Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure


Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure

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Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the world's

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most brilliant and extraordinary men.

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He was endlessly curious, searching for answers in everything he did.

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We think of him as the ultimate Renaissance man.

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He created a new idea of beauty.

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He reinvented the art of painting.

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From The Last Supper, tragically deteriorating,

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but still full of power and drama...

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..to the Mona Lisa,

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whose mysterious hint of a smile has intrigued generations.

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There are perhaps no more than 15 paintings by Leonardo in the world.

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They're scattered in different countries...

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..believed until now to be all that remains of Leonardo's work.

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But in New York,

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locked away at a secret address, is a newly discovered painting

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by Leonardo, something that hasn't happened for over 100 years.

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The picture has never been filmed until now.

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It could be worth £125 million.

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Is this the discovery of a painting

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thought lost for centuries?

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Leonardo is a man for whom the word genius could have been invented.

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And yet his reputation as an artist

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rests on just a handful of paintings.

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And some of them were never finished.

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How did Leonardo become the most famous painter ever to have lived?

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Many people dream at some point in their lives

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of discovering a lost masterpiece.

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Few allow themselves

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to dream of finding a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci.

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No artist has a higher reputation. No artist's work

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is more highly coveted. But there's so little of it.

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I've come to New York to visit a gallery in a secret location.

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And in it is a painting that's just been seen by a handful of experts.

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If it's genuine, it will be the discovery of a lifetime!

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A painting by the greatest old master of them all.

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Hello!

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You must be Fiona. Nice to meet you.

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Pleased to meet you. Come this way.

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'Restorer Dianne Modestini,

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'and dealer and art historian Robert Simon

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'have been guarding their secret for more than two years'.

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Wow.

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My goodness.

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Gosh! To be that close to it!

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Amazing.

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'It's a painting of Christ known as Salvator Mundi,

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'or the Saviour of the World'.

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-It has got a real presence, hasn't it?

-Yes.

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He begins to really dominate the space, and capture your attention.

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-And the gaze, as well.

-Yes, the gaze. Yes.

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That's not a happy or inviting gaze, he's kind of fixing you

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with his stare! Don't you think?

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Yes, it's a very intent, very engaging and very powerful image.

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I think we've all felt from looking at it that as much as the subject,

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obviously, is a religious subject, it's a spiritual quality

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that communicates rather than anything strictly religious.

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The sense that this is really a man, and kind of a portrait of a man,

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as Christ, is very powerful.

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When you look at this, now, in its pristine state, thanks to all

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your endeavours, what are the bits that really strike you about it?

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The hand for example, certainly for me, is just so beautifully done.

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Yes. It has an incredible presence that no other picture

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I've ever worked on, and I've worked on some very important things,

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-has had this effect on me.

-Really?

-Yes.

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If you watch how he emerges at the end of the day, when the light

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goes down, which is the kind of light that Leonardo describes

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as being ideal for making pictures, he starts to glow from within.

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And sort of pulse with life. It's very...it's eerie.

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Do you think that you've been spending too long with it?!

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Yes! I certainly have spent hundreds of hours!

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I've experienced it too, actually!

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There are details, if you look even here, this crystal ball,

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in which he's portrayed these inclusions.

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-The little flaws.

-Yes, exactly,

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in which everyone is individually light.

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Some from the top of it, some in the shadow, it really boggles to see the

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degree of study and the degree of ability to be able to render that.

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And of course, this enters into Leonardo's own very deep

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study of optical effects of light and of science.

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'It would be a while before I got into the

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'restoration studio to see the evidence,

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'to find out if this really is a lost Leonardo'.

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'If it is, for some people it would be like finding a new planet!

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'It's a measure of the extraordinary

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'veneration in which Leonardo is held'.

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He is that kind of mysterious, profound artist who seems

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to address the mysteries and secrets of life

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and to give them such beautiful expression

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without ever tying them down.

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Something of a cult has grown up around Leonardo.

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It's not just art lovers.

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Thriller writers and conspiracy theorists are drawn to him,

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fascinated by his obsessive enquiries

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into the frontiers of knowledge.

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From the secret of flight

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to the motions of the moon

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to the hidden architecture of the human body,

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all minutely noted in his mysterious mirror handwriting.

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We've got thousands of pages of writing, we've got

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these pictures, not many, to be sure, but he remains elusive,

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so there's this strange balance between being known and unknown,

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and it's a very precious, precarious balance.

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The unknown is sufficiently apparent, that people

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can go in and see mysteries where there are no mysteries, in fact.

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Is it possible to strip away the myths, the cult of Leonardo, and see

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the truth about this flawed, often puzzling man?

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The medieval town of Vinci, in Tuscany, in northern Italy.

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It was here on 15th April, 1452, that Leonardo was born.

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His surname, Da Vinci, literally means, "From the town of Vinci."

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Leonardo's start in life wasn't auspicious.

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He was illegitimate.

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His father came from a respected local family. His mother was

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a poor peasant girl - his father's mistress.

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Leonardo was born and would always remain something of an outsider.

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He never inherited his father's wealth.

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He never settled anywhere for too long.

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All his life, he moved from place to place.

