0:00:15 > 0:00:18The Valley of the Dordogne seems like a good place for an Englishman
0:00:18 > 0:00:20to think about France.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23A country I've loved since I first came here as a teenager
0:00:23 > 0:00:25to learn the language.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30This is the very heart of la France profonde...
0:00:31 > 0:00:35..and how profoundly peaceful it seems, with its fat rivers,
0:00:35 > 0:00:38stately chateaux, neat vineyards.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44On a sunny day it's easy to believe that this place, this nation,
0:00:44 > 0:00:47has been and always will be an earthly paradise.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54But elsewhere, things are not so peaceful.
0:01:03 > 0:01:08Beneath the placid surface lies a republic in the throes of violent change.
0:01:08 > 0:01:12Dogged by economic stagnation and unemployment.
0:01:12 > 0:01:14Assailed by terrorism.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18Failing the brave promise of liberty, equality,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21fraternity for all its citizens.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24MUSIC PLAYS
0:01:29 > 0:01:33In the suburb of St Denis, on the northern outskirts of Paris,
0:01:33 > 0:01:37you can see the truly varied faces of this modern nation.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40But it's a reality many in France refused to accept.
0:01:42 > 0:01:45There are people who say that this place doesn't even deserve to be
0:01:45 > 0:01:48considered as part of France.
0:01:48 > 0:01:50But of course they're wrong.
0:01:50 > 0:01:54The truth is that France has never been just one thing.
0:01:58 > 0:02:01Proof of that lies at the heart of this ancient marketplace,
0:02:01 > 0:02:04in a building that's nothing less than the French equivalent of
0:02:04 > 0:02:06Westminster Abbey.
0:02:06 > 0:02:08The Basilica of St Denis.
0:02:08 > 0:02:13Final resting place of every French king and queen, bar three,
0:02:13 > 0:02:15stretching back over 1500 years.
0:02:17 > 0:02:21Don't be fooled by the tranquillity of this Gothic crypt into thinking
0:02:21 > 0:02:26that the history laid out here is one of serene continuity,
0:02:26 > 0:02:29or some ideal of pure Frenchness.
0:02:29 > 0:02:31Just like the market traders outside,
0:02:31 > 0:02:34these long dead rulers were a mixed bunch.
0:02:34 > 0:02:39Flemish, German, Italian, even English lie alongside the French.
0:02:39 > 0:02:43Like every great country, France has always been a mongrel nation...
0:02:45 > 0:02:48..and also a nation shaped by violence.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56There's no better example of than poor Marie Antoinette.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59Born in Austria, she became queen to Louis XVI,
0:02:59 > 0:03:02then lost her head to the French Revolution.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07Her remains, like his, were flung into an unmarked grave,
0:03:07 > 0:03:11only to be exhumed and given the dignity of royal burial some
0:03:11 > 0:03:1330 years later.
0:03:13 > 0:03:17This monument by the sculptor, Edme Gaulle, marks the spot,
0:03:17 > 0:03:23its sugar-coated surface applied to an end that was very bitter indeed.
0:03:28 > 0:03:33Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as they say here.
0:03:33 > 0:03:37The more things change, the more they stay the same.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40And as the story of Gaulle's monument proves,
0:03:40 > 0:03:45French history has certainly been subject to violent change.
0:03:45 > 0:03:50And this, too, is the story of the art of France.
0:03:50 > 0:03:55A struggle between revolution and tradition, freedom and constraint,
0:03:55 > 0:03:59rulers and a people who didn't always want to be ruled.
0:04:00 > 0:04:07And out of that tension between the change and the meme chose would be
0:04:07 > 0:04:11born some of the greatest art the world has ever seen.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42Echoes of revolution linger in the Basilica of St Denis.
0:04:42 > 0:04:44And I don't mean the one that did for Marie Antoinette.
0:04:45 > 0:04:50Almost 1000 years ago, another revolution took place here.
0:04:50 > 0:04:53The first revolution in French art.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56The invention of Gothic architecture.
0:04:56 > 0:05:02CHOIR SINGS
0:05:11 > 0:05:17The Gothic style transformed the churches and cathedrals of the
0:05:17 > 0:05:19Western world and it all began here.
0:05:19 > 0:05:24St Denis was the world's very first Gothic cathedral.
0:05:24 > 0:05:28It was the brainchild of a man called Abbe Suger,
0:05:28 > 0:05:32who also wrote about it, describing the process by which the
0:05:32 > 0:05:37original church was transformed into this magnificent cathedral.
0:05:41 > 0:05:47Beginning in the year 1137, St Denis, already by then 500 years old,
0:05:47 > 0:05:51suddenly emerged from its Romanesque chrysalis.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54Spurred on by the visionary and ambitious Suger,
0:05:54 > 0:05:58St Denis' master masons borrowed from Islamic architecture,
0:05:58 > 0:06:04boldly synthesising Eastern ideas about structure, volume and form,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07with native innovations from Normandy and Burgundy.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11So, yes, Gothic was French, but spoken, you might say,
0:06:11 > 0:06:12with an Arab accent.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16And with what spectacular results.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21Round arches were replaced by pointed ribbed arches that sprang
0:06:21 > 0:06:27from clustered columns, drawing the eye up to vaulted ceilings high above.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30Massive walls, dark and defensive,
0:06:30 > 0:06:34were opened up to let the sacred light come flooding in.
0:06:35 > 0:06:41Suger also offered a beautiful justification for the whole project.
0:06:41 > 0:06:46A response to those who said he'd spent too much money.
0:06:46 > 0:06:51"The dull mind rises to truth through material things."
0:07:03 > 0:07:07The transformation of St Denis proved to be enormously influential.
0:07:14 > 0:07:18Within the space of a generation, the French style, as it was called,
0:07:18 > 0:07:22was sprouting up everywhere, in ever more complex, ambitious forms.
0:07:24 > 0:07:28And, for me, the most sublime expression of the Gothic spirit,
0:07:28 > 0:07:33ascending upwards perhaps to truth, certainly to beauty,
0:07:33 > 0:07:36is a jewel-like building in the heart of Paris.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38The Sainte-Chapelle.
0:07:39 > 0:07:41MUSIC PLAYS
0:08:02 > 0:08:06What a magical, beguiling space this is.
0:08:06 > 0:08:12It's the function of architecture in here to abolish itself,
0:08:12 > 0:08:15to efface itself, so you're unaware of structure.
0:08:15 > 0:08:21You experience the entire space in terms of light and colour.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26It's almost like a gigantic light box.
0:08:26 > 0:08:31In fact, it makes more sense to think of this place as a box
0:08:31 > 0:08:38than to think of it as a building because it was actually designed to
0:08:38 > 0:08:40house one particular thing.
0:08:40 > 0:08:44The most precious thing in the entire world.
