How the Devil Got His Horns: A Diabolical Tale

'Lucifer,

'Satan,

'Beelzebub,

'Old Nick.'

The Devil has many names and faces. Sometimes he appears as a monster.

Sometimes he's human. The arch fiend ruling over Hell, he's terrifying.

'But it wasn't always this way.'

If you go looking for the Devil that we would recognise in this period,

you don't find anthropomorphising images of the Devil,

sort of humanoid but with wings and a tail and cloven hooves -

you don't find that.

'That's because the Devil we know today is a human creation,...'

This was probably the image they took

to create the image of Lucifer or the Devil.

'..owing more to the minds of artists than the pages of the Bible,

'invented and reinvented by generations for whom he became

'a tantalizing perverse muse.'

It's a tumultuous sadomasochistic fantasy -

this is as much porno as it is Inferno.

'The Devil is a mysterious, seductive and ambiguous character,

'but for nearly 1,000 years,

'there was no consensus on what he looked like.'

'From the end of the Roman Empire

'to the Renaissance in Italy,

'from the muddy fields of Gothic England

'to the libraries of the grandest French chateaux,

'this film is about how artists

'invented Satan by taking the little the Bible says about him,

'letting their imaginations run riot

'and challenging our fundamental understanding of good and evil.'

This is the mysterious story

of one of the strangest yet most electrifying figures

in all of Western art - the Devil!

'This is Ravenna in Northern Italy.'

'This unassuming town was once just about the most important place

'in the world.'

'It was the last capital of the Western Roman Empire

'and in the early days of the Christian church,

'its citizens wrestled over the great religious questions.'

'Was Jesus divine?'

'What was his relationship to God and the Holy Spirit?'

'When the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo

'was built in the sixth century,

'many of the main beliefs of what we recognise today as Christianity

'hadn't yet been decided - including who or what the Devil was.'

'But I've come here because some people believe

'this is where his story begins.'

So if you come through this little doorway, you enter the Basilica.

This is a spectacular church.

These splendid, glittering mosaics

are how they would have been

when they were first created.

'The sixth century is a critical era for Christianity

'because the iconography of the religion wasn't yet secured.'

'There's no crucifixion here, for example.'

'Even the appearance of Jesus varies.'

The important series of mosaics here for us is right at the very top -

up near the roof,

about a metre high where there are 26 scenes from the life of Christ.

And somewhere in here -

they say - is the first depiction of the Devil in Western art.

And you have to look around to find it.

It's not going to be on the side with the Passion.

It's somewhere up here.

In fact, here it is. If you look up there,

there is a scene which may be the first Last Judgment in Western art

and what we're looking at is Christ in purple in the middle

and to his right is an angel dressed in red

and to his left is an angel dressed in blue

and that angel dressed in blue may well be Satan.

Why do we think it's Satan?

The answer is because in front of him you have these three goats.

Matthew's story in the Bible tells of when Christ comes in judgment

at the end of the world

and separates out the nations and humankind into the good - the sheep,

who he places to his right -

and the bad - the sinners, the goats, who go to the left.

There you can see the goats.

He's enacted that separation

and it's bizarre because,...

instead of the grizzly ruler of Hell who we're all familiar with,

you have, from down here, someone who looks radiant, he's glowing.

He is a beautiful angel. He's quite ephebic.

'And, of course, he's blue not red,

'which is exactly the opposite of what we might expect.'

'In modern minds, red is the colour of Hell,

'but in the sixth century,

'blue was the colour associated with darkness, with error.'

What's so strange about this image

in particular is that, in a sense, it's an exception. It's a one-off.

There are no depictions of the Devil that we know of

which exist before this mosaic.

'Which kind of makes you think.'

'Satan, supposedly central to Christianity -

'the personification of evil itself -

'seems absent from the artistic world for hundreds of years.'

'And when he does turn up, he arrives

'with no ceremony, almost hidden

'amongst a grand programme of decorative mosaics.'

'And not only that, he looks like an angel.'

'But this blue angel doesn't convince everyone.'

'Arguments have raged for decades about his significance.'

'Giovanni Gardini is a local religious historian and writer.'

-But what about this bloke up here - the blue angel, the Devil?

-No...

-It's the Devil.

-No.

I can see him. He has the goats.

'This argument about the blue angel

'encapsulates a big problem with the Devil in early Christian art.'

'There's no clarity about his image

'because there's no clarity about his role.'

I don't think art historians will ever agree on whether or not

that blue angel is meant to be the Devil.

It seems accepted that his colour is about evoking shadows and the night

to represent the erring ways of the goats or sinners in front of him.

It's in contrast to Christ who's associated with the light,

but no-one could argue that he is the personification of evil.