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Leonardo's schooling was basic.

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He always called himself an uneducated man.

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But he made a virtue of this.

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His school room was the Tuscan countryside.

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He began to draw.

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Over the course of his life,

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he would fill hundreds of notebooks with minutely observed drawings

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of animals, plants and natural forms.

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There's a tenderness and sympathy in these pictures

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as well as a remarkable skill.

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At the age of 13 or so, Leonardo left this small country town.

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He carried with him his love of the landscape,

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his fascination with animals, and the wonders of the natural world.

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He set off for a new life in a very different sort of place.

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Florence in the 1460's was wealthy,

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cultured, a magnet for the finest artists, sculptors and architects.

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An exciting place to be.

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The city was the pinnacle of Renaissance splendour.

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What better place for an aspiring young artist to live and learn.

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Leonardo had come to work as an apprentice

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to a master artist and craftsman, Andrea del Verrocchio.

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Artists' studios were busy, crowded, dusty places.

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In the workshops of Florence's cathedral, where sculptors

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still work in the same way they have for centuries, you can get some

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sense of what it was like. Young apprentices learnt everything

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from how to clean brushes to how to paint an angel's wing.

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Verrocchio's workshop would have been a hive of activity.

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As well as producing paintings under the guidance of the master,

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he would have produced sculptures in bronze and marble,

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works in silver and gold, theatre sets - anything the wealthy

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and cultured classes of Florence desired.

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But for Leonardo, the city itself became his studio.

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He kept a notebook always dangling from his belt,

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and he drew the faces he saw around him.

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The turns and movement of the human body fascinated him.

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In the city's Uffizi Gallery, you can catch the first glimpse

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of the hand of Leonardo, the painter.

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The moment when Leonardo's master

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decided it was time to let his talented pupil pick up a brush.

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This is Verrocchio's painting of Christ with John the Baptist.

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Except this isn't all Verrochio's work.

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There's something very special about the kneeling angel here.

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Leonardo had the task of painting the angel when he was 23 or so.

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Just look a little bit more closely.

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The fact that the angel is three-quarter turned away from us,

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gazing raptly, adoringly, at Christ,

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that pose was groundbreaking at the time.

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Then look at the curls. Fine detail like ripples of water.

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You'll see that more and more, and then, the subtlety of the blue

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and the shading of the drapes of the material.

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Apparently, when Verrochio saw that, as the story goes,

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he decided that he should put down his brush

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and stop painting altogether,

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because he had been surpassed by his apprentice.

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Leonardo progressed to more ambitious and complex subjects.

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Though this painting in the Uffizi is unfinished,

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and at first glance, looks a bit of a mess.

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It's so dark and jumbled.

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It's hard even to know what's going on!

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It's a common religious subject - the moment when the three wise men

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come to pay homage to the infant Christ.

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Instead of the usual group of static, silent,

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reverential worshippers,

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there's something completely different going on here.

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The only still figure at the centre is Mary and baby Jesus.

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Around her, there is life, vitality, chaos.

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And there's even something slightly threatening about the way the crowd

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is pressing in on her and the faces, some of them seem rather skull-like.

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There are horses in the background rearing,

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there appears to be fighting going on.

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There's a real sense that the old order has been thrown over. And the new one is about to begin.

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There's an interesting detail to the right of the picture.

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The one figure who is standing looking away from the action.

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Many artists at that time would put a self-portrait in their work,

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and it's believed that that is, in fact,

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a portrait of Leonardo himself.

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If that's true,

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it may be the only image we have of Leonardo as a young man.

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It's not known why Leonardo didn't finish the work.

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But he became notorious for abandoning projects

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half way through. It drove his patrons mad with frustration.

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Time and time again, Leonardo couldn't or wouldn't finish the job.

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His insatiable curiosity meant that he was often distracted

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by something new or something different.

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And it's a paradox of Leonardo's that a man that was obsessed

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with detail and with reproducing that detail in paint

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often just left his works unfinished.

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I think with the Adoration of the Magi, Leonardo realised that he

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had started a picture that he simply didn't know how to finish.

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He had bitten off more than he could chew, if you like.

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I think he was sometimes intimidated

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by what he set out to do. and he got to a point

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sometimes where he realised he wasn't going to be able to finish,

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that he couldn't arrive at the perfect beauty

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that he had in his mind.

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In some ways, it's astonishing that he finished anything at all,

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given what he wanted for painting, what he thought painting

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should be able to achieve.

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As he matured as an artist,

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Leonardo acquired a reputation for being unreliable,

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a bit flaky, even. But an exceptional talent.

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Leonardo appeared to be living a charmed life in Florence.

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By the age of 20, he had been accepted into the official

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Florentine body of painters.

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He was described as generous, cultivated, well-dressed,

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extremely beautiful, with his hair cascading down

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in ringlets to his chest. One poet said he had infinite grace.

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But a dark shadow was about to fall across his world.

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Renaissance Florence was a small city.

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No more than 60,000 inhabitants.

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Florentines knew each other's business.

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They loved scandal.

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They would write anonymous notes to the authorities

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denouncing anyone they thought guilty of a crime.

