0:00:22 > 0:00:27In 1861 the famous novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote,
0:00:27 > 0:00:31"If there is a country in the world
0:00:31 > 0:00:37"which to other countries is more unknown or unexplored,
0:00:37 > 0:00:39"enigmatic,
0:00:39 > 0:00:41"and mysterious,
0:00:41 > 0:00:46"that country is undoubtedly Russia."
0:00:52 > 0:00:56"For Europeans," he said, "Russia is one of the riddles of the Sphinx."
0:01:00 > 0:01:06"Perpetual motion, or the elixir of life, will be sooner discovered
0:01:06 > 0:01:08"than the truth about Russia."
0:01:17 > 0:01:22Dostoevsky really believed it was impossible for anyone from the West
0:01:22 > 0:01:27to fathom the mysteries of the Russian soul, but I think that there is a way to at least begin
0:01:27 > 0:01:32to understand Russia, its rich history and its extraordinary people,
0:01:32 > 0:01:34and that's through the story of its art.
0:01:38 > 0:01:42That story will take me across the vast Russian landscape,
0:01:42 > 0:01:46to encounter the rich but often neglected art of its past...
0:01:48 > 0:01:52..from the power and mystery of the Russian icon,
0:01:52 > 0:01:56to the baroque splendours of St Petersburg...
0:01:58 > 0:02:02..and on to the political protest paintings of the 19th century,
0:02:02 > 0:02:06and the abstract art of revolution itself.
0:02:07 > 0:02:12And I'll chart the dizzying story of modern Russia
0:02:12 > 0:02:16from the tyrannical heyday of communism,
0:02:16 > 0:02:19to the artistic experiments of today.
0:02:54 > 0:02:59On the edge of Moscow's Red Square lies the State Historical Museum.
0:03:02 > 0:03:05Its ethnographic galleries are rarely visited but they're a treasure trove
0:03:05 > 0:03:12of Russia's pre-history filled with the relics of its most ancient past.
0:03:19 > 0:03:22I think of the great rooms of the State Historical Museum as
0:03:22 > 0:03:28a kind of Aladdin's cave of all the civilisations that once occupied the vast territories
0:03:28 > 0:03:31that are now what we think of as Russia
0:03:31 > 0:03:33and it begins with this boat, this wonderful boat,
0:03:33 > 0:03:37created approximately 9,000 years ago by an unknown tribe
0:03:37 > 0:03:41who floated down the River Don in southern Russia in that vessel.
0:03:41 > 0:03:44We know almost nothing else about them.
0:03:44 > 0:03:46Here we are in the second room and suddenly,
0:03:46 > 0:03:48we're somewhere quite different,
0:03:48 > 0:03:51we're in the Urals, towards Kazakhstan,
0:03:51 > 0:03:56and this is 3000 BC, about the same time as the peoples of ancient Egypt.
0:03:56 > 0:03:58This is what's happening in the Urals.
0:03:58 > 0:04:03They're making these extraordinary idols almost like African totems.
0:04:06 > 0:04:12This is a museum of the many Russias that once lay beneath the soil of this disparate land.
0:04:13 > 0:04:21These clay fertility goddesses with their jutting hips were dug up from the Caucasus.
0:04:21 > 0:04:28And this iron elk was found on the shores of the Black Sea, created by a people with roots in Greece.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38The sheer span of time and space in here is mind-boggling.
0:04:41 > 0:04:46Here is a series of death masks dug up at the absolute eastern limit
0:04:46 > 0:04:50of what would become the Russian Empire,
0:04:50 > 0:04:56and they date from about the 1st century BC, 100 years before the birth of Christ.
0:04:58 > 0:05:04It's extraordinary to think of those faces once alive, staring out, looking at me.
0:05:11 > 0:05:18And when you reflect on the immensity of Russia's territory and the diversity of its peoples,
0:05:18 > 0:05:22I think you become aware of just what an immense challenge it must have been
0:05:22 > 0:05:28for the first people who decided to turn all of this into one nation.
0:05:40 > 0:05:48I'm travelling to the place where the first attempt was made to mould many peoples into one Russia.
0:05:48 > 0:05:53That place is Kiev, now the capital of modern-day Ukraine.
0:05:55 > 0:05:59There's an old proverb which says Moscow is the heart of Russia,
0:05:59 > 0:06:05and St Petersburg the head, but its mother is Kiev,
0:06:05 > 0:06:09and that's all because of one ruler and his vision.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16In the 10th century, the city was at the centre of a vast pagan empire
0:06:16 > 0:06:21known as Kievan Rus, ruled by an ambitious prince called Vladimir.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28He wanted to unite his people under the banner of a single religion,
0:06:28 > 0:06:32and in the year 988 he made a momentous decision.
0:06:35 > 0:06:43He ordered the destruction of all the Slavic pagan idols and converted his country to Christianity.
0:06:47 > 0:06:52Prince Vladimir sent his emissaries far and wide in search of the one true faith capable of binding
0:06:52 > 0:06:59his disparate peoples together but they beheld no glory in the churches of western Christianity,
0:06:59 > 0:07:04and, as for the Muslim world, they found its ceremonies foul-smelling and frenzied.