He's got this mysterious, unsettling aspect.

He emanates an aura of error,

but there are no horns, no tail or a cloven hoof

or even the merest whiff of sulphur,

so he seems to be almost more like a heavenly functionary.

He's a custodian of sinners and he's not Satan as we know him today.

'But seeing the Devil as an angel isn't as surprising as it might seem

'when you think of the theological context - a century before

'the Ravenna mosaic was created,

'Christian thinkers had fixed upon an ambiguous passage

'in the Book of Isaiah.'

'To them, it suggested that Lucifer, the most beautiful angel in Heaven,

'had rebelled against God and been cast out of paradise.'

'The fallen angel Lucifer had become the Devil.'

'But that was just about all contemporary artists had to go on.'

'Satan isn't even mentioned in Genesis.'

'So does this mean the Devil was simply a beautiful angel gone wrong

'and if so, how did he become the figure we recognise today -

'the implacable enemy of God

'and the tyrant who rules in Hell?'

'Here on the Venetian island of Torcello,

'there's a big clue about how the church and artists

'began to shape the Devil and his role in the universe.'

Thank you. Grazia.

Perfect.

I've come to Torcello,

which is the oldest populated island in the Venetian lagoon

and inside the Basilica, which was founded in 639,

is a stunning, monumental Byzantine mosaic

which dates from the 11th century.

The thing is I can see it,

but when I go in, it's so holy that I'm not allowed to talk about it.

'Which is actually kind of appropriate

'because the treasures inside the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta

'really do leave you speechless.'

'We don't know the names of the artists

'who created this glittering mosaic,

'but we do know that when it was completed in the 11th century,

'this was a blueprint of how the medieval church saw the world,

'the Underworld and the Devil's role in both.'

'The crucial point for me

'about this mosaic is that Hell is part of the cosmic hierarchy,

'so in the second tier from the top,

'you can see Christ in the middle of an elliptical shape, a mandala,

'and beneath him, coming out of the mandala,

'is a big red river of fire

'that cascades down several tiers into the depths of Hell.'

'Two of the biggest elements in that vision of Hell aren't demons at all,

'they're angels.'

'And the angels have long staffs prodding at kings and bishops,

'nuns from all over the world as far afield as Egypt and the Orient -

'their heads floating in the sea of fire -

'and fluttering around them are these little blue anti-cherubs.'

'The figure who sits on the throne is blue with wild hair and a beard.'

'And the throne has serpents' heads coming out of either side,

'eating, consuming sinners.'

'And that blue ogre has a smaller figure sitting on his lap.'

'Scholars disagree about who this could be.'

'Maybe he's the personification of Hell.'

'Maybe he's Judas the traitor.'

'He could even be the Devil himself

'sometimes known as the "little master",

'but whoever that little guy is, I like to think of this blue giant

'as the real Devil

'because we're on the route to some of the more monstrous Satans

'that would come to dominate the medieval imagination.'

'I think this is a very revealing work of art.'

'This blue giant looks like the prototype

'of the medieval Satan with his wild hair and fiery domain.'

'Five centuries after the blue angel of Ravenna,

'there's nothing angelic about him.'

'Nonetheless, the definite impression here

'is that this Torcello Devil

'is part of some medieval Christian work-flow diagram.'

'He's part of the divine plan -

'a cog in the cosmic machinery.'

I remember coming to this church several years ago

and being really taken

by that figure of the blue giant

because you can tell by looking into his eyes,

which look in different directions,

that there's something not right about this man.

He's deranged. I think of him as like a psychotic jailer

let loose in the dungeon of Hell with the blessing of God.

The point about this figure is that, weirdly enough

and as unexpected as it might seem, the Devil seems to be on God's side.

'I've come to King's College in London

'to meet Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockcliffe,

'who studies the strange early days of Satan

'to work out what role he played

'in the first centuries of Christianity.'

-He's a bureaucrat.

-Yeah, exactly!

There's no particular opprobrium attached to him as an individual,

he's just doing his job. Even the nastiest judges

and torturers who are taking a bit too much pleasure

in stripping Christians of their flesh and burning them alive -

quite often you'll find a sort of over-arching, distancing device

of saying that this was all done according to the providence of God.

Why do these early Christian fathers need to construct a Devil

that we might recognise today?

The need for a Devil is an important theological and philosophical one.

So the problem that Christians face and indeed non-Christians as well

is the big philosophical question, whence evil -

how does bad come into a good, creative universe?

And the Devil is important in helping to answer that question.

And in the early Christian world, there is that sense

that the Devil is everywhere, either in himself or through his minions,

and that you can't trust the visible, tangible world

because it's essentially deceptive.