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They dropped them into holes in the wall like this, known as

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buchi della verita - holes of truth.

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In early April 1476, someone dropped a denunciation

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into one of these holes. And it read, "To the officers of the night,

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"I hereby testify that Jacopo Saltarelli, aged 17,

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"who dresses in black, pursues many immoral activities and consents

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"to satisfy those persons

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"who request sinful things from him".

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He means, of course, homosexuality. And it goes on to list

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four of Jacopo's lovers or clients, including one "Leonardo da Vinci,

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"who works with the painter, Verrocchio".

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Homosexuality was common enough in 15th century Florence,

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particularly among artists and bohemians.

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But it was still a crime, punishable by death.

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Leonardo was forced to attend court.

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But the charges against him were eventually dropped.

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Was Leonardo gay?

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Some biographers say his art suggests he was.

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The recurring image of a young man with curly hair is arguably based

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on a young man called Salai - an apprentice in Leonardo's studio.

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He's there in a lot of drawings, seen often in profile

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with this slightly decadent profile

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and this cascade of ringleted hair.

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This was something that Leonardo really loved.

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Those angels always have this

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cascade of flowing hair - it was a kind of trademark

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in his paintings and drawings.

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There are one or two comments he makes in his notebooks which

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suggest he ran into a bit of trouble,

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because his angels were considered a bit too much like the pretty boys

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from the street, or the artist models on which

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they were no doubt based.

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Salai remained at Leonardo's side for the next 30 years

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until Leonardo's death - pupil, servant,

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confidant, and his lover.

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So this is the key relationship, probably, in Leonardo's life.

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In Florence, Leonardo was recognised as a supremely accomplished artist.

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But it was in another Italian city that he would

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achieve greatness.

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Milan was the wealthiest city state in Renaissance Italy.

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If Florence was a jewel of culture, Milan was a city

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of excess, of ostentation.

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It's fashion week here in Milan

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and there's something about the buzz and the glamour and the excitement

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that brings to mind why Leonardo came here all those years ago.

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It was a place to see and be seen, it was all about spectacle.

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He came here not as a painter, but as a musician

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and not just any musician, but with a lira di braccio,

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which was a kind of violin made out of solid silver

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in the shape of a horse's head.

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It was quite an entrance!

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Leonardo's patron in Milan

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was the Duke Ludovico Sforza, an immensely powerful

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and dangerous man.

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Leonardo saw him as a means to an end,

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a way of pursuing his own developing ideas.

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He brought with him an extraordinary letter of introduction.

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This is Leonardo presenting himself for employment

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to the Duke of Milan.

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It's a CV - but not what you'd expect.

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It's calculated to appeal to a 15th century despot.

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It starts with a bit of flattery - he writes, "Senor mi ilustrisimo",

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"my most illustrious Lord",

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and then Leonardo effectively goes on to sell himself

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as an inventor and maker of fantastical weapons!

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There's a whole list of them here.

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He talks about, "Ponti leggerissimi forti",

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bridges which are very light and strong.

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"I can make an infinite variety of methods of attack and defence."

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It's only at the end, almost as an afterthought,

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that he refers to himself as an artist. He says, "I can further

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"execute sculpture in clay, marble and bronze.

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"Also in painting, I can do as much as anyone else,

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"whoever that may be". Now, was he really that modest

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about his own talents or was it that he thought of all his talents,

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his painting was the thing that

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would least appeal to the Duke of Milan at the time?

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Whatever he meant,

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the letter reveals the dazzling diversity of Leonardo's

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interests and talents. Designing machines of war.

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Studying the motion of water.

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Mapping the geometry of the human body,

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relating it to the perfect forms of the circle and the square

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in the famous drawing known as the Vitruvian Man.

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That person in the circle,

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as well as expressing certain ideas of proportion and harmony

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and therefore being a rather abstract composition,

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that person is undoubtedly a real person.

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You can see his feet sort of pressing against the edge

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of the circle, you can see the muscles straining as he puts

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his arms out in the sort of flying position, as it seems to be.

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And then, very much, you have very specific features,

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a rather saturnine figure with long hair, parted in the middle,

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and these eyes boring out.

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And if you look hard at the face of the Vitruvian Man,

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which people strangely enough don't often do, because they're so

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aware of it as a sort of emblematic figure, kind of a logo almost

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of the Renaissance as it's used,

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that people don't tend to suddenly think,

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"Well, who is this guy?" Well, I think the answer is it's

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a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci.

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Who better to express the sort of

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secrets of human proportion than the philosophical artist, scientist,

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Leonardo Da Vinci himself.

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In the court of Ludovico Sforza,

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Leonardo was employed on a surprising range of projects.

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He didn't make his main living by being paid to paint pictures.

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He made his living at the court.

0:26:210:26:23

He was paid at the court to do great festival designs.

0:26:230:26:27

He was paid at the court to do military designs,

0:26:270:26:29

and when he was asked to do these great designs

0:26:290:26:33

for weddings or whatever, I think

0:26:330:26:35

he got very involved with it and he could always see possibilities.

0:26:350:26:39

I suspect he would have groaned initially,

0:26:390:26:41

and then suddenly become captivated by the project.