0:07:04 > 0:07:10However, when they got to Constantinople, when they beheld the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia with
0:07:10 > 0:07:17its towering dome and its glittering mosaics, they said, "We knew not if we were in heaven or on earth."
0:07:17 > 0:07:19God truly dwells with those people.
0:07:22 > 0:07:30So it was, that Vladimir decided to recreate the glories of Byzantium here on the soil of Kievan Rus.
0:07:34 > 0:07:39The result was this cathedral, Santa Sophia.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43It was built and decorated by an army of master craftsmen
0:07:43 > 0:07:48sent from Constantinople to realise Vladimir's great plan.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54So how does this new and unfamiliar deity,
0:07:54 > 0:07:59this Jesus Christ, announce himself to the peoples of 11th-century Kiev?
0:07:59 > 0:08:04Well, he arrives in an astonishing blaze of mosaic glory.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07There he is, Christ Pantocrator,
0:08:07 > 0:08:12at the very summit of the central dome of the cathedral.
0:08:14 > 0:08:20He is surrounded by a circle, all the colours of the rainbow,
0:08:20 > 0:08:26and he gazes down at us with this tremendously solemn awe-inspiring expression on his face,
0:08:26 > 0:08:31holding the book and making the gesture of blessing, and he's got his angelic entourage
0:08:31 > 0:08:36with him, these four extraordinarily impassive, severe,
0:08:36 > 0:08:41solemn, brightly-patterned Byzantine archangels.
0:08:41 > 0:08:45You can see why the emissaries of Vladimir, when they went to Hagia Sophia,
0:08:45 > 0:08:50felt they were in heaven, and that's exactly the effect that the Byzantine craftsmen
0:08:50 > 0:08:53and master mosaicists who created this extraordinary image,
0:08:53 > 0:08:56that's exactly what they were setting out to create.
0:08:59 > 0:09:04When you imagine what it must have felt like for an 11th-century person from here
0:09:04 > 0:09:08to see that golden glow, that radiance,
0:09:08 > 0:09:11it must have seemed like a kind of miracle, as if
0:09:11 > 0:09:15the light of the sun had somehow been brought indoors and placed up there.
0:09:29 > 0:09:35The focal image of the whole church is actually not Christ Pantocrator in the dome,
0:09:35 > 0:09:39which is only fully visible to the priests at the altar.
0:09:39 > 0:09:43The central image for the people at large is this great mosaic
0:09:43 > 0:09:46of the Madonna Orans - the Madonna praying.
0:09:48 > 0:09:53Now, she is the symbol of the church because the church contains God.
0:09:53 > 0:09:57She herself had been a living church, so to speak.
0:09:57 > 0:10:01In her flesh was Jesus Christ, in her belly,
0:10:01 > 0:10:05and that idea is contained here or expressed here architecturally.
0:10:05 > 0:10:13She's been placed in this apse that itself feels like an enclosure, almost like a womb.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16She's Mary, mother of God, but she's also very much Mary the Merciful
0:10:16 > 0:10:20and there's a telling detail in the form of this gold-embroidered handkerchief
0:10:20 > 0:10:23that's tucked into her belt which, according to local tradition,
0:10:23 > 0:10:28is there to wipe away the tears of all those who might come to her seeking consolation.
0:10:28 > 0:10:34If ever there was an image that embodied the role of Kiev
0:10:34 > 0:10:37as the mother of old Christian Russia, I think this is it.
0:10:46 > 0:10:49Prince Vladimir hadn't just adopted a religion.
0:10:49 > 0:10:55He'd imported an entire Christian culture, the culture of Byzantium
0:10:55 > 0:11:00forged over centuries in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul.
0:11:09 > 0:11:11The impact on the people was immense.
0:11:11 > 0:11:18They'd leapt from a world of pagan idols of stone or wood to these glittering visions of heaven.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22It must have been like travelling 1,000 years in one day.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32But there was one Byzantine art form above all others
0:11:32 > 0:11:35that Russians would take to their hearts,
0:11:35 > 0:11:39perhaps because it had a simplicity that spoke directly to them.
0:11:42 > 0:11:49To Russian Christians it would become the most powerful symbol of their faith and their nation.
0:11:51 > 0:11:52The icon.
0:11:56 > 0:11:59The painting on wood of a saint
0:11:59 > 0:12:03or a prophet or Jesus Christ himself.
0:12:08 > 0:12:13Now this famous image, Our Lady of Vladimir,
0:12:13 > 0:12:17is really the founding icon of the whole Russian painting tradition,
0:12:17 > 0:12:20the holy of holies, the holiest religious painting in all of Russia.
0:12:22 > 0:12:26Art history's stylistic analysis tells us that the picture was painted
0:12:26 > 0:12:31in about 1130 by one of the great masters of Byzantine art
0:12:31 > 0:12:36working in Constantinople and it was brought to Russia as a great prize, a great treasure.