'Which may explain why no-one in this period - church or artists -

'seems sure about what the Devil should look like?'

If you go looking for the Devil

that we'd recognise from later medieval art, you don't find him.

So you don't find anthropomorphising images of the Devil -

sort of a humanoid but with wings and a tail and cloven hooves.

You don't find that in this period.

'But there were plenty of other images around

'which could give Christian artists inspiration

'when they needed to depict Satan -

images of pagan gods once worshipped in Greece, Rome and Egypt.'

'Among them,

'the Greek god Pan, who soon became a popular source of inspiration

'for Christian artists.

I think early Christians understood that the pagan gods existed

and were demons, evil forces,

and early Christian literature refers to this idea of a world

humming with demons - there's a reference in Psalms which says

the gods of the heathen are demons.

It's something that's already there in scripture -

associating the demonic with things worshipped by pagans as gods.

It's the demonisation of that which what was once thought to be divine.

And it's competitive - saying your gods are actually minor demons

and our god trumps them all.

'In the first millennium,

'Christianity was still very much in competition

'with ancient pagan religions.'

'By demonizing the gods and monsters of the ancient world,

'the church not only won converts to its own cause,

'it had also finally found

'a convenient model for Satan.'

'The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

'has one of the finest collections of pagan artefacts in Britain.'

'These are the remnants of ancient religions

'that once stretched from Northern Europe to the Nile

'and included gods like the Egyptian deity Bes,

'who might provide clues as to why the Devil looks how he does today.'

I have three Bes figurines,

which is basically an Egyptian deity. Looks like little demon.

'Curator of Antiquities Dr Anja Ulbrich has looked some out for me.'

-He's quite ugly, isn't he?

-Yes, he definitely is.

-These are all representations of Bes?

-Of the same deity, yes.

-And they're all Egyptian?

-Yes.

-When do they date from?

-From pretty late period, which means the first millennium BC.

What's so noticeable is the sheer ugliness of this god.

He's got very squat, flat features.

He's heavily bearded

and it's interesting to think about the possible connections

with later representations

in Western art of the Devil because there are some similarities.

How much do you think that European artists were aware of Bes

when they were thinking about representing the Devil?

Since these amulets were exported all over the Eastern Mediterranean,

people definitely knew the image of Bes,

but he actually was worshipped

as a demon who protects you against evil.

-It's a protective deity.

-So he's the opposite of the Devil?

He's the opposite of the Devil because, as I said,

this is a protective deity.

We wouldn't consider the Devil protective in Christianity.

'So not only did early Christians appropriate the imagery

'of a pagan god like Bes,

'but they also trashed his reputation.'

'Bes - the lucky charm, the protector - became Bes the monster.'

'They demonized him and other pagan gods suffered a similar fate.'

Right, so who is this?

Well, this was a Greek satyr,

so he's one of the demons - half goat, half horse sometimes,

erm,... with a goat tail -

who celebrate the good life.

Big beard, pointed ears - goat ears -

often hairy flanks lower half of their body, cloven hooves, a tail.

These are all attributes that were later co-opted by the Devil.

-Exactly.

-This guy looks like Lucifer.

-Yes. Indeed.

-Or rather Satan.

This was probably the image they took

to create the image of Lucifer or the Devil in early Christianity.

So when we're thinking about the gradual evolution

of the way the Devil looks in art,

these could be the chief figures in that hinterland of influences

-that went into it?

-Yes, because Christianity draws

on the imagery known

to create Christian images with new connotations.

It's almost like he's the grandfather of the Devil

-if this is his dad...

-Yes, possibly!

So there's the progenitor, that's his offspring

-and his offspring is the Devil we know today.

-Indeed.

What I'm discovering is that the early history of the Devil

is much murkier than I imagined.

In the Bible, Satan has this role as God's accuser or attorney general.

He does God's dirty work, he tests and he obstructs.

But his duties are surprisingly bureaucratic and also minimal.

He's got more of a walk-on part than a star turn.

'As long as Christianity is in flux,

'then, Satan's role and image are also ambiguous,

'but when the imagery of pagan gods like Bes and Pan

'is borrowed by the church, then, all Hell breaks loose.'

'Satan not only gets a more definite look,

'but also becomes characterised with things Christianity wishes to reject

'or considers morally dubious.'

'This new Devil is as much a human as a religious creation.'

'He's leaving the Bible's pages and entering the control of the church

'and that makes the Devil

'and the church much more powerful.'

This is one of the most memorable paintings to have survived

from the Middle Ages - it's known as the Winchester Psalter.

There's a collection of manuscripts and this is one of the paintings.