0:26:410:26:44

But Leonardo was also experimenting with painting portraits.

0:26:500:26:53

I must say, I don't warm to this young lady.

0:26:540:26:58

She looks decidedly frosty.

0:26:580:27:00

So why is she so admired?

0:27:010:27:04

The portrait of Ginevra de' Benci is curiously unlovable.

0:27:070:27:10

She really stares at us with

0:27:100:27:12

a quite sort of chilly, menacing gaze. I think what Leonardo

0:27:120:27:15

was trying to do was to make her very remotely beautiful,

0:27:150:27:19

was to raise her beauty above a kind of ordinary human level

0:27:190:27:24

to something that was poetic and almost otherworldly.

0:27:240:27:28

I think she comes over as

0:27:280:27:30

rather as if she's carved from marble rather than

0:27:300:27:34

like a living, breathing human being and I think he moved on

0:27:340:27:38

a great deal in his subsequent portraits.

0:27:380:27:40

One picture in particular

0:27:450:27:48

would take the art of portrait painting to new heights.

0:27:480:27:52

It's thought by some to be Leonardo's unsung masterpiece.

0:27:520:27:55

But it's left Italy forever, now hanging 700 miles away in Poland.

0:27:570:28:05

I've come to see a painting

0:28:190:28:21

that some experts believe is more beautiful than the Mona Lisa.

0:28:210:28:26

And to think it was almost completely unknown to the Western

0:28:260:28:30

art world until the start of the 20th Century!

0:28:300:28:34

In 1798, it was bought by a Polish prince.

0:28:370:28:40

In its long life, it's been walled up in a palace,

0:28:430:28:46

hidden in a hotel cellar, and survived two world wars.

0:28:460:28:52

It formed part of Hitler's private collection of looted art.

0:28:520:28:55

Its present home is the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

0:28:590:29:03

The portrait is of Ludovico's elegant young mistress,

0:29:050:29:09

Cecilia Gallerani.

0:29:090:29:11

It's become known as The Lady with the Ermine.

0:29:120:29:16

An Italian poet writing when this was painted

0:29:190:29:22

said that Cecila appeared so lifelike,

0:29:220:29:24

it was almost as if she was listening.

0:29:240:29:27

And when you look at her pose, see if I can get this right...

0:29:270:29:30

..it's as if someone's just caught her attention

0:29:310:29:34

just outside the frame.

0:29:340:29:36

And this was revolutionary. No one else was painting like this,

0:29:400:29:43

getting the body in that kind of movement.

0:29:430:29:45

Look at her hand - you can see under the skin

0:29:490:29:51

the bones and the muscles and the tendons.

0:29:510:29:55

Just look at her face.

0:29:560:29:58

Young, modest, but intelligent and alert. You can see that!

0:29:580:30:02

And that's why I love this painting.

0:30:020:30:04

And then what about the ermine or the stoat that she's holding?

0:30:070:30:10

I mean, what's that all about? It's certainly not a pet.

0:30:100:30:13

But to anyone at the time,

0:30:130:30:16

the symbolism of the ermine would have been immediately apparent.

0:30:160:30:19

The ermine was the symbol of purity, of chastity.

0:30:190:30:22

The story was that the ermine would rather die

0:30:220:30:25

than let its pure white coat be soiled.

0:30:250:30:27

But also, this was about sex, because the ermine

0:30:270:30:31

was the symbol of Cecilia's lover, of Ludovico Sforza.

0:30:310:30:36

And when you look at him...

0:30:360:30:37

Look, he's muscular, he's got his claws digging into her arm,

0:30:370:30:41

he looks as if he might take a nip out of her at any moment.

0:30:410:30:44

This is about sex and about power.

0:30:440:30:46

Back in Milan, in 1495, Leonardo began work on a painting

0:31:000:31:04

that would confirm him as the greatest artist of his age.

0:31:040:31:09

The monastery of Santa Maria della Grazia was funded

0:31:110:31:14

by Leonardo's patron, Ludovico Sforza.

0:31:140:31:17

He commissioned Leonardo to paint a huge picture

0:31:200:31:23

for the monks' dining room.

0:31:230:31:25

The result would bring triumph, but also tragedy.

0:31:280:31:31

It's visited by thousands of people every year.

0:31:350:31:38

Their time limited to just 15 minutes in the presence

0:31:400:31:43

of the masterpiece.

0:31:430:31:44

It's approached through a series of airlocks.

0:31:480:31:51

It's more like a hospital, protecting the patient

0:31:550:31:59

from contamination.

0:31:590:32:01

But the stage management of the entrance and the exit to this work

0:32:100:32:14

is very important.

0:32:140:32:16

Because this is a deliberately dramatic work of art.

0:32:160:32:20

It's such a famous image,

0:32:350:32:38

but nothing prepares you for seeing it in the flesh.

0:32:380:32:40

Leonardo's epic painting shows the Last Supper,

0:32:430:32:47

the meal Christ shares with his disciples

0:32:470:32:49

just before his death.

0:32:490:32:51

And in it, Leonardo has taken everything he has learned

0:32:520:32:55

from the portraits about revealing the life within

0:32:550:32:59

and choreographed it on a huge scale.