0:08:47 > 0:08:53In 1238, King Louis IX of France, Saint Louis as he became known,
0:08:53 > 0:08:57acquired, at huge expense, nothing less than the crown of thorns.
0:08:57 > 0:08:59The holiest relic in all of Christendom.
0:09:01 > 0:09:05The Sainte-Chapelle was built in flamboyant Gothic style
0:09:05 > 0:09:06to house the precious relic.
0:09:08 > 0:09:14A decade later, in 1248, dressed as a penitent, barefoot,
0:09:14 > 0:09:18Louis himself carried the crown of thorns into the Sainte-Chapelle,
0:09:18 > 0:09:20and placed it on the altar.
0:09:21 > 0:09:27Now, for Louis it was a gesture of huge significance.
0:09:27 > 0:09:30Spiritual and also political.
0:09:30 > 0:09:36Because, by acquiring the most holy object in the universe,
0:09:36 > 0:09:43he had, by implication, by placing it here in Paris, here in France,
0:09:43 > 0:09:47he had made France the very centre of the world.
0:09:52 > 0:09:56But what was daily life like in France in the Middle Ages?
0:09:56 > 0:10:01And why did the Gothic mind yearn to rise above the world of material things?
0:10:01 > 0:10:05In the Chateau of Chantilly, 30 miles north of Paris,
0:10:05 > 0:10:08is a medieval treasure of another kind,
0:10:08 > 0:10:10and it suggests some answers to those questions.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16The Tres Riches Heures is a prayer book,
0:10:16 > 0:10:19created in the early 15th century by Flemish artists,
0:10:19 > 0:10:23the Limbourg brothers, for a great French nobleman, the Duc de Berry.
0:10:25 > 0:10:28It begins with a celebrated sequence showing the months of the
0:10:28 > 0:10:30year, which, even in facsimile,
0:10:30 > 0:10:34reveal a breathtaking mastery of the medieval illuminator's art.
0:10:39 > 0:10:43One of the distinguishing features of these illustrations of the months
0:10:43 > 0:10:47is the sense that they gave one of a perfectly ordered world.
0:10:48 > 0:10:54Labour is depicted as a graceful, easeful, almost effortless activity.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58The peasants might be barefoot but they seem almost to dance as they
0:10:58 > 0:11:03scythe, as they rake, and as they gather the hay into these...
0:11:04 > 0:11:06..very neat little mounds.
0:11:14 > 0:11:15Here we are in September.
0:11:16 > 0:11:18It's one of my favourites.
0:11:18 > 0:11:21In the very middle of the scene, what do we see?
0:11:21 > 0:11:27This figure actually bares his arse inadvertently while picking grapes.
0:11:27 > 0:11:31And I think it's rather like some of the grotesques that you find in
0:11:31 > 0:11:35Gothic cathedrals. A little detail that's meant to raise a smile.
0:11:40 > 0:11:47The months end with this really extraordinary image of December.
0:11:48 > 0:11:49It's a boar hunt.
0:11:51 > 0:11:55It's a scene of quite considerable savagery.
0:11:55 > 0:12:00This pack of dogs tearing at the flesh of the boar.
0:12:00 > 0:12:04The dog handler can't actually tear the animal off the beast.
0:12:04 > 0:12:08I think it's an image that reminds us that throughout this period
0:12:08 > 0:12:13that death was, for most people, the most overwhelming reality of all.
0:12:18 > 0:12:23In this period, substantial chunks of what we now think of as France
0:12:23 > 0:12:25were claimed by others.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30The Burgundians, the Flemish and the Goddams, the foul-mouthed English,
0:12:30 > 0:12:33who fought a hundred-year war to stake their claim.
0:12:34 > 0:12:38And riding alongside war were death's other trusty allies,
0:12:38 > 0:12:40Pestilence and Famine.
0:12:44 > 0:12:49And so, while death triumphed, France remained a work in progress,
0:12:49 > 0:12:52politically fractured, culturally uncertain.
0:12:57 > 0:13:00One of the great French myths, repeated through the centuries,
0:13:00 > 0:13:05is the idea that France has somehow always been at the very centre of
0:13:05 > 0:13:07human civilisation.
0:13:07 > 0:13:10But when it comes to art, that's really not quite true,
0:13:10 > 0:13:15because between 1450 and the beginnings of the 17th century,
0:13:15 > 0:13:20France produced not one single painter of international fame.
0:13:20 > 0:13:23In fact, during the Renaissance, if the French were famous for anything,
0:13:23 > 0:13:26it was for destroying art rather than creating it.
0:13:26 > 0:13:30In the 1490s, the troops of Louis XII invaded Milan and with
0:13:30 > 0:13:35their bows and arrows, shot to pieces Leonardo da Vinci's great
0:13:35 > 0:13:41model for what was to have been the largest equestrian sculpture in the world.
0:13:41 > 0:13:45It's not quite true to say the French made no contribution to
0:13:45 > 0:13:46Renaissance art and architecture.
0:13:46 > 0:13:50This rare but beautifully elegant courtyard,
0:13:50 > 0:13:56with its bas-relief sculptures by John Goujon is proof of that.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59But its very rarity does tell a story.
0:13:59 > 0:14:03So, too, the fact that Francois premier, Francis I,
0:14:03 > 0:14:07the French king who did more than any other to bring the Renaissance
0:14:07 > 0:14:11to France, did so by importing Italian artists,
0:14:11 > 0:14:13notably Leonardo himself.
0:14:13 > 0:14:18Perhaps a form of consolation for having destroyed that great statue.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21The fact remains, that during the Renaissance,
0:14:21 > 0:14:24France was not the leader, it was the follower.
0:14:28 > 0:14:33But not every Renaissance man in France was labelled,
0:14:33 > 0:14:34"Made in Italy".
0:14:34 > 0:14:37- So have you got the keys?- Yes.
0:14:37 > 0:14:41One of the greatest thinkers and writers of the era,
0:14:41 > 0:14:45indeed of all time, was born and lived for most of his life in a
0:14:45 > 0:14:48remote chateau in south-west France.
0:14:48 > 0:14:52He developed new ways of thinking and seeing that would transform the
0:14:52 > 0:14:57literature and art, not just of France, but of the Western world.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00His name was Michel de Montaigne,
0:15:00 > 0:15:05and he was born at the chateau of Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne in 1533.
0:15:05 > 0:15:07A true child of the Renaissance,
0:15:07 > 0:15:10he was brought up to speak Latin as his mother tongue.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15Trained in the law and active in the court rooms and Parliament of
0:15:15 > 0:15:20Bordeaux, he retired at 38, weary, he tells us,
0:15:20 > 0:15:22of the court and public duties.
0:15:23 > 0:15:27He retreated here, to a simple tower on his family estate,
0:15:27 > 0:15:32where he surrounded himself with the works of his beloved classical authors.
0:15:48 > 0:15:49Wow! Merci.