At the end of the world,

the angel has cast that old wily serpent known as Satan

down into this bottomless pit - the bottomless pit of Hell -

and he's sealing it and locking the door so that no-one can get out.

Inside, you have all of the poor sinners

and the reason I love it is because they're all topsy-turvy.

They're going in every direction.

It's as if the sinners are sizzled

in this infernal tumble dryer.

'In Torcello, the angels punished the sinners as the Devil looked on.'

'Here the Devil has a new role.'

'He's in the thick of the torture

'and seems much more powerful than previous Devils.'

'Now he commands legions of terrifying demons

'all of whom are helping him in his diabolical work.'

Inside the jaws of the Hellmouth, as this great beast is known,

are all these sinners in this fetid, cramped, claustrophobic condition

where they're being tormented

by demons and Devils, some with big bushy beards,

which put you in mind of that Egyptian deity Bes,

some with Pan-like bestial hair coating their bodies.

A few have horns, some don't.

They're delighting in tormenting all of these sinners.

So we imagine within Hell all of these people being chewed up.

You can see the great jaws, the teeth -

they're not even canine teeth, they're molars,

to make that excruciating grinding process continue for longer.

'When the Winchester Psalter

'was created in the middle of the 12th century, the artist behind it

'strained every sinew to make the Devil more powerful and terrifying

'than ever before - the tyrannical leader of armies of crazed demons!'

'And they wanted to bring the real world

'into Hell too.'

'The Devil's victims include secular leaders like kings and queens

'as well as heretical monks.'

'The Winchester Psalter is the medieval church's enemies list.'

Whoever's created it has let their imagination run riot.

That's what's wonderful about this. It's a topsy-turvy, scatalogical,

highly energetic, volatile, big fantasy

of what happens in Hell in the afterlife.

'We'll probably never know the names of the individual artists

'who created this Psalter.'

'While their vision of Hell may have chimed more or less with the church,

'it also looks like these artists really embraced this new Devil.'

'They seem to love the opportunity 'to depict gruesome scenarios

'featuring Satan and assorted unfortunate sinners.'

'This was true across medieval England where even great cathedrals

'like Lincoln

'became canvases on which artists could project some dark fantasies.'

'Dr Nicholas Bennett is Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral.'

I'm a 13th century pilgrim,

approaching the cathedral from the south,

but before I go in, I'm confronted by this sculptural design.

-What am I looking at?

-This is a reminder of what happens to those who are not good in life

and what happens to those who ARE good.

There's one of the damned. You can see his bum sticking out.

-Exactly. That's right.

-Really quite close to the genitals of the demon next to it.

Yes, having a very satisfying experience, one would think.

That's actually quite prominent.

-No, there's no messing about...

-We can't sidestep that.

Above the door into the cathedral

is a very explicit, erect Devil's penis...

-Yes.

-Why?

Well, it's all part of this very in-your-face sort of style.

It's showing them

that it's not a pleasant experience going to Hell.

You're going to be manhandled by these grotesque, horrible demons.

It's going to be totally removed from the love of God.

CHORAL SINGING

'Arts like this make Satan a recognizably medieval character.'

'The punishments he inflicts would have been immediately recognised

'by people whose lives were themselves tough and violent.'

'While God remained ethereal and unknowable,

'Satan, in contrast, was found

'in amongst all the sex, violence and brutality of medieval life.'

I feel like I've stumbled

-into a filming of The Wicker Man or something.

-..worship me as thy Lord... >

'This is a mystery play.'

'These were first performed in France more than 900 years ago

'as a way of bringing important passages of the Bible to life.'

I am a devil...

'They became popular across Europe from Germany to Italy to England.'

-Show the might...

-'Lay people knew little

'about the arcane theological arguments of the church fathers,

'but they knew a Devil when they saw one, so these plays

'became the most influential representations so far

'of the Devil in art.'

'Often painters copied the costumes and look that lay people created.'

'The next incarnation of the Devil's appearance came, not from priests,

'but from the terrified imaginations of medieval lay people.'

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

Right, well...

I think it maybe conjures some of the spirit

of the mystery cycle plays whereby cosmic grand themes

were made comprehensible in quite broad brush strokes to the masses

and this was the great tradition of popular culture of the day.

'When mystery plays were at their height

'in the 13th and 14th centuries,

'they reinforced an image of Satan in people's minds -

'the all-powerful source of evil, the ruler of Hell.'

'And a tyrant standing in opposition to God.'

'The subtle ambiguity of the Ravenna and Torcello Devils was long gone.'

Lo! I nourish sin

for the confusion of Man.

Draw him to my dungeon

in fire!

