584 00:51:14,902 --> 00:51:17,894 Or so I think. I can't be sure. 585 00:51:17,982 --> 00:51:22,658 None of us can, because we don't really know what the big picture looked like. 586 00:51:23,142 --> 00:51:28,341 What we're looking at here is a fragment a fifth of the original size. 587 00:51:28,422 --> 00:51:32,097 The bit rescued from Rembrandt's knife. 588 00:51:34,222 --> 00:51:37,020 All that we have left of the complete painting 589 00:51:37,102 --> 00:51:40,890 is the sketch Rembrandt made, with prophetic irony, 590 00:51:40,982 --> 00:51:43,735 on the back of an invitation to a funeral. 591 00:51:45,782 --> 00:51:48,296 But this precious scrap is enough 592 00:51:48,382 --> 00:51:52,853 to let us see the visionary grandeur of the painting's design. 593 00:51:52,942 --> 00:51:56,173 With its vast hall open to the trees, 594 00:51:56,262 --> 00:51:58,901 a barbarian king's lair. 595 00:52:03,102 --> 00:52:07,380 No wonder you think ofThe Last Supper when you see this picture, 596 00:52:07,462 --> 00:52:11,011 for Rembrandt has painted a secular altarpiece. 597 00:52:11,102 --> 00:52:15,095 Mysterious, dangerous,joyously profane. 598 00:52:17,102 --> 00:52:21,095 No halo, but a bath of burning golden light. 599 00:52:22,302 --> 00:52:26,693 No candles,just the power surge of freedom. 600 00:52:28,182 --> 00:52:30,571 The fire of an idea. 601 00:52:34,262 --> 00:52:37,095 And you're thinking that it looks unfinished, 602 00:52:37,182 --> 00:52:40,697 aggressively rough, a work in progress. 603 00:52:41,622 --> 00:52:45,615 But Rembrandt's saying, in a voice that's a visual roar, 604 00:52:45,702 --> 00:52:50,139 ''That's you, a city, a country, 605 00:52:50,222 --> 00:52:52,338 a work in progress." 606 00:52:57,062 --> 00:53:01,101 ''This is my group portrait of all of you, 607 00:53:01,182 --> 00:53:05,221 a portrait of a people, a portrait of who you are, 608 00:53:05,302 --> 00:53:07,497 who you've always been. '' 609 00:53:48,622 --> 00:53:51,773 Let the high and mighty celebrate their greatness 610 00:53:51,862 --> 00:53:54,012 with fastidious etiquette. 611 00:53:54,462 --> 00:53:57,898 Let them even copy the rest of Europe if they must. 612 00:53:57,982 --> 00:54:03,215 But Rembrandt, the bankrupt, the has-been, was their patriotic conscience. 613 00:54:03,982 --> 00:54:07,258 ''Smother yourself in fashion at your peril,'' he was saying. 614 00:54:07,342 --> 00:54:11,176 ''These are your flesh and blood, rough and honest, 615 00:54:11,262 --> 00:54:15,255 your barbarian ancestry. They made you Dutch, 616 00:54:15,342 --> 00:54:19,893 so banish your embarrassment, embrace them, honour them." 617 00:54:20,222 --> 00:54:23,851 ''For everything that you think matters, doesn't." 618 00:54:23,942 --> 00:54:27,821 ''The town hall, with all its acres of marble, could go tomorrow." 619 00:54:27,902 --> 00:54:31,531 ''Amsterdam can sink back into the sea again." 620 00:54:31,622 --> 00:54:36,855 ''As long as you have your rough freedom, you have all you need to stay Dutch. '' 621 00:54:45,182 --> 00:54:48,697 So of course Rembrandt's not gonna paint by the rule book. 622 00:54:48,782 --> 00:54:53,537 Instead, he does the roughest, toughest history painting ever. 623 00:54:53,742 --> 00:54:57,940 An old lion's roar of a picture. 624 00:54:58,022 --> 00:55:00,616 He had every incentive to paint it straight, 625 00:55:00,702 --> 00:55:04,536 but something in him just wouldn't do it. 626 00:55:04,622 --> 00:55:10,094 This is what drives the very greatest art. Contempt for ingratiation. 627 00:55:13,182 --> 00:55:16,060 Now Rembrandt had learnt this the hard way, 628 00:55:16,142 --> 00:55:20,738 when the callow hand of fashion had given him a resounding thumbs down, 629 00:55:20,822 --> 00:55:24,895 and when his relationship with the rich of Amsterdam had turned sour, 630 00:55:24,982 --> 00:55:29,772 and he'd been stripped, not just of his fortune, but of his illusions. 631 00:55:30,222 --> 00:55:34,181 Giving them what they wanted was now beside the point. 632 00:55:34,262 --> 00:55:37,538 Giving them what they needed was more like it. 633 00:55:37,622 --> 00:55:43,413 But they refused to look and that's why he cut up his masterpiece. 634 00:55:50,542 --> 00:55:53,420 One of the very last pictures Rembrandt painted 635 00:55:53,502 --> 00:55:58,815 was Simeon the priest being brought the Christ child by the prophetess Anna. 636 00:55:58,902 --> 00:56:01,939 A story he'd done before, in his youth. 637 00:56:03,062 --> 00:56:06,134 But then, the painting had been sharp. 638 00:56:07,102 --> 00:56:10,014 Now, it was dense and textured. 639 00:56:10,102 --> 00:56:13,174 Almost as if it was woven, not painted. 640 00:56:20,462 --> 00:56:25,411 Out of the face of the Christ child pours a soft, brimming radiance 641 00:56:25,902 --> 00:56:31,135 which falls on the face of the old man, who, with his eyes closed, 642 00:56:31,382 --> 00:56:35,660 understands at last he has, in fact, seen the light. 643 00:56:37,702 --> 00:56:41,934 Rembrandt's patrons, alas, did not. 644 00:56:46,222 --> 00:56:50,454 The painting was one of those found in Rembrandt's house when he died 645 00:56:50,542 --> 00:56:54,057 on October 2, 1669. 646 00:56:54,142 --> 00:56:57,339 It's always been thought of as unfinished. 647 00:56:59,622 --> 00:57:04,298 Somewhere in that dim little house was another painting the world thought of 648 00:57:04,382 --> 00:57:09,331 as shockingly unfinished, a mutilated stump of a picture. 649 00:57:16,822 --> 00:57:22,579 This just may be the most heartbreaking fragment in the entire history of painting. 650 00:57:23,462 --> 00:57:27,375 And just because you can see, can't you, that it looks nothing, 651 00:57:27,462 --> 00:57:31,091 nothing whatsoever like an old master, 652 00:57:31,182 --> 00:57:33,901 that it leaps from the decorum of the gallery wall 653 00:57:33,982 --> 00:57:37,054 into some other world of eloquence. 654 00:57:37,142 --> 00:57:42,978 Rembrandt's Claudius Civilis tells us that the very greatest painting 655 00:57:43,222 --> 00:57:47,773 isn't bound by time or taste. 656 00:57:47,862 --> 00:57:50,979 A reminder, if ever we should need it, 657 00:57:51,062 --> 00:57:55,692 that eloquence doesn't always come with a pretty face.