0:15:51 > 0:15:52Thank you.
0:15:53 > 0:15:57I've read about this sky with its stars.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01Montaigne's bedroom was just above here and he used to joke,
0:16:01 > 0:16:05I'm one of the few people in the world who actually sleeps above the sky!
0:16:15 > 0:16:20France at the time was racked by religious wars with thousands of
0:16:20 > 0:16:25Protestants massacred by Catholic mobs in Paris and elsewhere on
0:16:25 > 0:16:27Saint Bartholomew's day.
0:16:27 > 0:16:30Montaigne, himself a Catholic,
0:16:30 > 0:16:33practised a philosophy of tolerance and moderation.
0:16:34 > 0:16:38From his tower, he honoured the open mind and the right of every
0:16:38 > 0:16:42individual to challenge man-made authority.
0:16:42 > 0:16:46In a nutshell, he was France's first great freethinker.
0:16:50 > 0:16:56The French intellectual tradition is often all about order, rules,
0:16:56 > 0:17:01the system. But Montaigne, who's at the start of it all, well,
0:17:01 > 0:17:03he's the great exception to the rule.
0:17:03 > 0:17:07He's all about disorder, irregularity.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10You could even compare his thought to this uneven,
0:17:10 > 0:17:12winding stone staircase.
0:17:12 > 0:17:13He himself said,
0:17:13 > 0:17:17"I'm never quite sure where my thoughts are going to take me.
0:17:17 > 0:17:19"All I can do is follow them."
0:17:22 > 0:17:24BIRDS CAW
0:17:26 > 0:17:29This feels a bit like a bird's nest up here.
0:17:29 > 0:17:30And the ceiling's wonderful.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38Montaigne's study is a miraculous survival from a vanished world,
0:17:38 > 0:17:42its beams inscribed with his favourite sayings
0:17:42 > 0:17:47from the Bible but, above all, from the stoic writers of the classical age.
0:17:47 > 0:17:53Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto.
0:17:53 > 0:17:58I am a man and nothing human is alien to me.
0:18:00 > 0:18:04And it was from these sources that he would create a new kind of deeply
0:18:04 > 0:18:10personal writing, the essay, a joyful exploration of the self.
0:18:12 > 0:18:17Montaigne's fame rests on his essays.
0:18:17 > 0:18:20There are about 100 of them and, depending on the edition,
0:18:20 > 0:18:26they fill something like ten volumes with his wonderfully rambling
0:18:26 > 0:18:27diverse thoughts.
0:18:27 > 0:18:30He writes about friendship, he writes about loyalty,
0:18:30 > 0:18:37he writes an essay on thumbs, he writes about Siamese twins.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40But what runs throughout all of them, I think,
0:18:40 > 0:18:45is a tremendous levelling ambition.
0:18:45 > 0:18:50He wants us to recognise our common humanity but he also wants us to
0:18:50 > 0:18:53recognise how frail our humanity is.
0:18:55 > 0:18:59Whatever these futilities of mine may be, I have no intention of
0:18:59 > 0:19:03hiding them any more than I would a bald and grizzled
0:19:03 > 0:19:05portrait of myself.
0:19:05 > 0:19:11These are my humours, my opinions, things which I believe,
0:19:11 > 0:19:13not things to be believed.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18My aim is to reveal myself, which may well be different tomorrow.
0:19:19 > 0:19:25He proposed, I think, a new sense of identity for his period...
0:19:26 > 0:19:29..a profoundly uncertain sense of self.
0:19:29 > 0:19:31"Que sais-je?" he said.
0:19:34 > 0:19:35What do I know?
0:19:39 > 0:19:44It's a concept of self that has a huge influence on all of European
0:19:44 > 0:19:48civilisation. Shakespeare almost certainly read Montaigne.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51Hard to imagine Hamlet without Montaigne.
0:19:51 > 0:19:55Hard to imagine Rembrandt's self portraits in which he appears happy,
0:19:55 > 0:20:00glad, sad, old, young, bold, timid.
0:20:00 > 0:20:03Hard to imagine all that without Montaigne.
0:20:03 > 0:20:04But in France...
0:20:06 > 0:20:11..the response to him, I think, above all, is one of profound unease.
0:20:11 > 0:20:16It's as if Montaigne, with his que sais-je? What do I know?
0:20:16 > 0:20:20Lays down a huge challenge that...
0:20:22 > 0:20:25..those who rule France and those who would rule France,
0:20:25 > 0:20:32spend much of the next three centuries attempting to answer.
0:20:32 > 0:20:39MUSIC PLAYS
0:20:39 > 0:20:42Montaigne brandished his philosopher's sense of uncertainty
0:20:42 > 0:20:46with exuberance and wit, but he was followed by a pessimistic
0:20:46 > 0:20:51and melancholic generation for whom doubt was no laughing matter
0:20:51 > 0:20:56but a state of mind made permanent by the Wars of religion and dynastic
0:20:56 > 0:20:59rivalry that raged across France and Europe.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05The 30 Years War was documented by Jacques Callot in a searing
0:21:05 > 0:21:12portfolio of engravings entitled The Miseries And Misfortunes Of War,
0:21:12 > 0:21:17nearly three centuries before Goya and just as harrowing.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22Strange fruit dangled from the lynching tree,
0:21:22 > 0:21:26a snapshot vision of a single atrocity which Callot and his
0:21:26 > 0:21:29audience knew was just part of a far greater human catastrophe.
0:21:30 > 0:21:37Some 8 million dead by war's end, a quarter of Europe's total population.
0:21:39 > 0:21:44At times like these, stoicism and endurance seemed the only answer,
0:21:45 > 0:21:50exemplified in Louis Le Nain's painting of a peasant family.
0:21:50 > 0:21:55They're surrounded by shadows so deep it looks like darkness made visible.
0:21:55 > 0:21:57And what's in that darkness?
0:21:57 > 0:22:00Perhaps the memories of all those lost to war.
0:22:07 > 0:22:14But the master painter of these dark times was surely this man, Nicolas Poussin.
0:22:14 > 0:22:17Born to a family of impoverished nobility,
0:22:17 > 0:22:20he spent nearly all of his career away from France in Rome.
0:22:21 > 0:22:23He studied the Renaissance masters.
0:22:23 > 0:22:27He read the same classical authors that had beguiled Montaigne.
0:22:27 > 0:22:31And he struggled to make sense in pictures rather than words of a
0:22:31 > 0:22:33disordered world.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40Poussin was the first French painter fully to take
0:22:40 > 0:22:43possession of the language of the Italian Renaissance.
0:22:43 > 0:22:47In standing here in this room, surrounded by his works,
0:22:47 > 0:22:51I feel almost as if I am inside Poussin's brain.