'This Devil perfectly fitted a world

'where death could come quickly and horribly.'

'Cities all over Europe were regularly savaged by the plague

'with devastating consequences.'

'One of the most vivid first-person accounts of this terror

'was written by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio.'

"Few of those who caught it ever recovered

"and, in most cases, death occurred

"within three days from the appearance of the symptoms,

"some people dying more rapidly than others."

"The stench of dead bodies, sickness and medicines

"seem to fill and pollute the whole of the atmosphere."

"In the face of so much affliction and misery,

"all respect for the laws of God and Man have virtually broken down."

'As death raged across the continent,

'the plague was seen as nothing less

'than the work of the Devil.'

In many ways, the Middle Ages were a period of calamity and woe.

War, poverty, pestilence, famine - these were ever-present threats.

Europe suffered epidemics - the bubonic plague or the Black Death.

In 1348, for instance, Tuscany was convulsed by the plague.

Half of the citizens living in Florence were wiped out.

In Sienna, 65 per cent of the population were killed.

You can imagine fevers, running sores,

the stench of rotting flesh and forgotten carcasses.

It must have been a dreadful, precarious time to be alive.

'And that dreadful, dangerous nature of life in medieval Europe

'erupted in terrifying artistic visions

'of the Inferno.'

'The original version of this Devil is found in the Baptistry -

'one of the most sacred churches in Florence.'

'It was created around 1260 by an artist called Coppo di Marcovaldo.'

This is a Satan that is very close to my heart.

He dates from a period where the look of the Devil

is starting to become crystallised.

There are various attributes which point him out to be the Devil.

The strange, paradoxical thing

is those attributes are actually quite miscellaneous.

He's surrounded by animals - the serpents on the throne, locusts,

a fat toad, his head - his horns,

it's bald, it's bright blue. His torso is green.

He has a thick beard with snaking goat's hair curls, and it's clear

that this work of art was inspired by the bestiaries -

the anthologies of fabled magical animals

that were so beloved of medieval readers.

'The result is one of the most persuasive visions of Satan

'as the tyrant of Hell.'

To the medieval onlooker, this was a thing of terrifying awe.

They would have looked up at this Devil and been scared witless

and you get a sense from this of the instability of the medieval world.

'Surely Coppo di Marcovaldo drew on the ravages he saw around him

'when he created this warped, terrifying, grotesque Devil.'

'This is the ultimate

'diabolical image - a perfect horrible example

'of art reflecting the dreadful mood of the times.'

And this image

was seen by a number of extremely important Italian artists

and writers and thinkers.

Two of them would go on to define

the way we still think about the Devil today.

'One of them was the Florentine artist and architect Giotto,

'who's often called the father of modern Western art.'

'It was said of Giotto

'that he translated the art of painting from Greek into Latin,

'changing for ever what painting could achieve.'

'And his own greatest achievement

'is the interior of this chapel in the northern Italian town of Padua.'

I'm feeling exceptionally fortunate

because it's very early in the morning

and I've been allowed in here before the crowds come

to have a look at Giotto's famous fresco cycle in the Arena Chapel.

And it's completely spectacular. It's almost overwhelming.

Behind me here

is the most monumental fresco of all of the frescos in this great cycle.

It's a vision of the Last Judgment, which dominates

the entire western wall of the chapel.

'Here in the Arena Chapel

'at the turn of the 14th century,

'Giotto created the quintessential medieval vision of Hell

'with its monstrous, pot-bellied Satan

'consuming then excreting sinners.'

'You can see the influence of the Florentine Devil,

'completed only a few decades before Giotto started work

'and there are older influences as well.'

'We first saw these rivers of fire in Torcello

'more than two centuries ago.'

'Like the real world around him, Giotto's Devil is vicious

'and the Hell he inhabits is a nasty, brutal place.'

You see people being tortured in very specific ways.

They're manacled, whipped, hanged.

There's a bloke who's being skewered on a spit.

You can see Judas hanged with his bowels hanging out.

He's been eviscerated. There's a number of sinners here

who seem to be punished for sexual sins.

The church has always had

a problematic relationship with sexuality and we see that here.

For example, by Satan's left hip, there's a tiny, lizard-like,

green, scaly monster that's chewing on a man's penis

and if you look up behind Satan,

there are four of the damned hanging

and two of them have been strung up by their genitals.

'It's a catalogue of inventive, diabolical sanctions,

'but the real story of the Arena Chapel, I think,

'is that this Devil is the least innovative part of the whole cycle,

'both theologically and artistically.'

'Though there are fascinating elements

'of the real world here,

'the power of this Last Judgment as a piece of art

'pales in comparison to what Giotto has been able to achieve elsewhere.'