0:12:36 > 0:12:43But as far as the early rulers of Russia were concerned, and as far as the tradition of the painting has
0:12:43 > 0:12:48always been presented to the Russian people, it wasn't painted by a Byzantine artist in the Middle Ages.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51It was painted by Saint Luke himself!
0:12:51 > 0:12:53It was, if you like, almost a photograph
0:12:53 > 0:12:58taken in the Virgin Mary's kitchen of her with her son,
0:12:58 > 0:13:03and it projected this new race of Christian people,
0:13:03 > 0:13:04this race of converts.
0:13:04 > 0:13:09So to speak, it projected them straight into the centre of the Christian mystery.
0:13:09 > 0:13:14This is Christ the vulnerable baby in the arms of his mother.
0:13:14 > 0:13:17Look at the tenderness with which he clasps her neck.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21Look at the sadness in her eyes, those beautiful almond-shaped eyes
0:13:21 > 0:13:25that look out at you with the foreknowledge of his death.
0:13:26 > 0:13:29And in this type of image they place great stress
0:13:29 > 0:13:31on his vulnerable body.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35The underneath of his foot is presented to us, I think,
0:13:35 > 0:13:37in an attempt to make us imagine
0:13:37 > 0:13:41the terrible torment of having a nail pierced through that foot.
0:13:43 > 0:13:46It's full of pathos and humanity, this type of image,
0:13:46 > 0:13:49and I wonder if that isn't partly why it struck
0:13:49 > 0:13:53such a deep chord in the Russian imagination,
0:13:53 > 0:13:56because they had their own Slavic traditions
0:13:56 > 0:13:59of worshipping a fertility figure, a mother,
0:13:59 > 0:14:02and this is very much an image of the mother of God, and God.
0:14:02 > 0:14:05It's welcoming, it's got a warmth about it.
0:14:12 > 0:14:16Icons aren't realistic in the western sense.
0:14:16 > 0:14:18They're spaceless, shadowless.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21Yet they'd always been venerated in the eastern tradition
0:14:21 > 0:14:23precisely because they were held to represent
0:14:23 > 0:14:26the actual likeness of the saints in heaven.
0:14:29 > 0:14:35And nowhere have they been venerated, even loved, as deeply as in Russia.
0:14:37 > 0:14:39So far from the roots of the Christian faith,
0:14:39 > 0:14:43it's as if the people needed something sacred they could touch.
0:14:48 > 0:14:52As well as the art of the icon, there was the art of the book.
0:14:54 > 0:14:57This is the Ostromir gospel.
0:14:57 > 0:14:58It was created in 1056,
0:14:58 > 0:15:02less than 70 years after the conversion of old Russia.
0:15:04 > 0:15:08It's the most ancient surviving Russian book.
0:15:10 > 0:15:15The illuminations range from impish grotesques worthy of the European Gothic tradition,
0:15:15 > 0:15:20to this beautiful vision of St Mark wrapped in patterns of gold.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28But it's the text of early Russian books like this one,
0:15:28 > 0:15:32written in such supple calligraphy, that was so significant.
0:15:34 > 0:15:37At a stroke, this script removed one of the biggest obstacles
0:15:37 > 0:15:40to completing the conversion of the Kievan empire.
0:15:44 > 0:15:49You can't teach the Bible unless you can transcribe the Bible into your own language,
0:15:49 > 0:15:51and that was a problem in Kievan Rus
0:15:51 > 0:15:54because they had no written language that we know of.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58So they appealed to the scholars of Byzantium for help and the result
0:15:58 > 0:16:02was this wonderful script known as Cyrillic.
0:16:02 > 0:16:05Now the invention of Cyrillic marks the very beginnings
0:16:05 > 0:16:09of the Russian literary tradition, but I think that Cyrillic itself
0:16:09 > 0:16:14deserves to be seen as a work of art, a work of design and it's charged with significance
0:16:14 > 0:16:19because the scholars responsible for it used Greek as their basic template,
0:16:19 > 0:16:24but to that they added a series of letter shapes based on symbolic forms, the circle, the triangle
0:16:24 > 0:16:29and the cross, all of these forms loaded with Christian significance.
0:16:31 > 0:16:36With the help of bibles and books like this, by the beginning of the 13th century
0:16:36 > 0:16:40a rich Christian culture had taken root.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44But almost as soon as it was established, it was under threat.
0:16:49 > 0:16:54In 1237, a great army of marauding nomads
0:16:54 > 0:16:58advanced into Kievan Rus from the plains of the east.
0:16:58 > 0:17:03They looted and destroyed churches, burning precious bibles and icons.
0:17:06 > 0:17:11The Mongols were a warrior race driven by power and acquisition.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16Art wasn't a currency they understood,
0:17:16 > 0:17:19so unless they could melt it down for gold, they destroyed it.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30When the Mongol hordes drove across the Eurasian steppe, they forced
0:17:30 > 0:17:35a wrenching displacement of the old orthodox culture of Christian Kiev.
0:17:35 > 0:17:38The city and the surrounding region was looted and pillaged.
0:17:38 > 0:17:42All routes south were blocked by Mongol fortresses.