0:22:51 > 0:22:58And here, you can feel what he has made of the Renaissance,
0:22:58 > 0:23:03how he's made that language almost like a language of dream so that he
0:23:03 > 0:23:08can use it to reflect on what's getting under his skin.
0:23:08 > 0:23:12He's thinking about Diogenes, the Stoics,
0:23:12 > 0:23:16the total renunciation of worldly possessions, a man who's decided
0:23:16 > 0:23:20that even a simple drinking bowl is too much to own.
0:23:25 > 0:23:30He's thinking about violence, the Romans abducting the Sabine women,
0:23:30 > 0:23:34about how every great civilisation is founded on a crime.
0:23:37 > 0:23:41I think it was Poussin's achievement, if you like,
0:23:41 > 0:23:48to turn painting into a form of essay, like the essays of Montaigne,
0:23:48 > 0:23:55a way of reflecting on the nature and meaning of life.
0:23:55 > 0:23:57And that's why I've chosen this picture...
0:24:00 > 0:24:03..as perhaps the ultimate expression of that impulse.
0:24:05 > 0:24:06This is Arcadia.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11A group of shepherds and a young lady in classical costume,
0:24:11 > 0:24:17almost a living statue, have gathered in this earthly paradise
0:24:17 > 0:24:21around a tomb on which it is inscribed the phrase,
0:24:21 > 0:24:25Et in Arcadia ego.
0:24:25 > 0:24:29I, too, am in Paradise.
0:24:29 > 0:24:31I, meaning death.
0:24:33 > 0:24:37This shepherd notes the inscription...
0:24:39 > 0:24:45..but he, the figure that punctuates the composition and gives it its
0:24:45 > 0:24:51emotional weight, he is plunged into deep, deep sadness.
0:24:53 > 0:24:55"Que sais-je?" Montaigne had asked. What do I know?
0:24:55 > 0:25:00And I think it's as if Poussin is asking himself the same question,
0:25:00 > 0:25:04and he says to himself, "Well, I only know one thing,
0:25:04 > 0:25:08"which is that we're all going to die."
0:25:12 > 0:25:14Death, wars, division.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17Thunderclouds gathering over France.
0:25:18 > 0:25:23But one man believed that he could dispel the clouds,
0:25:23 > 0:25:25banish doubt and uncertainty,
0:25:25 > 0:25:30bend history to his will and make France the centre of the world.
0:25:31 > 0:25:35Not symbolically, as Louis IX had done at Sainte-Chapelle,
0:25:35 > 0:25:36but in actual fact.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41His name, Louis XIV.
0:25:41 > 0:25:43The Sun King.
0:25:43 > 0:25:48MUSIC PLAYS
0:25:57 > 0:26:02And this is where he lived, in a palace fit for a Sun King,
0:26:02 > 0:26:05the largest palace ever created by a European monarch.
0:26:06 > 0:26:08Versailles.
0:26:08 > 0:26:11MUSIC PLAYS
0:26:15 > 0:26:19Versailles is the grandest grande projet ever conceived by the
0:26:19 > 0:26:22French state, whether Royal or Republican.
0:26:22 > 0:26:27A former hunting lodge, its transformation into this powerhouse
0:26:27 > 0:26:31of a Palace began in 1661 when the 23-year-old Louis,
0:26:31 > 0:26:36after years of dutiful submission to his councillors and advisers,
0:26:36 > 0:26:41suddenly and unexpectedly dismissed the lot of them and assumed direct
0:26:41 > 0:26:44personal command of France.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48Now, Louis may never have said the words most famously attributed to him,
0:26:48 > 0:26:51L'etat c'est moi, I am the state,
0:26:51 > 0:26:55but then again, he didn't really need to.
0:26:55 > 0:26:57Versailles said them for him.
0:26:57 > 0:27:00MUSIC PLAYS
0:27:18 > 0:27:23There's something almost medieval about Versailles and its
0:27:23 > 0:27:27determination to express absolute truth through bricks and mortar.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32But, of course, there's a huge difference between this palace and
0:27:32 > 0:27:35the great cathedrals of the Gothic past.
0:27:35 > 0:27:41They existed to include everyone, to include the masses.
0:27:41 > 0:27:46But Louis XIV had contempt for the common people.
0:27:46 > 0:27:50It was even forbidden for an ordinary person, a servant,
0:27:50 > 0:27:52to die at Versailles.
0:27:52 > 0:27:58They had to be taken elsewhere to expire otherwise they might pollute
0:27:58 > 0:28:01the perfection of this royal realm.
0:28:05 > 0:28:11In 1682, Louis moved his court to Versailles and 2,000 aristocrats
0:28:11 > 0:28:17anxiously followed, knowing that opportunity and security depended on
0:28:17 > 0:28:19being constantly under the eye of the King.
0:28:21 > 0:28:25His courtiers were trapped like birds in a gilded cage.
0:28:25 > 0:28:28Even in the celebrated palace gardens,
0:28:28 > 0:28:30designed for Louis by Andre Le Notre,
0:28:30 > 0:28:34the themes of surveillance and control were hard to miss.
0:28:35 > 0:28:40The endless vistas radiating out from the palace were, in effect,
0:28:40 > 0:28:42sight lines for the eye of the King.
0:28:46 > 0:28:49Like God, Louis saw everything.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55Not everyone was impressed by Versailles.
0:28:55 > 0:28:58In 1698, an English diplomat called Matthew Prior came here
0:28:58 > 0:29:01and clearly hated the place.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04"The King's house at Versailles," he wrote,
0:29:04 > 0:29:07"is the foolishest in the world.
0:29:07 > 0:29:09"He's strutting in every panel,
0:29:09 > 0:29:14"galloping over one's head in every ceiling and, if he turns to spit,
0:29:14 > 0:29:18"he must see himself or his vice regent, the son."
0:29:19 > 0:29:25But it won't quite do to dismiss all this as folly and tyrannical vanity.
0:29:25 > 0:29:27The truth is that the great project of Versailles,
0:29:27 > 0:29:32which was itself part of the even greater project of rebuilding France
0:29:32 > 0:29:36itself, was always grounded in cool,
0:29:36 > 0:29:43hard logic and a firm grasp of political and economic realities.
0:29:50 > 0:29:54As the Galerie des Glaces, or hall of mirrors at Versailles shows,
0:29:54 > 0:29:57there's always more going on than meets the eye in the
0:29:57 > 0:30:00Palace of the Sun King.
0:30:00 > 0:30:04When this room was begun in 1668, mirrored glass was one of the most
0:30:04 > 0:30:09expensive man-made commodities in the world and could only be bought
0:30:09 > 0:30:12in Venice, which jealously guarded the secrets of its making.
0:30:14 > 0:30:19Louis and his finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, broke that monopoly.
0:30:19 > 0:30:23They lured a group of Venetian mirror makers to France to establish
0:30:23 > 0:30:29a new state financed venture, the Manufacture Royale Des Glaces.
