The Private Life of a Masterpiece reveals the stories behind famous works of art: how the pieces were created, how they have influenced others and how they have come to have a life of their own in the modern world. All the works featured in the series were revolutionary, often shocking at the time, or a ‘first' in some way.
The Scream tells the life-story of the painting more widely reproduced than any other, even the Mona Lisa. It shows exactly how and why the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch arrived at his extraordinary image and how that image of the screaming person has reverberated down the decades to become an icon in modern culture.
Michelangelo's David is one of the marvels of Renaissance art, yet was carved from a block of marble that was so shallow that two other master sculptors had declared it unusable. The programme tells just how Michelangelo cracked the problems and how his statue came to symbolise much more than David's victory over Goliath.
Two men sitting on the grass, with a picnic nearby. They are not looking at a naked woman seated nearby, who stares brazenly out of the canvas at the viewer. In the background a second woman is doing something hard to quite see. Just what is going on? The full story of the painting that many believe is the beginning of modern art.
She's been called 'the most smackable bum in art'. Velazquez's portrait of a young woman lying naked on a couch gazing at her reflection in a mirror held by Cupid has an extraordinary story
Rodin's The Kiss is arguably the most sensual sculpture in the art of the past 150 years. Its subject matter is more daring that most people understand: A it portrays a girl seducing a man. The sculpture has been controversial right up to the 21st century.
Arguably the most powerful painting about war ever achieved. It portrays the slaughter of civilians after Napoleonic troops entered Madrid in 1808. The programme reveals the historical truths behind the painting and shows exactly how Goya achieved this masterpiece of protest.
This painting was once described as the most beautiful of all the artworks of the 19th century. Certainly it seems the happiest. But beneath renoir's joyful portrayal of working class Parisians at leisure is another, darker story.
Why should a painting of a group of part-time Amsterdam militiamen, dressed up for an occasion that wasn't serious anyway, have become the most revered painting in Holland? The full story of Rembrandt's masterpiece.
Botticelli's painting is extraordinarily beautiful; his portrayal of Flora, the central character, reveals a face you might find in London or Bologna or Boston today. But what the painting is about is a mystery which scholars devote their lives to solving. It is rich is sex, even rape, but it also about love and the highest aspirations of man.
Perhaps the most celebrated of all Japanese pictures, the Great Wave's portrayal of a huge wave about to overwhelm three boats was only produced by Hokusai when he was old and broke and needed money badly. A print that cost little more than bowl of noodles to those who first bought it, the image has been hugely influential on later art.
The statue of the young girl in a real ballet dress is often seen today just as a pretty image of dancer making one of the classic moves of ballet. But to the people who first saw the statue when it was unveiled it was a dangerous, even disgraceful, portrayal of a degenerate girl little more than a whore. The programme reveals the story of the real woman who Degas used as a model and includes revelations about how the statue as actually made.
Perhaps the most reproduced of all 19th century paintings, The Sunflowers has a story that lies at the crux of the complex relationship between Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin. The programme reveals how Van Gogh started to paint sunflowers soon after he moved from Holland to Paris and how they became the emblem of his embrace of Southern France, warmth and the sun. It looks especially at the 8th of the Sunflower paintings, the one in the National Gallery in London which is arguably the best in the series. It was most admired and desired by Gaugin but denied to him by Van Gogh as their relationship deteriorated.
Arguably the first modern painting, this portrayal of five huge prostitutes was so powerful and controversial when it was first revealed that one fellow artist declared that Picasso would be found hanged behind it one day. The programme sets out the origins of the painting in the intense rivalry for the leadership of the Parisian avante-garde between Matisse and Picasso and shows in great detail how Picasso worked and re-worked, changed and changed again his concept for the painting in an endless series of studies.
The stark portrait, mainly in greys and black, that James McNeill Whistler painted of his mother is now a picture that is widely lampooned as a portrait of a prim Victorian lady. She is shown smoking reefers, wearing trainers, having a tatoo. But Whistler's approach was revolutionary in its time, wholly departing from the Victorian tradition of sentimental narrative painting. His relationship with his mother was also an intriguing study in contrasts.
The great revolutionary masterpiece, painted by a man who soon complained that revolutions got in the way of dinner parties. Shunned by the government of the day, it has endured to become the symbol of the French republic and an icon of later revolutions.
Of all Vermeer's paintings, it was probably this picture that he held in greatest esteem. It was the painting he used to show off his skills to customers. A customer three centuries after he died was none other than Adolf Hitler.
A popular masterpiece and yet an enduring enigma. It seems to show a quiet scene in a Paris park but there are hints at the demi-monde, if you know where to look. The most remarkable aspect of this vast canvas however remains Seurat's technique his revolutionary pointillism.