0:17:42 > 0:17:47As a result, Russian culture was suddenly cut off, not only from declining Byzantium
0:17:47 > 0:17:50but also from the civilisation of the West,
0:17:50 > 0:17:53from France where the first universities were being founded,
0:17:53 > 0:17:57from Italy where the first glimmers of the Renaissance were being seen.
0:17:57 > 0:17:59Old Russia would know nothing of that.
0:17:59 > 0:18:02It was its destiny to develop in isolation
0:18:02 > 0:18:07as its people were forced north into Muscovy, the wooded lands.
0:18:18 > 0:18:21The Mongols' main priority was simply to isolate the Russians
0:18:21 > 0:18:26so they could form no alliances and build no power base.
0:18:26 > 0:18:32They became a subject people, obliged to pay taxes to their nomadic masters.
0:18:43 > 0:18:50For more than 200 years, Russian Christian culture existed in a strange forest cocoon.
0:18:53 > 0:18:58To the rest of the world, it was as if they'd ceased to exist.
0:18:59 > 0:19:05During this period, the writers of medieval Europe and Byzantium simply stopped mentioning them.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13These years have been called the silent centuries.
0:19:16 > 0:19:18Central to everything was the forest.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22Their lives were dominated by its rhythms, its cycles,
0:19:22 > 0:19:28long freezing dark winters followed by the joyful rebirth of spring.
0:19:28 > 0:19:36This was a Christian world, but one from which the old pagan gods of the eastern Slavs had not yet departed.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40There was mother nature, the goddess of fertility, of the warm damp earth
0:19:40 > 0:19:46and counterposed to her was the god Perun, the god of lightning, thunder and above all fire,
0:19:46 > 0:19:53fire that was the source at once of life, light, warmth and refuge but also death and devastation.
0:19:53 > 0:19:57Now I don't think you can ever understand the unique forms
0:19:57 > 0:20:02that would be taken by Russian Christianity, its art and its architecture
0:20:02 > 0:20:06unless you grasp that its roots lay in this soil.
0:20:10 > 0:20:14Having reduced the people of Rus to subjugation, the Mongols left them alone
0:20:14 > 0:20:19as long as they paid their taxes, eventually allowing them freedom of worship.
0:20:24 > 0:20:29Denied real power over their own destiny, the Russians turned increasingly towards God
0:20:29 > 0:20:33and focused all their energies on the spiritual world.
0:20:35 > 0:20:39In the 14th and 15th century, countless settlements sprang up
0:20:39 > 0:20:44in lonely forest tracts and along northern lakes and rivers.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56This is Malye Karely in the depths of the Russian north,
0:20:56 > 0:20:59more than 1,000 kilometres from Moscow.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05Here they have preserved one of the most evocative of those early settlements.
0:21:08 > 0:21:13The quintessential expression of Christian civilisation in Russia is this.
0:21:13 > 0:21:18It's the wooden church, wonderfully homely form of religious architecture
0:21:18 > 0:21:22built, like any other house in the forest, from logs, but they build it tall
0:21:22 > 0:21:29so it can be seen from miles away above the treeline because, after all, this is the house of God.
0:21:33 > 0:21:38One of the most characteristic features of the little wooden church are its onion domes.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41They have been shaped by the forest too.
0:21:41 > 0:21:44To me they look like architectural fir cones.
0:21:59 > 0:22:03What immediately strikes me about this space is
0:22:03 > 0:22:09its small scale and its intimacy, and if you imagine this room filled with a congregation,
0:22:09 > 0:22:14you'd feel very much as if you were part of a family of worshippers.
0:22:14 > 0:22:19That's carried through into the art and architecture, I think, that idea of the church in Russia
0:22:19 > 0:22:24as a kind of home, a perfect version of the hospitable home, because
0:22:24 > 0:22:26this is what's known as an iconostasis,
0:22:26 > 0:22:30and it's an utterly and uniquely Russian invention.
0:22:30 > 0:22:37Only in Russia do you find it, this great screen of images raised up in tiers above you.
0:22:37 > 0:22:40In the eastern Byzantine church, the icons, the images are dispersed
0:22:40 > 0:22:42throughout the space, but not in Russia.
0:22:42 > 0:22:47They bring them all together to form this kind of golden wall of imagery.
0:22:48 > 0:22:53As you look at it, with the candles shimmering off it, it gives off this warm glow,
0:22:53 > 0:22:58and I think it's very much like the hearth at the centre of a house.
0:23:01 > 0:23:03BELLS CHIME
0:23:04 > 0:23:08The humble church did indeed become a welcoming forest home.
0:23:11 > 0:23:18Here, the beleaguered people of Rus could count on the hospitality of God to provide
0:23:18 > 0:23:20light, warmth and sustenance.
0:23:24 > 0:23:29And in place of the old forest ritual whereby the visitor was given bread and salt,
0:23:29 > 0:23:35here the visitor receives the flesh and blood of God himself in the form of the communion...
0:23:42 > 0:23:47..the whole rite sanctified by the protective gaze of the icons.
0:23:52 > 0:23:57Icon painting schools flourished in the forests of Old Muscovy,
0:23:57 > 0:24:00and today they're still making icons in the old way.