0:30:29 > 0:30:35Venetian assassins were dispatched to kill the defectors but to no avail.
0:30:35 > 0:30:41Louis got his room of many reflections and France acquired a
0:30:41 > 0:30:43new lucrative state owned enterprise.
0:30:45 > 0:30:49Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the canniest of them all?
0:30:49 > 0:30:54Swathed in silk and lace and acres of fleur de lis ermine,
0:30:54 > 0:31:00wearing shimmering hose tights and silver buckled shoes with their talon rouge,
0:31:00 > 0:31:04red heels reserved exclusively for the aristocracy.
0:31:04 > 0:31:08This is Louis XIV as realised by his court portraitist,
0:31:08 > 0:31:12Hyacinthe Rigaud.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16It's a painting that proclaims not merely Louis's magnificence but the
0:31:16 > 0:31:22sheer scale of his trade policies because every inch of these swirling,
0:31:22 > 0:31:27sumptuous fabrics was produced by one or other of the myriad new state
0:31:27 > 0:31:30enterprises Louis and his minister, Colbert, had set up.
0:31:32 > 0:31:35Protectionism, subsidies, loans, tax breaks,
0:31:35 > 0:31:39Colbert used them all to turn France into the world's leading producer of
0:31:39 > 0:31:41luxury goods.
0:31:42 > 0:31:46"Fashions were to France," he boasted, "what the mines of Peru were to Spain."
0:31:49 > 0:31:51So look again at Rigaud's portrait.
0:31:51 > 0:31:53A strutting peacock?
0:31:54 > 0:31:56Look into those eyes.
0:31:56 > 0:32:01This is a man in perfect control of himself and his world,
0:32:01 > 0:32:05a model king advertising brand France.
0:32:12 > 0:32:15Artists were an essential part of Louis' system.
0:32:17 > 0:32:23The Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, established in 1648,
0:32:23 > 0:32:28controlled commissions, policed production and enforced standards by
0:32:28 > 0:32:31the rigorous training of all would-be artists.
0:32:35 > 0:32:43This process, in which students are permitted to draw from the life,
0:32:43 > 0:32:47this was the final phase of an artist's education.
0:32:47 > 0:32:54Before this, the artist would spend perhaps a year drawing from drawings,
0:32:54 > 0:33:02then a year drawing from plaster casts and, only finally,
0:33:02 > 0:33:05only as the artist approached mastery,
0:33:05 > 0:33:09would they be allowed to draw the naked human form.
0:33:11 > 0:33:17All forms of creative activity was subject to rules during the reign of
0:33:17 > 0:33:21Louis XIV. Poets had to obey the rules of decorum.
0:33:21 > 0:33:25Playwrights had to obey the unities of time, place and action.
0:33:25 > 0:33:29But no-one had more rules to obey than the painter,
0:33:29 > 0:33:33who truly was the prisoner of a system.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40One of the principal designers of that system was Charles Le Brun,
0:33:40 > 0:33:44director of the academy, half artist, half bureaucrat.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49As artist, he designed Versailles' Hall of Mirrors.
0:33:49 > 0:33:51As bureaucrat, he set the standards at the academy,
0:33:51 > 0:33:56enforcing a strict hierarchy of genres, which placed his speciality,
0:33:56 > 0:33:58history painting, at the top.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02And he drilled into aspiring artists and colleagues alike,
0:34:02 > 0:34:05that when it came to art, the system ruled.
0:34:08 > 0:34:13But for Le Brun, the body was just the beginning.
0:34:13 > 0:34:17If you wanted to be able to create pictures that were absolutely,
0:34:17 > 0:34:22unambiguously clear in their statement of devotion to the ideals
0:34:22 > 0:34:28of king and state, you had to study the human face.
0:34:28 > 0:34:30And for Le Brun...
0:34:30 > 0:34:34..the secret was all in the eyebrows.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45Le Brun's theory, briefly stated, had to do with the pineal gland,
0:34:45 > 0:34:49which he believed, mistakenly, was placed directly between the eyes,
0:34:49 > 0:34:53as the focal point of all human emotions.
0:34:53 > 0:34:58The eyebrows, being closest to the gland, acted as a kind of seismograph.
0:34:58 > 0:35:03Their position indicating the degree and the type of emotion being felt.
0:35:03 > 0:35:06From wide-eyed admiration, to bug-eyed terror.
0:35:09 > 0:35:13The task of the artist was to master this repertoire of expressions.
0:35:13 > 0:35:18Thereby, creating works whose meaning could be read as easily as
0:35:18 > 0:35:19a piece of text.
0:35:21 > 0:35:22Here's a demonstration.
0:35:22 > 0:35:26Le Brun's gigantic picture of the family of the defeated Persian King
0:35:26 > 0:35:31Darius, prostrating themselves before the victorious Alexander the Great.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36For Alexander, read of course, Louis.
0:35:36 > 0:35:41And for the family of Darius, read the nation of France itself.
0:35:41 > 0:35:45From high to low, beholding the great conqueror, their leader,
0:35:45 > 0:35:50with a series of officially prescribed, precisely rendered expressions.
0:35:51 > 0:35:53Attention...
0:35:56 > 0:35:58..admiration with astonishment...
0:36:00 > 0:36:01..veneration.
0:36:05 > 0:36:07Because of their scale and intricacy,
0:36:07 > 0:36:12pictures like this became known as "grandes machines", great machines.
0:36:18 > 0:36:23But as Nicolas Milovanovic, Louvre curator and Le Brun expert explains,
0:36:23 > 0:36:27they're actually the result of a collaboration between Le Brun the
0:36:27 > 0:36:30painter, and Louis himself, the King.
0:36:30 > 0:36:33At that time, in the '60s,
0:36:33 > 0:36:37Louis XIV was fascinated by the figure of Alexander.
0:36:37 > 0:36:42Louis XIV wanted to be a new Alexander, and Le Brun understood that.
0:36:42 > 0:36:44So, that's the reason for...
0:36:45 > 0:36:51How did Le Brun go about inventing this idea of a painting?
0:36:51 > 0:36:52Because they're vast.
0:36:52 > 0:36:56You have to be in front of them to realise they are, you know,
0:36:56 > 0:37:0012 metres width, four metres high.
0:37:00 > 0:37:02So, you have to enter in the painting.
0:37:02 > 0:37:07You really are part of the battle, and that was the aim of Le Brun,
0:37:07 > 0:37:11to create a kind of, you know, cinema for us.
0:37:12 > 0:37:17That must have been a huge thrill, if one's trying to understand,
0:37:17 > 0:37:19from Louis XIV's perspective.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22Louis must have been bowled over by it.
0:37:22 > 0:37:27The moment when Le Brun was painting the first composition of the series,
0:37:27 > 0:37:30that's the family of Darius in front of Alexander,
0:37:30 > 0:37:35Louis XIV was coming to discuss it with Le Brun,
0:37:35 > 0:37:38and tell him what he will paint for tomorrow.