0:32:590:33:03

He's painted the precise moment when Christ says,

0:33:070:33:10

"One of you will betray me."

0:33:100:33:13

And the reaction of the disciples is frozen in time.

0:33:130:33:16

But you can see that bombshell ripple out through the painting,

0:33:160:33:20

in their faces, in their body language and, very Italian,

0:33:200:33:24

in their hands.

0:33:240:33:25

This is not some traditional, flat,

0:33:370:33:40

rather sterile religious image,

0:33:400:33:43

this is human drama on a scale larger than life.

0:33:430:33:48

It's realistic, it has perspective, passion.

0:33:480:33:52

It's like a story in widescreen.

0:33:520:33:54

But the painting we see today... is the ghost of what it was.

0:33:590:34:05

Because only 20% of the original remains.

0:34:050:34:08

So what happened?

0:34:080:34:10

The clue is in the way Leonardo chose to work -

0:34:140:34:17

unorthodox and eventually disastrous.

0:34:170:34:20

Paintings on walls, frescoes, have to be painted quickly

0:34:220:34:26

onto wet plaster.

0:34:260:34:27

But Leonardo knew he was anything but a fast worker.

0:34:290:34:33

He chose to work in oil paint on plaster that had already dried.

0:34:350:34:40

The result? Within a few decades, the picture began to deteriorate.

0:34:400:34:44

Several desperate attempts have been made over the centuries

0:34:470:34:51

to salvage it.

0:34:510:34:52

Leonardo's slow, painstaking approach to painting

0:35:490:35:53

brought the monks to a frenzy of impatience.

0:35:530:35:56

Eye witnesses sent to spy on him

0:35:570:35:59

reported he would sometimes work from dawn to dusk

0:35:590:36:03

and then do nothing for days, except stand and look.

0:36:030:36:06

The detail of Leonardo's painting can never be recovered.

0:36:130:36:18

But a key to what it looked like

0:36:180:36:20

can be found surprisingly close to home.

0:36:200:36:23

In the chapel of Magdalen College in Oxford,

0:36:350:36:38

and quite unknown to most people, hangs Britain's last supper.

0:36:380:36:43

It was painted in Leonardo's day, thought to be by a pupil

0:36:550:36:59

of Leonardo, copied from the original,

0:36:590:37:01

possibly approved by the master himself.

0:37:010:37:04

Details which have disappeared forever from Leonardo's picture

0:37:100:37:14

can be seen clearly in this one.

0:37:140:37:16

The food on the table...

0:37:190:37:21

..the sandaled feet of the disciples...

0:37:250:37:28

..and most dramatically the face of Simon,

0:37:310:37:35

stubborn and disbelieving.

0:37:350:37:37

In 1499, Leonardo left Milan.

0:37:470:37:51

His restless, inquiring nature took him off in pursuit of new,

0:37:510:37:55

often wildly ambitious projects.

0:37:550:37:57

In Venice, he tried to persuade the authorities

0:38:000:38:03

to let him build underwater defences for the city.

0:38:030:38:06

In Rome, he worked on designs for grand villas and statues.

0:38:080:38:12

He dreamed up a scheme to divert the waters of the river

0:38:160:38:19

around Florence to make it navigable.

0:38:190:38:21

Eventually, he settled back in Florence,

0:38:250:38:27

the city that had made him a painter.

0:38:270:38:31

But things had changed here.

0:38:310:38:33

In a city already crowded with talent, a new star had emerged,

0:38:360:38:40

whose talents as a painter and sculptor

0:38:400:38:42

threatened to eclipse Leonardo's.

0:38:420:38:45

He was arrogant and aggressively ambitious.

0:38:450:38:48

His name was Michelangelo

0:38:480:38:50

and the two men would become fierce rivals.

0:38:500:38:53

In 1501, Michelangelo won the commission

0:38:590:39:02

to build a colossal statue for the city, of David,

0:39:020:39:06

the slayer of Goliath.

0:39:060:39:08

Leonardo was piqued and unimpressed.

0:39:080:39:11

The two artists couldn't have been more different.

0:39:120:39:15

Whereas Michelangelo's figures are virile supermen,

0:39:150:39:19

all muscle and swagger,

0:39:190:39:21

Leonardo was always after delicacy and subtlety.

0:39:210:39:25

He even had a go at figures like that, saying their bulging muscles

0:39:250:39:28

made them look ridiculous - like "un sacco di noci",

0:39:280:39:31

a bag of nuts.

0:39:310:39:33

Leonardo was much in demand,

0:39:410:39:43

as military engineer, map maker, architect, designer.

0:39:430:39:47

And though he was celebrated as a painter, he was notorious

0:39:480:39:52

for late delivery.

0:39:520:39:54

One man wrote of him, "Leonardo is better than anyone.

0:39:540:39:58

"But he won't leave a picture alone."

0:39:580:40:01

It was a quality that got him into trouble more than once.

0:40:010:40:04

At the age of 54, he received a summons from some rich patrons

0:40:040:40:08

in Milan - "Come back and finish our painting."

0:40:080:40:12

The painting in question

0:40:160:40:17

is a mysterious reimagining of the Madonna and child.