0:24:02 > 0:24:07That's because the ideal of the icon painter has always been not to innovate
0:24:07 > 0:24:12but to remain true to the sacred prototypes of each saint and prophet,
0:24:12 > 0:24:14passed down by holy tradition.
0:24:18 > 0:24:23For every icon there has always been an established pattern,
0:24:23 > 0:24:26almost like a stencil, that had to be traced.
0:24:27 > 0:24:31But despite the inherent conservatism of the Eastern icon tradition,
0:24:31 > 0:24:37the truth is that, by the middle of the 15th century, it had taken a unique form here in Russia.
0:24:43 > 0:24:48If you want to experience the essential Russian-ness of the Russian icon
0:24:48 > 0:24:50there's only one place to go -
0:24:50 > 0:24:55that's the Holy Trinity Monastery in Sergiev Posad.
0:24:57 > 0:25:00I'm here on the holiest day of the year,
0:25:00 > 0:25:03the Feast of St Sergius himself.
0:25:03 > 0:25:10For centuries, this has been the place of pilgrimage for Russia's Orthodox Christians.
0:25:16 > 0:25:18They come not only to remember St Sergius
0:25:18 > 0:25:24but to worship before the icons painted by Russia's most celebrated religious artist,
0:25:24 > 0:25:29Andrei Rublev, who was himself a monk here in the 15th century.
0:25:34 > 0:25:40I met Father Dolmat, a deacon in the modern order of St Sergius.
0:26:23 > 0:26:27According to Father Dolmat, it's also important that the person
0:26:27 > 0:26:34experiencing Rublev's icons should do so in a heightened spiritual atmosphere, during an actual mass.
0:27:00 > 0:27:05This is the great iconostasis by Rublev and his workshop.
0:27:06 > 0:27:12The colours are very subtle, not as strident as Byzantine icons,
0:27:12 > 0:27:19and above all, there's this rich old gold standing for the vault of heaven.
0:27:32 > 0:27:37The paintings have faded, smoked by time and incense.
0:27:44 > 0:27:49But there's a wonderful simplicity about the story-telling in these scenes from the life of Christ.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05But as the mass unfolds, it's as if the art is transformed
0:28:05 > 0:28:09by the intensity of the ritual.
0:28:16 > 0:28:21The people and the icons seem to be communicating with each other.
0:28:21 > 0:28:26Heaven bending to earth, earth reaching to heaven.
0:28:48 > 0:28:52It's an extremely moving, powerful experience.
0:28:52 > 0:28:54It's very hard to put into words.
0:28:55 > 0:28:58But what I'm struck by more than anything else
0:28:58 > 0:29:02is this extraordinary sense of intimacy.
0:29:02 > 0:29:06When I think of the great spaces of western Christian art,
0:29:06 > 0:29:09I think of Giotto, I think of Michelangelo...
0:29:09 > 0:29:13Giotto creates this sense of sacred theatre,
0:29:13 > 0:29:15Michelangelo is like a great epic poem,
0:29:15 > 0:29:18but they're essentially painted books telling you a story.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21It's not like this, it's not like that at all here.
0:29:21 > 0:29:26It's Christianity as a refuge from the cold, Christianity for a people
0:29:26 > 0:29:29whose roots lie in the forest.
0:29:29 > 0:29:32It's totally visceral, it's utterly emotional and
0:29:32 > 0:29:37when you're there in that space, you feel as if people are almost
0:29:37 > 0:29:42literally warming themselves at the fire of the Christian faith.
0:29:47 > 0:29:50THEY SING
0:29:58 > 0:30:01Less than 30 years after Andrei Rublev completed his paintings,
0:30:01 > 0:30:04Byzantine Constantinople fell to the Muslims.
0:30:04 > 0:30:07The Russians suddenly felt their nation
0:30:07 > 0:30:10was the one true home of Christianity.
0:30:23 > 0:30:27But icons don't only appeal to the faithful.
0:30:29 > 0:30:32In recent years, they've become emblems of Russian-ness
0:30:32 > 0:30:35for the country's new rich.
0:30:38 > 0:30:40I'm off to visit publisher Victor Bondarenko.
0:30:40 > 0:30:44Owner of the world's largest private collection of Russian icons.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51I'm curious to know why a secular man, a non-believer,
0:30:51 > 0:30:54would want to possess so many sacred objects.
0:30:56 > 0:30:57Victor.
0:30:59 > 0:31:02- Good morning.- Thank you for having us. It's such a pleasure.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04It's my pleasure also, come on in.
0:31:06 > 0:31:08I hadn't imagined your house like this at all.
0:31:10 > 0:31:16I don't know why but I wasn't quite expecting all this contemporary art in an icon collector's house.
0:31:16 > 0:31:21Now you can see in England how simple Russian people live in Russian villages.
0:31:21 > 0:31:24Oh, yes, all right, this is a simple Russian village hut.
0:31:26 > 0:31:28I feel this is my roots, I feel it.