0:37:38 > 0:37:41So in a sense, Louis XIV is almost the director of the movie?
0:37:41 > 0:37:44- Yeah, yeah.- And Le Brun's the cinematographer.
0:37:44 > 0:37:46That's very right, what you say.
0:37:46 > 0:37:51The king was, you know, in the first place, the author, the subject,
0:37:51 > 0:37:53but also the author of the painting.
0:37:58 > 0:38:01Louis' systems, from art to manufacturing,
0:38:01 > 0:38:05transformed France into a European superpower.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09It had a population of 20 million, compared to England's eight.
0:38:09 > 0:38:13Government revenues were five times as large.
0:38:13 > 0:38:17It had a navy and an army that were the strongest in Europe.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21And it used them to project French power along its borders, and beyond.
0:38:22 > 0:38:27If Louis had an Achilles heel, it was his fondness for conquest.
0:38:27 > 0:38:31But even in matters of war, he planned everything meticulously.
0:38:31 > 0:38:36As you can see, in what may be the single most remarkable survival of
0:38:36 > 0:38:41his rule, a collection of extraordinary but largely forgotten objects,
0:38:41 > 0:38:46now to be found in the basement of the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lille.
0:38:48 > 0:38:54They were all made for the king, these great tables.
0:38:54 > 0:39:00Each one is a town, a representation of a town, that he had fortified.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03This is Ypres, this is Tournai.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09There were originally 144 of these objects.
0:39:09 > 0:39:14They occupied 8,000 square metres of the Louvre,
0:39:15 > 0:39:19nearly a mile to walk past all of them.
0:39:19 > 0:39:21And what they represented, I think, for Louis,
0:39:21 > 0:39:29was a tangible demonstration of the extent to which he had expanded and
0:39:29 > 0:39:31secured France's borders.
0:39:33 > 0:39:36They also served a very practical purpose.
0:39:36 > 0:39:41Because, when he came here, with his generals or his advisers,
0:39:41 > 0:39:42he could plan strategy.
0:39:42 > 0:39:48He could literally feel with his hand, the lie of the land.
0:39:48 > 0:39:52And he could enjoy, as no-one else in the world could do,
0:39:52 > 0:39:56a bird's eye view of these strategically important cities.
0:39:58 > 0:40:02I think the "plans-reliefs", as they are called, it's extraordinary,
0:40:02 > 0:40:06goodness knows how many man-hours went into their creation.
0:40:06 > 0:40:11I think what they represent is a making good of the promise that
0:40:11 > 0:40:15Versailles, as it were, holds out.
0:40:15 > 0:40:21That, yes, the king's eye stretches to the very end of the realm.
0:40:21 > 0:40:25These plans-reliefs, they prove that that promise wasn't empty.
0:40:25 > 0:40:27It was true.
0:40:27 > 0:40:29Louis did see everything.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37Omniscient, and also immortal, or so it must have seemed.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41For, while death carried off wives, mistresses, ministers, sons,
0:40:41 > 0:40:48even grandsons, Louis lived on, indestructible as his bronze likeness.
0:40:48 > 0:40:52But finally, in 1715, death caught up with him,
0:40:52 > 0:40:55after more than 70 years on the throne.
0:40:57 > 0:40:59He left a France politically powerful,
0:40:59 > 0:41:03but virtually bankrupted by his appetite for war.
0:41:03 > 0:41:08A society in which the ultra rich scorned the overtaxed poor,
0:41:08 > 0:41:12whose stoicism, unlike Le Nain's peasant family,
0:41:12 > 0:41:14couldn't be taken for granted.
0:41:18 > 0:41:20So, what next?
0:41:21 > 0:41:23In a fashionable Parisian picture shop,
0:41:23 > 0:41:28the dead king's likeness is buried in the straw of a packing crate.
0:41:28 > 0:41:30While on the other side,
0:41:30 > 0:41:34an art lover genuflects before a very different style of painting.
0:41:35 > 0:41:39The message, from Jean-Antoine Watteau, couldn't be clearer.
0:41:39 > 0:41:41The times, they are a-changing.
0:41:47 > 0:41:52Watteau's one of the most mysterious of French painters, and this picture,
0:41:52 > 0:41:58Pierrot, is perhaps his most enigmatic masterpiece of all.
0:41:58 > 0:42:00What does it show us?
0:42:00 > 0:42:04The figure of a clown, dressed in white,
0:42:04 > 0:42:09is stranded in a piece of landscape that might almost be a stage set.
0:42:09 > 0:42:12But, no play is taking place.
0:42:13 > 0:42:18An expression of ineffable pathos on his face,
0:42:18 > 0:42:21there's something more than slightly absurd about him.
0:42:24 > 0:42:29You'd have a hard job matching this enigmatic expression to anything in
0:42:29 > 0:42:30Le Brun's neat little system.
0:42:31 > 0:42:37Watteau signals a return to Montaigne's elusive sense of humanity,
0:42:37 > 0:42:40as something you can't just put in a box.
0:42:43 > 0:42:45So, what does the picture mean?
0:42:45 > 0:42:47Nobody knows for sure, and I can't pretend to say.
0:42:47 > 0:42:52But I do think it's significant that it was painted just three years
0:42:52 > 0:42:55after the death of Louis XIV.
0:42:55 > 0:43:01It's as if the great director of life in all of France,
0:43:01 > 0:43:06the great dictator, the great puppet master, well, he's gone.
0:43:06 > 0:43:12And now, it's as if all of France is in his position.
0:43:13 > 0:43:15They don't know what to do next.
0:43:23 > 0:43:26Watteau did have one suggestion to make.
0:43:26 > 0:43:27Escape.
0:43:28 > 0:43:31The Embarkation to the Island of Cythera was his invitation to an
0:43:31 > 0:43:37aristocracy exhausted by the Alexander the Greatism of Louis XIV.
0:43:37 > 0:43:41A private world of gallantry, flirtation, passion.
0:43:41 > 0:43:44"Make love," says Watteau, "not war."
0:43:45 > 0:43:48And so, a new artistic style appeared,
0:43:48 > 0:43:52born on the wings of plump, playful cherubs.
0:43:52 > 0:43:53Rococo.
0:43:55 > 0:44:00One of the principal inventors of rococo style in painting was the
0:44:00 > 0:44:02great Francois Boucher.
0:44:02 > 0:44:05And this relatively modest picture,
0:44:05 > 0:44:12which shows Diana accompanied by her attendants after the hunt, takes us,
0:44:12 > 0:44:14I think, to the heart of that style.
0:44:14 > 0:44:15The scale itself is significant.
0:44:15 > 0:44:20This is a picture intended for domestic contemplation.