0:40:170:40:21

Once again, Leonardo brought to a conventional subject

0:40:240:40:27

an unusual approach.

0:40:270:40:28

He places them in a strange cavern of rocks,

0:40:300:40:33

a remote deserted place

0:40:330:40:35

suggesting a world before time began.

0:40:350:40:38

Instead of the bright, sharp colours of the day,

0:40:410:40:44

he creates an atmosphere of shadows and subtle shifts

0:40:440:40:48

of light and shade.

0:40:480:40:50

Before Leonardo, people were very, very interested

0:41:000:41:03

in line, in contour.

0:41:030:41:06

Leonardo, on the other hand, believed

0:41:060:41:08

in dissolving those contours to make something

0:41:080:41:11

which was...which was really modelled from light and shade.

0:41:110:41:14

And he used a technique called sfumato, which literally means

0:41:140:41:18

smoked or smoky. So that's about

0:41:180:41:20

those misty transitions of light and shade

0:41:200:41:23

which he applied to a face like the Virgin in the Virgin Of The Rocks.

0:41:230:41:28

It was really an entirely revolutionary process

0:41:280:41:31

and was born from the fact that he understood

0:41:310:41:34

the way in which light fell on objects

0:41:340:41:37

like no other artist before him.

0:41:370:41:39

The painting now hangs in the National Gallery in London.

0:41:460:41:49

It's being restored for a major Leonardo exhibition there.

0:41:510:41:56

The restoration is a terrifyingly delicate business.

0:41:560:41:59

Just how much do you tinker with a Leonardo?

0:42:020:42:06

On the one hand, it's a restoration of a Renaissance painting.

0:42:080:42:12

On the other hand, it is a Leonardo, which is no small thing.

0:42:120:42:16

The retouching I am doing is quite reversible

0:42:160:42:20

and separated from the actual paint of Leonardo

0:42:200:42:23

by a modern varnish layer.

0:42:230:42:26

Leonardo was really exploring the possibilities of using oil paint

0:42:290:42:33

to do this kind of modelling from light to dark

0:42:330:42:38

in a consistent way. I think he's exploring the difference

0:42:380:42:42

between quite dark, very dark and extremely dark,

0:42:420:42:45

in a way that other artists up to then hadn't really done.

0:42:450:42:48

One of the things that I think is essential about Leonardo -

0:42:500:42:54

you can see when you look closely at this picture -

0:42:540:42:56

is the way that he didn't seem to like to produce

0:42:560:42:59

a definitive answer to anything. Contours are always being adjusted,

0:42:590:43:03

nothing is quite final.

0:43:030:43:05

There's often the possibility of just a slight change,

0:43:050:43:09

a little modification here, a twist there,

0:43:090:43:13

a line a little different than it was.

0:43:130:43:15

And the fact that so many of his works are unfinished

0:43:170:43:19

speaks to that kind of psychological tendency.

0:43:190:43:23

I think he always saw another possibility,

0:43:230:43:26

another way of doing something.

0:43:260:43:28

Leonardo would never lose his habit of seeing other possibilities.

0:43:500:43:54

He spent many months here at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata

0:43:570:44:00

in the centre of Florence.

0:44:000:44:02

The monks would certainly have appreciated a painting from him.

0:44:020:44:05

But one who visited him at work in his studio reported,

0:44:060:44:10

"He scarcely seems interested in picking up a brush."

0:44:100:44:13

Leonardo's attention had been seized by new kinds of exploration,

0:44:160:44:20

including the study of the human body.

0:44:200:44:23

From dissections he made in the city's hospitals,

0:44:290:44:32

he analysed the architecture of the body...

0:44:320:44:35

..and noted the minute workings of its internal organs.

0:44:370:44:40

The anatomical drawings are incredibly beautiful

0:44:450:44:49

and he would regard the inside of the body as at least as beautiful

0:44:490:44:53

as the outside.

0:44:530:44:55

So if he draws, say, the branching of the air passages in the lung,

0:44:550:44:58

it becomes like a coral. It's a beautiful structure,

0:44:580:45:02

and that's not a loose analogy

0:45:020:45:05

because he saw branching in nature as all the same thing.

0:45:050:45:09

How a tree branches, how our vessels branch, how rivers come together,

0:45:090:45:13

these are all systems which are essentially the same.

0:45:130:45:16

During these intense philosophical investigations,

0:45:200:45:23

painting seems to have been forgotten. Until...

0:45:230:45:28

One day Leonardo received a request to paint a portrait.

0:45:280:45:32

It probably came from Francesco del Giocondo,

0:45:320:45:35

a merchant in silk and cloth,

0:45:350:45:36

and he wanted Leonardo to paint a portrait of his wife.

0:45:360:45:40

Nothing unusual in that -

0:45:400:45:42

a perfectly ordinary, everyday subject.

0:45:420:45:45

What Leonardo could not have imagined is that this would be

0:45:450:45:49

the painting that defined him.

0:45:490:45:52

It would become the most famous painting in the world.

0:45:520:45:56

As so often with Leonardo, you can see glimpses of future masterpieces

0:45:580:46:02

in his sketchbooks.