One of the most sensual of paintings, achieved in the extraordinary intellectual climate of turn of the century Vienna by a male artist of prodigious sexual appetite. Yet it may portray the shift of sexual power towards the female.
Among the greatest of all depictions of battle, these three panels were break throughs in painting technique, so that contemporaries must have viewed them in awe. Also they were the victims of an audacious art crime.
The story of probably the most renowned painting in the world. The Last Supper revolutionized Western art and its power reverberates to this day in the courts and the bookshops and cinemas.Just how Leonardo Da Vinci broke with traditions in creating his supremely dynamic masterpiece is recounted, together with the tale of his disastrous attempt to use a new technique in wall-painting.
Salvador Dali's extraordinary crucifixion is often called the greatest religious painting of the 20th century. Yet its artist was a notorious blasphemer some of whose work had outraged the Catholic Church.His Christ of St. John of The Cross was inspired by a weird mix of Spanish mysticism and nuclear physics, with his Christ being modelled by a Hollywood stuntman. It's also a masterpiece of painting technique.
The first moment in the Christmas story is the arrival of the Archangel Gabriel to tell Mary that she has been chosen to give birth to the son of God. Many painters have depicted this event, none better than the great Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck. As befits a man who seems to mixed espionage in with painting for his patron, Eyck's picture is full of symbols and half-concealed messages. It has an extraordinary after-life - sold by the Soviets against the wishes of the Hermitage and bought by a secretive American millionaire who hid it away in a cellar.
The first moment in the Christmas story is the arrival of the Archangel Gabriel to tell Mary that she has been chosen to give birth to the son of God. Many painters have depicted this event, none better than the great Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck. As befits a man who seems to mixed espionage in with painting for his patron, Eyck's picture is full of symbols and half-concealed messages. It has an extraordinary after-life - sold by the Soviets against the wishes of the Hermitage and bought by a secretive American millionaire who hid it away in a cellar.
Arguably the painting that invented the snowy Christmas card scene, the Census at Bethlehem is a picture that depicts the arrival of Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem But it also a portrays Netherlands village under the grip of a cruel winter and under the hammer of a foreign army. The picture teems with human life as the best Breughels do, but it also speaks to the 21st century in an extraordinary way.
This is a Nativity, and since it is by Paul Gauguin, it is modern and fresh like few recent nativities. This painting is intensely personal. The Madonna is Gauguin's young Polynesian mistress, who was pregnant with his child. It is a brilliant departure in other ways from traditional nativities, relevant to the contemporary world.
When Caravaggio completed his painting of the betrayal and arrest of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, it quickly became one of the most celebrated paintings of its time. But spool forward two centuries and the painting has vanished.The Taking of Christ, one of the most radical religious images of any time, became known as the lost masterpiece. This programme tells the enthralling story of the painting and its rediscovery in 1990.
Botticelli's Mystic Nativity is a painting that lovers of mystery fiction should love: a Renaissance masterpiece crammed with cryptic symbols disguising a dangerous message. But it is much more besides. Painted in 1500 by one of the most famous artists of all time, it is a supremely beautiful vision of maternal love, earthly harmony, and heavenly ecstasy. The painting also has a dark side though.Botticelli carefully hid the Mystic Nativity's dangerous meaning. This programme reveals the recent chance discovery by a scholar which fully unlocks the painting's message.
Six hundred years ago, one painting in Northern Europe was prized above all others. Queens and Kings rivalled to own it. Other and lesser painters endlessly copied it. Anyone who saw it was struck with awe. The 'Descent from the Cross' was huge and overwhelming. The painter was a Flemish master, Rogier Van Der Weyden. He succeeded in this painting in doing something that no one before him and many after him could not do: he painted real human emotion.Today it is one of the greatest masterpieces in Spain's National Gallery - the Prado - in Madrid. It was taken there by Philip II of Spain and survived great adventures - almost lost at sea and almost destroyed by German bombers in the Spanish Civil War. This Private Life tells the remarkable story of this painting.
Painted over five centuries ago, Filippo Lippi's nativity is like no other: the birth of Christ in a dark, wooded wilderness. Its beauty inspired Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. But it also conceals a deeply personal story. It was painted for a wealthy banker who feared that his money was dragging him straight to hell. The artist's life was equally surprising. The most celebrated painter of his day, Filippo Lippi was also a Carmelite friar. But he was no stranger to the temptations of the flesh,shortly before painting his Adoration, he caused uproar by seducing a twenty year-old nun – and getting her pregnant.This programme looks at the turbulant history of this masterpiece which with its combination of divine mystery and a very human beauty make it seem to transcend time and creed.
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