'In the other panels, there's a revolution going on.'

'The way that people are depicted as three-dimensional,

'as beautifully and vulnerably human,

'marks a fundamental change in art.'

'This is what they mean when they say that Giotto changed for ever

'the language of painting.'

'Seen in this wider context,

'Giotto's Devil seems a little bit, well, unconvincing

'and he isn't the only troublesome Devil in the chapel.'

Giotto didn't just paint one Devil in the Arena Chapel.

He painted two and the second one is just up there

where we see the scene in which Judas is taking money

and it's the moment that we know he's going to betray Christ

and you see in that image,

in that fresco,

part of the problem that Giotto faced when he was painting the Devil

because his genius in this spectacular space

was that he was taking art history away from its Byzantine traditions,

which were a bit more abstract where things were not naturalistic

and he's introducing a much more recognisably everyday human sense

into the way

that artists perceived the world.

These are real people located in real space.

And then he paints the Devil,

a figure who isn't from the real world, who isn't a human actor,

and it's almost like he can't quite work out how to render him

if he's not thinking about the pictorial

and psychological reality of OUR world.

Taking this being from Western imagination,

from the church's teaching of the afterlife

and its panoply of cosmic beings,

doesn't quite work here because you can see that Devil

is almost two-dimensional.

He's a shadowy cardboard-cutout Devil.

What that fresco foretells is that

Satan was going to have to evolve

otherwise he risked being eliminated

from the art historical story altogether.

'But Satan was rescued by another Florentine

'who'd visited Giotto

'while he was completing his frescoes in the Arena Chapel.'

'Dante Alighieri was a young poet

'who found himself on the wrong side

'of a bitter political power struggle in Florence.'

'By the start of the 14th century, he was in exile, never to return.'

'By then, he'd begun work on an immense trilogy of poems

'called The Divine Comedy

'and the most famous of these was Inferno - Hell.'

'This epic poem would transform

'the way that artists thought about Satan.'

It has a very famous beginning.

"Halfway through our trek in life,

"I found myself in this dark wood, miles away from the right road."

He's lost, spiritually lost,

and he encounters a guide - the Roman poet Virgil - who leads him

into the Underworld.

And Dante imagines this very schematic vision of Hell.

He sees it as a succession of circles, almost in a funnel shape,

narrowing as we move towards the centre of the Earth

and in each circle, he encounters different sets of sinners.

Some are famous figures from classical mythology,

others - and this is part of the poem's brilliance -

are contemporary political figures

so that society of Italy at the time is referenced throughout the poem.

Dante's almost getting his revenge, his own back, on various people

and the climax of Inferno

comes right towards the end, in Canto 34,

when eventually, Dante and Virgil happen upon

Satan himself.

"The emperor of that dire empire was stuck chest deep in the ice

"and I'd come nearer to a giant than a giant would to his arm,

"so you see how enormous he was with all of him on this scale."

"If he's as ugly as he was lovely when he stood up to his maker,

"all pain indeed derives from him."

"And his six eyes weep,

"his three chins drip with tears and gory slaver."

"In each mouth, his teeth grind away at a sinner."

One difference about this Satan is we're moving away - it's 1300 -

from the medieval conception of the Devil as this odd overlord of Hell,

the "ruler of Hell" idea.

Here it's quite different. We're invited to imagine

how beautiful he was as Lucifer before he fell

and to imagine him as the origin of all sorrow in the world.

We're being invited to have... to imagine his own mental health.

'Dante does what Giotto doesn't -

'he makes Satan three-dimensional.'

'There are some hints of empathy with the Devil in this poem.'

'His Satan is fundamentally different

'from either of Giotto's Devils in the Arena Chapel

'and it's no accident, I think,

'that artists who came later took Dante as their inspiration,

'not Giotto.'

'Romantic artists like Gustave Dore loved the Inferno

'and they played on the tragedy of the Devil

'when they illustrated the poem centuries later.'

Dante's Satan is a vision

that rang down through the ages.

Milton was thinking directly about The Divine Comedy

when he wrote Paradise Lost

and I don't think you could find his Satan with all of his grandeur

without a conception of the Devil which Dante offers,

which moves us forwards towards the modern world.

'And this is important

'because as soon as Satan enters the real world,

'as soon as he is physically defined and treated in a human way,

'then, in a sense, he ceases to be Satan

'and becomes something else - a much more human,

'much less supernatural image of evil.'

BELL TOLLS

'This is such a radical change

'that it poses an important question -

'who's now in charge of what the Devil looks like or represents?'

'Is it the church or is it the artists?'

'By the 15th century,

'this battle was being waged on the streets of Italy.'