0:44:20 > 0:44:24It's not meant to inspire you with political or moral virtue.
0:44:24 > 0:44:26It's meant to please you.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30And yet, it's still within the tradition of French painting,
0:44:30 > 0:44:35as it had been established by Le Brun back in the great days of Louis XIV.
0:44:35 > 0:44:38Boucher had been to Le Brun's French Academy.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41Like Poussin, he had studied in Rome.
0:44:41 > 0:44:45And, like those artists, he's working with the grand, allegorical,
0:44:45 > 0:44:47mythological tradition of French painting.
0:44:47 > 0:44:55But what he's emptied it of is any sense of political seriousness or
0:44:55 > 0:44:57moral intent. This is, if you like,
0:44:57 > 0:45:02the perfect picture for an age dedicated to luxury,
0:45:02 > 0:45:05libertinage and love.
0:45:09 > 0:45:12Boucher's Diana was painted in 1745,
0:45:12 > 0:45:16the same year that another goddess of love made a conquest.
0:45:16 > 0:45:22Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, installed as Louis XV's maitresse-en-titre,
0:45:22 > 0:45:23or official mistress.
0:45:24 > 0:45:28It was a role for which she'd been groomed from the age of nine,
0:45:28 > 0:45:32and as Madame de Pompadour, she played it with style,
0:45:32 > 0:45:35emerging as an influential patron of the arts,
0:45:35 > 0:45:37Boucher was a particular favourite,
0:45:37 > 0:45:40and shaping the taste of the rococo world.
0:45:42 > 0:45:44And what taste it was.
0:45:44 > 0:45:49As if all the pomp and circumstance of the great Palace of Versailles
0:45:49 > 0:45:52had been distilled down into the sort of delicious plaything you
0:45:52 > 0:45:54could just slip into your pocket.
0:45:59 > 0:46:04Now, I've kindly been allowed to open this display case,
0:46:04 > 0:46:09which is a rather rare and wonderful opportunity to
0:46:09 > 0:46:13get close to all the knick-knackery,
0:46:13 > 0:46:18the personal possessions of the gilded rich of the Ancien Regime.
0:46:18 > 0:46:24One of my favourite objects of all is this tiny little gun,
0:46:24 > 0:46:28decorated in enamel and cloisonne, which was designed...
0:46:30 > 0:46:33..to fire a little jet of perfume,
0:46:33 > 0:46:36perhaps into the bodice of an aristocratic lady.
0:46:36 > 0:46:38You can almost smell the decadence.
0:46:39 > 0:46:43And talking of liaisons dangereuses, look what we've got here.
0:46:43 > 0:46:44It's an etude du message,
0:46:45 > 0:46:49the 18th century precursor, if you like, of the text.
0:46:49 > 0:46:52You'd roll up your message, put it in a cylinder, hand it to your footman,
0:46:52 > 0:46:55and he would take it to the object of your affections.
0:46:55 > 0:47:00It is, in effect, a kind of machine for arranging a liaison dangereux.
0:47:00 > 0:47:02It's a wonderful display,
0:47:02 > 0:47:06but you can see why there were those in France who thought that this was
0:47:06 > 0:47:08MUSIC PLAYS
0:47:31 > 0:47:36The most vocal critic of French high society at the time was the writer
0:47:36 > 0:47:37Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
0:47:37 > 0:47:42who railed against what he saw as the over sophistication,
0:47:42 > 0:47:47the attachment to things of the French leisured classes.
0:47:47 > 0:47:50Rousseau preferred nature to cities.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53He made a cult of the child.
0:47:53 > 0:47:57Every adult, he argued, was a once-innocent child who'd been
0:47:57 > 0:48:02corrupted by his education and by false principles of belief.
0:48:03 > 0:48:10He even went so far as to argue that civilisation itself was a retrograde force.
0:48:10 > 0:48:15The more mankind moved away from their original, good,
0:48:15 > 0:48:17primitive state,
0:48:17 > 0:48:21the more they were drawn into temptation and into decadence.
0:48:22 > 0:48:24At the centre of his thought,
0:48:24 > 0:48:29Rousseau placed the figure of the noble savage.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32But that begged a question,
0:48:32 > 0:48:36who was truly noble, and who was truly savage?
0:48:36 > 0:48:39And, who was to tell the difference?
0:48:39 > 0:48:42MUSIC PLAYS
0:48:49 > 0:48:51For critics of the status quo,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54savage, noble or somewhere in between,
0:48:54 > 0:48:56this was their secret weapon.
0:48:56 > 0:49:01The multi-volume Encyclopedie, the Encyclopaedia,
0:49:01 > 0:49:06published over a 20-year period between 1752 and 1772,
0:49:06 > 0:49:11in spite of fierce opposition from censors, critics and the church.
0:49:12 > 0:49:16Bruno Blasselle, director of the Arsenal Library in Paris,
0:49:16 > 0:49:18is showing me a precious first edition.
0:49:21 > 0:49:25Contributors to the Encyclopaedia included Rousseau, Voltaire,
0:49:25 > 0:49:28and editor in chief, Denis Diderot.
0:49:30 > 0:49:35Contentious, sometimes cantankerous voices, they were united in one thing.
0:49:35 > 0:49:38Antagonism towards established authority.
0:49:40 > 0:49:43This was the moment when Michel de Montaigne's
0:49:43 > 0:49:46big ideas came home to roost.
0:49:47 > 0:49:53But now, it wasn't just one solitary freethinker in his birds nest study.
0:49:53 > 0:49:54It was a whole flock of them.
0:49:55 > 0:49:59So, the three essential faculties of the civilised man necessary for the
0:49:59 > 0:50:01advancement of human knowledge are...
0:50:01 > 0:50:05Memory, reason and imagination.
0:50:35 > 0:50:39Along with the mini essays of the written text came illustrations.
0:50:39 > 0:50:42More than 4,000 in all.
0:50:42 > 0:50:46The French Enlightenment's, Tres Riches.
0:50:46 > 0:50:49This extraordinary image.
0:50:49 > 0:50:51Goodness me.
0:50:59 > 0:51:01They're so beautiful. Beautiful.
0:51:20 > 0:51:25After 20 years of what he called untiring labour on the Encyclopaedia,
0:51:25 > 0:51:27Diderot was ready for a change.
0:51:27 > 0:51:32He took the essay, Montaigne's invention, into new territory.
0:51:32 > 0:51:33My territory.
0:51:34 > 0:51:35Art criticism.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40Here you are. Bonjour, Monsieur Diderot.
0:51:40 > 0:51:43This is one of my favourite paintings in the Louvre.
0:51:43 > 0:51:45It's by Louis-Michel van Loo,
0:51:45 > 0:51:48an otherwise undistinguished portrait painter.
0:51:48 > 0:51:53But here, he has risen to heights far above his normal level.