0:31:28 > 0:31:31Sometimes I can sit on the sofa
0:31:31 > 0:31:36and look at this wall, sometimes I can sit in that armchair
0:31:36 > 0:31:37and look at this wall
0:31:37 > 0:31:41and I feel this vibration through hundreds of years
0:31:41 > 0:31:47feeling of my grand-grandparents praying to these sacred images
0:31:47 > 0:31:49which formed the civilisation.
0:31:50 > 0:31:52This is extraordinary.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54I am glad you like it.
0:31:54 > 0:31:56I like it myself.
0:31:56 > 0:31:59This is like your very own iconostasis.
0:31:59 > 0:32:01- Yes.- Amazing.
0:32:01 > 0:32:03What aspect of Christianity
0:32:03 > 0:32:06do you think that the icon painting emphasises?
0:32:06 > 0:32:08Does it emphasise the human aspect
0:32:08 > 0:32:12or the other worldly, the divine, the mystical?
0:32:12 > 0:32:15I guess it emphasises human aspect.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19When you are looking at the mother of God,
0:32:19 > 0:32:22don't you see in her sad eyes
0:32:22 > 0:32:26that she feels that her child will be killed,
0:32:26 > 0:32:30people will kill him and she already
0:32:30 > 0:32:33feels this and...
0:32:33 > 0:32:37you can see the grief in her eyes, grief on her face.
0:32:37 > 0:32:41- Almost gesturing to us.- Yes, in every gesture you can feel this.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45Talking about whether the icon in Russia is slightly different,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48I wonder if, you know the way that
0:32:48 > 0:32:53this rock formation is painted and the way the sky is painted, this reminds me a little bit of
0:32:53 > 0:32:57certain things in Persian painting, Asiatic, but you don't find that
0:32:57 > 0:32:58in, in eastern Byzantium.
0:32:58 > 0:33:03I know you British, you always push us below and below to Asia but.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06I'd much rather...is that, you don't like that idea of?
0:33:06 > 0:33:10No I like the idea, I like, I love the idea.
0:33:10 > 0:33:15I love the idea. We are not Asia and we are not Western Europe.
0:33:15 > 0:33:16We are just Russia.
0:33:16 > 0:33:21Why do we have to be like that or just like you or just like here?
0:33:21 > 0:33:23We are just Russians.
0:33:23 > 0:33:29We have our own civilisation, our own alphabet, our own language.
0:33:29 > 0:33:31Let's say Americans don't have their own language, even.
0:33:31 > 0:33:34We have everything our own.
0:33:36 > 0:33:42I don't understand how does it happen that we become adversaries.
0:33:42 > 0:33:44It's also enigma by the way.
0:33:44 > 0:33:47The next film you should do.
0:33:47 > 0:33:51Here's to international friendship and thank you so much for showing me your collection.
0:33:51 > 0:33:53- You're most welcome any time. - It's been great.
0:33:53 > 0:33:56- Thank you for coming. - Thank you, Victor.
0:34:08 > 0:34:11But the Russians haven't always loved their icons.
0:34:11 > 0:34:16This picture shows soldiers in the 1920s carrying armfuls of images
0:34:16 > 0:34:19out of a church that they've just looted.
0:34:20 > 0:34:24Under the communists, who feared and despised Christianity,
0:34:24 > 0:34:28churches were shut down and icons were removed.
0:34:31 > 0:34:35But the communists respected the power of the icon, nonetheless,
0:34:35 > 0:34:39and cleverly appropriated it for their own ends.
0:34:40 > 0:34:43Under Lenin, public spaces had,
0:34:43 > 0:34:44like every Russian home,
0:34:44 > 0:34:46a so-called red corner
0:34:46 > 0:34:48but instead of an icon,
0:34:48 > 0:34:51there was, of course, a portrait of the party leader.
0:34:56 > 0:34:59Stalin, too, would seek to recreate his own image
0:34:59 > 0:35:01in the caste of an icon.
0:35:08 > 0:35:13But the communists were by no means the first to steal the icon's magic
0:35:13 > 0:35:15and make it their own.
0:35:23 > 0:35:25In 1547...
0:35:25 > 0:35:31Russia's most despotic cruel and whimsical ruler came to power.
0:35:34 > 0:35:36His name was Ivan the Terrible
0:35:36 > 0:35:40and he's one of the towering figures of Russian history,
0:35:40 > 0:35:43immortalised in the films of Sergei Eisenstein.
0:35:48 > 0:35:50In the celluloid re-telling of Ivan's life,
0:35:50 > 0:35:55he's shown suppressing the scheming feudal lords of Muscovy,
0:35:55 > 0:35:59uniting Russia and shattering the Mongol yoke.
0:36:04 > 0:36:06He did indeed achieve all of that.
0:36:06 > 0:36:09He wasn't quite the black-and-white hero
0:36:09 > 0:36:11Eisenstein made him out to be in this film.
0:36:14 > 0:36:19Ivan was brought up in the Orthodox faith but he was hardly a model Christian.
0:36:19 > 0:36:23As a child, his hobby was torturing small animals.