'In Florence, an apocalyptic preacher called Girolamo Savonarola

'took over the city - he was obsessed with Satan,

'blaming him for turning Florentines into corrupt, avaricious sinners.'

'His followers burnt books and art that they considered subversive.'

'Even for the 15th century, this was pretty old-time religion.'

Savonarola led a revolution

that saw him become virtual dictator of Florence.

You might think the church would support his puritanical campaigns

against Satan and lust, but it didn't.

In fact, it excommunicated him

and burnt him and two of his lieutenants at the stake.

'But Savonarola's revolution

'had caused political chaos in Italy

'and his hellish sermons resonated in towns and cities

'riven by clannish violence and famine.'

'Among the crowds watching his death

'had been the artist Luca Signorelli

'whose apocalyptic frescoes in the cathedral of the town of Orvieto

'captured the dangerous, uncertain mood

'of the times.'

It's a beautiful cathedral. I love the stripy effect of the brickwork.

Anyway, the thing I'm coming to see

is in a chapel down at one end of the cathedral.

This is it.

With a bunch of tourists.

It's kind of... On the outside, it's relatively spare -

there's a geometric feel of the cathedral itself,

but in here, there's supreme embellishment everywhere you look.

A spectacular, tumultuous effect,

where every single fresco has been overloaded with figures

and the composition is fit to burst.

We see here a scene in which the Antichrist

is giving one of his false sermons,

reckoning in the final period of the Apocalypse.

To the right are the elect - the people who are chosen for Heaven,

they're being lifted up to Heaven as we go over the altar.

On the other side, people - sinners -

are being plunged down towards Hell

and then we see the punishment of the damned.

Really brightly coloured.

You come in and it's quite hard

not to feel excited by this quite vigorous,

quite modern, contemporary-feeling approach.

What's interesting about it that strikes me immediately

is that Hell is quite bright.

There's no darkness.

There is claustrophobia, with bodies all writhed and massing together,

but there isn't that sense

of the surrounds being some horribly oppressive sensation upon them.

What you see are demons who are brightly coloured,

but, in many ways, they're not that different to the sinners.

It's a tumultuous,

sadomasochistic, almost kinky,

fetishistic fantasy.

This is as much porno as it is Inferno.

And right in the middle, clutching a woman

with her breasts not so far from his face

is a blue demon with a horn in the middle of his head

and lots of people, tradition has it, say that

it's a self-portrait of Signorelli - one demon doing the tormenting.

If that isn't an example of artistic sympathy for the Devil,

I don't know what is.

'Signorelli had recreated Hell right here on Earth.'

'Outside, people were dying in vicious political feuds

'or succumbing to the plague.'

'Inside, the end of the world was depicted in minute, horrific detail

'and many have seen Savanorola the revolutionary preacher

'right at the centre of this work.'

'The false prophet

'taking instructions from Satan before the end of the world

'is, the theory goes, a thinly veiled attack on Savanorola

'whose obsession with the Devil had caused so much chaos.'

SHE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

'Alessandra Cannistra is a local religious historian.'

How popular is the chapel with tourists who come to the cathedral?

'Signorelli was less concerned

'about how the Devil and Hell fitted into the cosmic hierarchy.'

'What obsessed him was the real pain and suffering of the human world.'

'In Orvieto, the violence is human,

'the demons are human.'

'Even Satan himself had never looked so much like a man.'

'Signorelli's work in Orvieto was one of the final Last Judgments

'in Western art.'

'The reasons why are contained in the frescoes themselves,

'which reflect the modern world as much as traditional religion.'

'The hold of religion on art was waning.'

'Perhaps the Devil didn't appeal to artists

'who were now more concerned with the human world around them

'rather than the supernatural worlds above and below them.'

'But while the church's monopoly on the Devil may have been waning,

'this wasn't the end of the Devil's story.'

'There is one incredible example

'of what happens when artists create images of the Devil

'not for religious authorities nor for the education of the masses,

'but for the enjoyment of a very rich individual.'

'So I've come to Chantilly in Northern France

'where I hope to see how three brothers from the Low Countries

're-imagined Satan for Jean, Duke of Berry,

'who was one of France's richest aristocrats.'

The Duke of Berry was one of the most extravagant art patrons ever.

He was the son, brother and uncle of successive kings of France.

First, he collected buildings -

constructing and renovating 17 chateaux.

Next he turned each one into an Aladdin's cave full of exotic loot.

So, over the years, he amassed tapestries and jewelleries,

caskets, cups, chalices, statuettes, antique cameos,

even one of Charlemagne's teeth, supposedly.

He loved animals and his menageries were stocked with lions and bears

and swans and peacocks.