0:46:020:46:04

The merchant, Del Giocondo, never actually received the portrait

0:46:130:46:17

of his wife which he'd commissioned.

0:46:170:46:20

When Leonardo left Italy for the last time in 1516,

0:46:210:46:24

he took it with him.

0:46:240:46:26

He had an invitation from the young French king, Francis I.

0:46:330:46:36

Francis saw in Leonardo a mentor and a genius

0:46:380:46:41

who would adorn his court.

0:46:410:46:44

But Leonardo never stopped working on his portrait of the wife

0:46:500:46:54

of a Florentine merchant.

0:46:540:46:56

She now hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

0:47:010:47:04

She's known, of course, as the Mona Lisa.

0:47:060:47:09

I've come here for a private audience with her

0:47:100:47:13

to try and see why she has become the most iconic image

0:47:130:47:17

in the world.

0:47:170:47:18

It's not obvious.

0:47:250:47:27

On first impressions, she's very small, very dark

0:47:280:47:33

and very yellow.

0:47:330:47:35

I know this is the most famous painting in the world

0:47:370:47:40

and is considered a work of genius, but I just don't quite get it.

0:47:400:47:44

What is so good about the Mona Lisa?

0:47:440:47:47

How did Leonardo manage to create this mysterious

0:48:500:48:53

and captivating woman?

0:48:530:48:55

It is uncanny.

0:48:590:49:01

It lives in a very extraordinary way.

0:49:010:49:03

This is... You know, it sounds kind of pretentious

0:49:030:49:06

but there is no other way of describing it.

0:49:060:49:09

The figure seems not just to be inert pigments on a surface,

0:49:090:49:12

but seems to be living and breathing.

0:49:120:49:15

Now, the way that Leonardo did that is not by some kind of mystery,

0:49:210:49:25

he did it by technique and he did it by mixing in the flesh,

0:49:250:49:31

in these key areas, these very subtle,

0:49:310:49:34

thin layers of paint, called glazes.

0:49:340:49:37

Just a little, thin stain of colour, a lot of oil

0:49:370:49:40

and just little dispersed bits of pigment.

0:49:400:49:42

So he lays that down on top of a white priming.

0:49:420:49:46

Then he'll lay another stain down,

0:49:460:49:48

then another one and another one, sometimes adding a bit of shadow,

0:49:480:49:52

sometimes a little bit of highlight, but basically he's relying upon

0:49:520:49:56

the light coming through from the white panel.

0:49:560:49:59

So he's using this transparency and it means the light comes through

0:49:590:50:05

and is very subtle, very elusive and you don't have fixed edges.

0:50:050:50:10

He doesn't draw the edge of a nose as a line.

0:50:100:50:14

It's very ambiguous, very elusive.

0:50:140:50:17

That is uncanny, it's spine tingling.

0:50:170:50:20

Leonardo spent the last years of his life at the court

0:50:300:50:33

of the French King.

0:50:330:50:35

Relieved of all pressure to deliver paintings, free to follow

0:50:390:50:42

wherever his curiosity led him.

0:50:420:50:44

I think at the end of his life,

0:50:470:50:49

Leonardo was, if anything, more of a celebrity than a painter.

0:50:490:50:53

And when he moved to France, it was not necessarily

0:50:540:50:58

because King Francis wanted somebody who was going to paint

0:50:580:51:02

enormous fresco cycles in the various chateaux that he owned.

0:51:020:51:08

I think it was more that he wanted to be seen to offer protection

0:51:080:51:12

to perhaps the greatest man in Christendom, of the day.

0:51:120:51:16

His last self portrait seems to show the face of a man

0:51:200:51:23

who has spent a lifetime enquiring into everything.

0:51:230:51:27

He died on 2nd May, 1519, at the age of 67,

0:51:300:51:34

in the arms, so the story goes, of the French king.

0:51:340:51:38

Francis declared he, "Did not believe that a man had been born

0:51:420:51:46

"who knew as much as Leonardo."

0:51:460:51:48

Leonardo left several of his paintings to his favourite, Salai.

0:51:540:51:57

Among them was the Mona Lisa.

0:51:590:52:00

She won't be travelling to London for the exhibition.

0:52:050:52:08

Instead, the buzz will be about a picture

0:52:080:52:11

that most people will never heard of...

0:52:110:52:13

..the newly discovered Salvator Mundi.

0:52:140:52:17

It's an amazing story.

0:52:220:52:24

It's been known for centuries that Leonardo painted

0:52:290:52:32

such a picture.

0:52:320:52:34

Until now, it was thought lost.

0:52:340:52:36

This is how the picture looked before it was restored,

0:52:390:52:42

dismissed as a crude copy, buried in a private collection,

0:52:420:52:47

last sold for £45 in 1958.

0:52:470:52:51

I went to the restoration studio to see the evidence for myself.

0:52:560:53:00

What had led restorer Dianne Modestini to believe

0:53:030:53:07

she had discovered a lost Leonardo?

0:53:070:53:10

First of all, X-rays revealed what lay beneath

0:53:110:53:13

the surface of the painting.