0:36:23 > 0:36:27He once killed more than 30 puppies in a single afternoon
0:36:27 > 0:36:30by hurling them from a tower of the Kremlin,
0:36:30 > 0:36:34and that was just the start of his psychopathic rampage through life.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38By the age of 13 he was a serial rapist and murderer,
0:36:38 > 0:36:41and he could do whatever he liked with impunity
0:36:41 > 0:36:43because his authority was absolute.
0:36:48 > 0:36:52Ivan had a paradoxical relationship with the Orthodox faith.
0:36:54 > 0:36:58Devilish misdeeds would be followed by agonised repentance.
0:37:01 > 0:37:04And this strange, twisted relationship
0:37:04 > 0:37:05would be dramatically reflected
0:37:05 > 0:37:08in the religious art that he commissioned.
0:37:13 > 0:37:14In the State Tretyakov Museum
0:37:14 > 0:37:17hangs a work of art painted for Ivan's palace,
0:37:17 > 0:37:20a huge narrative icon called Church Militant
0:37:20 > 0:37:24which would change the rules of icon-painting forever.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32For me, this huge extraordinary panoramic icon
0:37:32 > 0:37:35of the Church Militant
0:37:35 > 0:37:40is the ultimate example of Ivan the Terrible's political bravado,
0:37:40 > 0:37:41his devil may care willingness
0:37:41 > 0:37:46to use the imagery of the church in the service of his own ends.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53Now what it represents is a truly extraordinary watershed moment in
0:37:53 > 0:37:55the history of Russian icon painting
0:37:55 > 0:37:58because Ivan had to convene a special church council
0:37:58 > 0:37:59to make this possible.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02What it shows us, for the first time,
0:38:02 > 0:38:06is a ruler, a Russian ruler actually crossing the line,
0:38:06 > 0:38:09entering the world of the heavenly and the holy,
0:38:09 > 0:38:12having himself painted into the icon because there he is,
0:38:12 > 0:38:16leading the massed forces of Christendom
0:38:16 > 0:38:20towards the new Jerusalem, the city of God.
0:38:24 > 0:38:28OK he's, he's just behind Archangel Michael
0:38:28 > 0:38:31but look who he's put himself in front of -
0:38:31 > 0:38:37St George, St Dimitrios, St Vladimir with his two sons.
0:38:37 > 0:38:41He's in front of all of those figures from the Christian past
0:38:41 > 0:38:43and he's also in front of Constantine the Great,
0:38:43 > 0:38:45the founder of Constantinople.
0:38:56 > 0:38:59This burning city stands for Gomorrah
0:38:59 > 0:39:01but I think, in Ivan's own iconography,
0:39:01 > 0:39:04it stands, too, for the city of Kazan
0:39:04 > 0:39:08which he had seized from the Mongols and torched.
0:39:08 > 0:39:11And I think what this picture crystallises very clearly
0:39:11 > 0:39:14is the strong sense in Russia at this point in history,
0:39:14 > 0:39:18the middle of the 16th century, that having for so long
0:39:18 > 0:39:21been somehow at the margins of the Christian world,
0:39:21 > 0:39:23they are now at its very centre.
0:39:23 > 0:39:24Byzantium has fallen,
0:39:24 > 0:39:29the baton has been passed and Ivan has taken it over.
0:39:29 > 0:39:32And look, as a clinching symbol of that,
0:39:32 > 0:39:35look how the artist has painted the heavenly city of Jerusalem.
0:39:35 > 0:39:40He's painted it as an idealised vision of Moscow.
0:39:48 > 0:39:51But Ivan's sense that Russia was the new Byzantium
0:39:51 > 0:39:56led him to an increasingly distorted view of the world and his own importance.
0:39:56 > 0:40:02He became ever bolder in twisting art and the church to his own ends.
0:40:04 > 0:40:08To see the most disturbing evidence of this,
0:40:08 > 0:40:12you have to travel to a place called Aleksandrov Sloboda.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16Ivan built a monastery there where he spent much of his later years
0:40:16 > 0:40:21consolidating his power and staving off the plots to unseat him.
0:40:23 > 0:40:27As Ivan grew older, his fits of psychotic rage
0:40:27 > 0:40:30became ever more frequent and his paranoia deepened.
0:40:30 > 0:40:32He surrounded himself with his own elite guard,
0:40:32 > 0:40:34the much-feared Oprichniki.
0:40:34 > 0:40:40They were his private army, his secret police and his death squads.
0:40:49 > 0:40:52These days Aleksandrov Sloboda is down at heel
0:40:52 > 0:40:54and definitely off the beaten track
0:40:54 > 0:40:58but it was once the nerve centre of Ivan's empire.
0:41:04 > 0:41:09These monastery precincts were stalked by Ivan's secret police
0:41:09 > 0:41:14whose emblems were the head of a dog, symbolising their status as the Tsar's watch dogs,
0:41:14 > 0:41:17and a broom, standing for their determination
0:41:17 > 0:41:20to sweep away his enemies.
0:41:26 > 0:41:30Murders and executions were a daily occurrence and Ivan directed much of
0:41:30 > 0:41:34the depravity from his own private chapel,
0:41:34 > 0:41:36the Trinity Cathedral,
0:41:36 > 0:41:39decorated with a great fresco sequence.