He even boasted an ostrich and a monkey, a wolf and a leopard

as well as no fewer than 1500 dogs.

'A bibliophile as well as an art lover, the Duke had a library

'containing around 300 manuscripts,

'including 14 books of hours - private devotional books

'which were created specifically for wealthy individuals.'

'And because he, not the church, had commissioned them,

'no pope or priest would have any influence

'over how these books would look.'

'One such book is the Tres Riches Heures,

'begun by three brothers - Paul, Johan and Herman Limbourg -

'around 1412, one of the finest illuminated manuscripts

'from the late Middle Ages.'

'Sadly the original is too precious for me to leaf through,

'but as well as this original, the Musee Conde here in Chantilly

'also holds a perfect replica.'

So here we have Satan,

seated in a kind of bed.

'Olivier Bosc is the museum's Chief Librarian.'

It looks like a griddle iron. There are flames beneath,

so he is almost being tortured, but he doesn't seem to mind too much.

-No, it's his element!

-It is! There's this whirl,

this vortex of smoke and sulphur coming out of his jaws

with these people swirling around these little sinners in freefall.

And he's surrounded by these demons

who are themselves very fierce with their batwings

and big horns and they even have these bellows to fan the flames.

'So far, so familiar.'

'This Devil's part of the tradition

'we've seen throughout the Middle Ages - malevolent, inhuman.'

'Striking though this image may be, it's not what I've come to see.'

'That's because the Limbourgs were interested

'in how the Devil came to be in a fiery Hell in the first place

'and they've gone right back to his 5th century origins

'as Lucifer, the most beautiful angel of them all

'who challenged God and was expelled from Heaven.'

This is a famous image from the book of hours, the Tres Riches Heures,

and what we see here is the fall of the rebel angel Lucifer.

Exactly. He's in the middle.

On the top of the image, you've got God.

He's surrounded by angels.

And as you may notice, the angels are sitting around him,

but some of the seats are vacant because these angels are...

-The rebel angels are cast out.

-Yeah, exactly.

So these angels we see falling down here,

we imagine they once had their seat in Heaven.

What's so significant

about this image is that previously, the Devil mostly looked grotesque

and yet here is the Devil

and he looks beautiful, a beautiful, very good-looking Apollonian man

who has these resplendent blue robes

and with his retinue, he's falling in a V-shape, which draws the eye

down towards the Devil

and he's in the process of changing

from the most beautiful angel in Heaven to the Devil,

going down into the centre of the earth where Hell was imagined to be.

'The Limbourgs have captured the moment when Lucifer the rebel angel

'was cast out from Heaven

'and they've imagined him not as an angry, sullen, vengeful tyrant,

'but as a beautiful man - weeping, terrified, distraught.'

'Where is the evil in this image? Not in Lucifer.'

'Indeed, arguably, this is the most beautiful Devil in Western art.'

We always figure ourselves, you know,

the frontier between good and evil as something very, uh, straight.

You were born on one side and you don't cross the side.

Here is the proof you can cross the border, you know?

And here the fallen angel is proof

of this duality - of the humanity and the duality

of the human character. That's why it's an important work for us.

'In these two images, separated by only a few pages of this book,

'the Limbourg brothers have captured the Devil's split personality.'

'They've chronicled the journey of Lucifer from angel to Devil -

'from Heaven to Hell and into the forefront of the human imagination.'

'One image is the epitome of Satan the tyrant.'

'The other is more haunting,

'depicting the heartbreaking hopelessness of Lucifer's rebellion,

'which would inspire generations of artists to come.'

'The modern fascination with the dark, tragic side of our nature

'can be seen expressed here

'in this spectacular 15th century manuscript.'

'The Limbourgs' book of hours completes the journey of the Devil

'from the Old Testament to the edge of the Renaissance.'

'We've come full circle from the mysterious blue angel in Ravenna

'to the beautiful, blue and tragic angel in Chantilly.'

'In between,

'the Devil has personified a terrible bestial evil

'while becoming more and more recognizably human.'

'He's been the repository of our greatest fears

'and, as we've come to understand him, has helped us understand more

'about the darker side of our own natures.'

'Above all, he is a great work of art

'and a very complex, very human creation.'

I now believe that Leonardo da Vinci

was on to something when he said

"If the painter wishes to depict creatures or Devils in Hell,

"with what an abundance of invention he teems."

I think the Devil is dredged straight from the sulphurous depths

of the unconscious.

If God is Western culture's super ego,

then, the arch fiend is its id.

Just as a psychotherapist finds hidden significance in a nightmare,

so the fluctuating appearance of the Devil

reveals the darker reality of each age that dreamt him up.

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