0:53:130:53:16

That's the face, isn't it?

0:53:160:53:18

Yes, which you can just barely make out the features.

0:53:180:53:21

What about these cracks? What are they up there to the left?

0:53:210:53:26

-That's the crack in the wood.

-Just missed his face.

0:53:260:53:29

Imagine it had gone through the middle!

0:53:290:53:32

Yeah, miraculous. Just missed the face.

0:53:320:53:35

You see, it all came from this knot.

0:53:350:53:38

-Oh, a knot in the wood?

-There was a knot in the wood.

0:53:380:53:41

It had this defect.

0:53:410:53:43

Leonardo was very never very careful about his wooden supports.

0:53:430:53:47

Given how meticulous he was about everything else,

0:53:470:53:50

-that's quite surprising.

-It's very surprising.

0:53:500:53:53

-So the wood has basically warped and split from that knot.

-Yes.

0:53:530:53:56

One of the things you must have been looking for, which is

0:53:560:53:59

a classic clue to whether or not a picture is an original,

0:53:590:54:02

-is a pentimento, it's called, isn't it?

-That's right.

0:54:020:54:05

Which is where an artist has had a number of goes

0:54:050:54:08

at painting something in a particular way before settling

0:54:080:54:11

on painting a hand in a particular way or a drape of cloth.

0:54:110:54:14

-And you can see him trying to work it out on the canvas.

-Yes.

0:54:140:54:17

It doesn't look like there are any here in the X-ray.

0:54:170:54:20

No, we don't see any in this X-ray, but where we do see them

0:54:200:54:23

is in the infrared reflectogram.

0:54:230:54:26

So what are we looking at here?

0:54:300:54:33

Here we can see quite clearly, I think,

0:54:330:54:35

that there's a first idea for the thumb.

0:54:350:54:39

Oh, yes! So it was more upright.

0:54:390:54:42

It was more upright.

0:54:420:54:45

But this was the moment that gave us a clue and gave us some hope,

0:54:450:54:49

which wouldn't have entered our minds previously,

0:54:490:54:52

that we might be dealing with a lost original.

0:54:520:54:55

As it became clearer to you that this could well be

0:54:590:55:02

an original Leonardo, did you have a moment where you thought...

0:55:020:55:06

..if I do the wrong thing here...

0:55:080:55:10

this could all rest on your shoulders.

0:55:100:55:14

Yeah, I couldn't let myself think about that. I couldn't.

0:55:140:55:18

I would never have dared to touch it.

0:55:180:55:20

The discovery of a different first design for the thumb

0:55:250:55:29

was an incredible breakthrough.

0:55:290:55:31

No one painting a mere copy would experiment in this way.

0:55:330:55:37

When the picture was finally shown to leading Leonardo experts,

0:55:420:55:45

they examined everything - its history, its hidden details,

0:55:450:55:50

the paint itself.

0:55:500:55:51

I walked in to the conservation studios where it was being displayed

0:55:530:55:57

at that point and you get that tingle and you think,

0:55:570:56:01

"Ah, this is..."

0:56:010:56:03

But then I always have a gravitational pull.

0:56:030:56:06

I say, "Don't believe it!"

0:56:060:56:08

A Leonardo painting hasn't come along like that

0:56:080:56:11

since the early 20th century,

0:56:110:56:13

so one every 100 years is kind of rare.

0:56:130:56:16

There is that long process of research where you're putting

0:56:180:56:22

the counter arguments and saying,

0:56:220:56:24

"Let's look for what's wrong with it."

0:56:240:56:27

And in this case, I couldn't find anything wrong.

0:56:270:56:30

So the verdict is in. It's the real thing.

0:56:350:56:38

Getting the Salvator Mundi

0:56:450:56:46

and all the other paintings to London,

0:56:460:56:50

poses a massive challenge...

0:56:500:56:53

especially the huge copy of the Last Supper in Oxford.

0:56:530:56:56

Moving the picture is a two-day operation.

0:57:010:57:03

Once it's lowered from the walls,

0:57:030:57:06

it's removed from the wooden stretchers

0:57:060:57:08

that keep the canvas taut.

0:57:080:57:10

The canvas is carefully rolled around a drum, painted side outwards

0:57:150:57:19

to stop it cracking.

0:57:190:57:21

Then it's off to the National Gallery to take its place

0:57:280:57:31

alongside work by Leonardo himself.

0:57:310:57:34

Never before will so many Leonardo paintings

0:57:410:57:44

and drawings have been assembled in one place.

0:57:440:57:48

And almost certainly, they never will be again.

0:57:480:57:51

So valuable, so delicate,

0:57:530:57:56

it's unlikely anyone would dare risk moving them again.

0:57:560:57:59

When you strip away the cult that has grown up around Leonardo,

0:58:040:58:08

his sheer skill and vision as a painter

0:58:080:58:12

still tower above all others.

0:58:120:58:14

But there is also mystery.

0:58:160:58:18

He's an artist who continues to intrigue and baffle and astonish.

0:58:180:58:24

And that enduring mystery has earned him a unique place in our history.

0:58:240:58:29

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:440:58:46

E-mail [email protected]

0:58:460:58:48

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