0:51:53 > 0:51:57I think stimulated by the personality of Denis Diderot.
0:51:57 > 0:52:00Here he is, wonderfully informal.
0:52:00 > 0:52:03His shirt's unbuttoned at the collar.
0:52:03 > 0:52:06He's at his writing desk, in full flow.
0:52:06 > 0:52:10The pen, you can almost hear it scratching away at the paper.
0:52:10 > 0:52:14He's famous, world-famous, as the driving force behind the Encyclopaedia.
0:52:14 > 0:52:16But as far as he was concerned,
0:52:16 > 0:52:19his greatest achievement was his art criticism.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27It was during the reign of Louis XV that art in France finally found a
0:52:27 > 0:52:29general public.
0:52:29 > 0:52:33The Academy had been exhibiting the work of its members since 1667,
0:52:33 > 0:52:38but in 1737, the doors of the Salon held annually at the Louvre were
0:52:38 > 0:52:42thrown open, and the crowds poured in.
0:52:43 > 0:52:46Diderot was among them, reviewing the show for a philosophical and
0:52:46 > 0:52:48cultural newsletter,
0:52:48 > 0:52:52in which he used art as a stick with which to beat the establishment.
0:52:52 > 0:52:57Daring to think the unthinkable, to question the very nature of society.
0:52:59 > 0:53:02In the course of writing these reviews,
0:53:02 > 0:53:10he turned art criticism very subtly into a form of social criticism.
0:53:10 > 0:53:14The state of art, he equated with the state of France.
0:53:14 > 0:53:18So, for example, when he writes about his bete noire Boucher,
0:53:18 > 0:53:24with his unbridled eroticism, the vast expanses of powdered flesh,
0:53:24 > 0:53:30so lewdly displayed on his canvases, Diderot is in effect criticising,
0:53:30 > 0:53:34lashing out at the decadence of the entire Ancien Regime.
0:53:36 > 0:53:42Who does he hold up, by contrast, with Boucher?
0:53:42 > 0:53:44Who's the hero, if Boucher's the villain?
0:53:44 > 0:53:48Well, surprisingly enough, and totally at variance with the
0:53:48 > 0:53:51established academic hierarchy of genres,
0:53:51 > 0:53:55which placed history painting at the top and still life at the bottom,
0:53:55 > 0:54:01Diderot chose as his hero a painter of eggs, glasses of water,
0:54:02 > 0:54:05copper pots, pans,
0:54:06 > 0:54:10uneasily poised knives on table tops.
0:54:10 > 0:54:12He chose a painter called Chardin.
0:54:14 > 0:54:16MUSIC PLAYS
0:54:39 > 0:54:44Chardin was a modest servant of the academy, he was its treasurer.
0:54:44 > 0:54:46He was in charge of hanging the annual Salon,
0:54:46 > 0:54:51all the while working in what were considered to be the lower reaches
0:54:51 > 0:54:55of art, genre painting and still life.
0:54:55 > 0:54:59Yet, for my money, he's one of the greatest, one of the most significant,
0:54:59 > 0:55:02one of the most influential French painters who ever lived.
0:55:05 > 0:55:09He established one of the great templates of French art,
0:55:09 > 0:55:15the things that we see in a room and on the table, we paint these things,
0:55:15 > 0:55:20and in so doing, we tell you what we think the world means.
0:55:20 > 0:55:22Cezanne would follow Chardin in this respect.
0:55:22 > 0:55:24All of Cubism, you could say,
0:55:24 > 0:55:30with its table top concatenations of objects, derives from Chardin.
0:55:30 > 0:55:32And he himself, I think,
0:55:32 > 0:55:38knew very well that he wasn't just painting what things looked like.
0:55:38 > 0:55:43He was trying to paint what the world meant to him.
0:55:44 > 0:55:48This is his presentation piece.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52The work he submitted so that he might be accepted into the academy.
0:55:52 > 0:55:58It's called La Raie, The Ray, and it's his weirdest,
0:55:58 > 0:56:01most disturbing painting.
0:56:01 > 0:56:06Is it just a picture of still life objects?
0:56:06 > 0:56:11I don't think so. Look at that great bloody central form,
0:56:11 > 0:56:14the ray of the title.
0:56:14 > 0:56:21A flatfish, grey, pink, red, blue for the liver and kidneys,
0:56:21 > 0:56:25hung from a hook in a dungeon kitchen.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28And to the left, look at that cat!
0:56:28 > 0:56:33That cat, so alive with energy, it almost might be moving.
0:56:33 > 0:56:35It seems blurred.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37It's feral in its energies.
0:56:37 > 0:56:41There wouldn't be another cat like it until
0:56:41 > 0:56:45Manet painted Olympia, the prostitute,
0:56:45 > 0:56:48the Parisian prostitute with her attendant cat.
0:56:49 > 0:56:53When the great French novelist Marcel Proust saw The Ray,
0:56:53 > 0:56:57he likened it to the nave of a polychromatic cathedral.
0:56:57 > 0:57:02A comparison that takes us right back to Abbe Suger's resonant credo.
0:57:02 > 0:57:06"A dull mind rises to truth through material things."
0:57:08 > 0:57:11But to what truth does Chardin's paintings lead us?
0:57:18 > 0:57:22For Diderot, Chardin's work stood with the idea that the simple life,
0:57:22 > 0:57:27lived well and truthfully, is far more sacred than a rich life,
0:57:27 > 0:57:29lived in decadence.
0:57:29 > 0:57:34From that contrast, it is only a small step to more radical thoughts
0:57:34 > 0:57:39about the instability of the whole system.
0:57:39 > 0:57:46A profoundly sensitive and humane man, Chardin was no revolutionary.
0:57:46 > 0:57:50But I can't help wondering if the unconscious mind that guided his
0:57:50 > 0:57:55hand knew that the forces unleashed during his lifetime
0:57:55 > 0:57:57might one day spin out of control.
0:57:59 > 0:58:01Chardin said almost nothing about painting in his lifetime,
0:58:01 > 0:58:05but one thing he did say, he reproved a younger painter,
0:58:05 > 0:58:08who said, "I paint with colours."
0:58:08 > 0:58:12And Chardin said, "You paint with colours? No, no.
0:58:12 > 0:58:16"You use colours, but you paint with feeling."
0:58:19 > 0:58:20What's the feeling here?
0:58:24 > 0:58:25It's ominous.
0:58:27 > 0:58:30There's death in the air.
0:58:30 > 0:58:33There's decadence in the air.
0:58:33 > 0:58:37And there's a sense of palpable threat.
0:58:39 > 0:58:41Look at that knife on the table.
0:58:43 > 0:58:46It's almost an invitation.
0:58:47 > 0:58:51Take up that knife, do something.
0:58:51 > 0:58:52You can change the world.
0:58:55 > 0:58:58Which, of course, is precisely what happened next.