0:42:01 > 0:42:04On the west wall of the church
0:42:04 > 0:42:07we've got this vast depiction of the last things.
0:42:07 > 0:42:11Christ seated at a circle of gold surrounded by the heavenly host
0:42:11 > 0:42:15and as so often whether in the Orthodox church or the Western church,
0:42:15 > 0:42:17as so often with depictions of the Last Judgment,
0:42:17 > 0:42:24the artist really pulled out all the stops when it comes to his depiction of the torments of hell.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34Up here we've got the resurrection of the dead
0:42:34 > 0:42:36and he's paid particular emphasis to those lines
0:42:36 > 0:42:40in Revelation about the sea giving up all those who had drowned or been eaten by monsters.
0:42:40 > 0:42:44There we can see some people being regurgitated.
0:42:48 > 0:42:50There, up on the left,
0:42:50 > 0:42:54you've got the blessed going off to heaven to meet St Peter.
0:42:55 > 0:42:59But down here below, is hell.
0:43:02 > 0:43:07There's Judas with his money bags sitting in the lap of the devil.
0:43:09 > 0:43:13Here, underneath a set of inscriptions detailing
0:43:13 > 0:43:16the seven deadly sins in old Russian -
0:43:16 > 0:43:18avarice, adultery, lust...
0:43:18 > 0:43:21We've got the torments of the damned.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25Here the gnashing of teeth, weeping and wailing. Here...
0:43:25 > 0:43:31Freezing to death. Here, being eaten by worms and consumed by flames.
0:43:33 > 0:43:39Being thrust into eternal darkness and boiled in pine resin.
0:43:41 > 0:43:46Now if you want to get a full sense of just how perverted
0:43:46 > 0:43:49Ivan the Terrible's relationship to God became,
0:43:49 > 0:43:53you have to realise how he used this space.
0:43:53 > 0:43:57He didn't use this space as a place of solemn contemplation,
0:43:57 > 0:44:00somewhere for him to meditate on the might of God.
0:44:00 > 0:44:05He actually used it as the administrative centre for his evil empire.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09He signed execution orders in here and worse than that,
0:44:09 > 0:44:11he's known, the archive tell us,
0:44:11 > 0:44:14that he used this area of the picture
0:44:14 > 0:44:17as a kind of instruction manual for torture.
0:44:17 > 0:44:20He himself copied these tortures.
0:44:20 > 0:44:25He enacted these very tortures on those who had displeased him.
0:44:26 > 0:44:29I don't think it was enough for Ivan the Terrible
0:44:29 > 0:44:31to be God's representative on earth.
0:44:31 > 0:44:33He wanted to BE God.
0:44:41 > 0:44:46Ivan the Terrible was the first ruler to call himself Tsar
0:44:46 > 0:44:49and in doing so, he'd invented perhaps the most terrifying
0:44:49 > 0:44:50of Russia's institutions,
0:44:50 > 0:44:54the absolute rule of a single individual.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01From the Tsars to the communists and into the present,
0:45:01 > 0:45:06the figure of a single all-powerful leader with the fate of millions
0:45:06 > 0:45:09at his mercy has been the one constant.
0:45:12 > 0:45:14And today you can still meet people
0:45:14 > 0:45:18who've had to endure the autocracy that Ivan invented.
0:45:20 > 0:45:26And their responses to such absolute power have through the centuries
0:45:26 > 0:45:30played a vital role in shaping Russian art and culture.
0:45:34 > 0:45:35Zdrastvuitye!
0:45:37 > 0:45:38Baba Vera!
0:45:40 > 0:45:45This is Baba Vera, she's lived most of her life as a subsistence farmer
0:45:45 > 0:45:47in modern Muscovy.
0:45:47 > 0:45:49Thank you for having me, very nice to meet you.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53- What a beautiful house you have. - Da. Da. Da.
0:45:54 > 0:46:01Vera's parents lived under the rule of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II,
0:46:01 > 0:46:04and she and her husband, Anatoly,
0:46:04 > 0:46:08experienced the extreme hardships of the Stalinist era.
0:47:06 > 0:47:08But against the hardship,
0:47:08 > 0:47:12it's as if Vera has turned her home into a work of art.
0:47:13 > 0:47:20Icons offer consolation but just as important is Vera's love of colour
0:47:20 > 0:47:22and her mischievous sense of fun.
0:47:51 > 0:47:54'And with that, she exploded into song.'
0:48:23 > 0:48:24HE LAUGHS
0:48:37 > 0:48:38Back in old Russia,
0:48:38 > 0:48:41there was an art form that spoke for the Veras of this world.
0:48:45 > 0:48:47Images like this were called luboks,
0:48:47 > 0:48:50prints of popular stories and folk tales.
0:48:50 > 0:48:55And they provide a glimpse into the vast mass of unrecorded lives in Russian history.
0:49:00 > 0:49:02They're full of mischief and wicked humour.
0:49:06 > 0:49:10This could almost be Baba Vera belting out her song.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16There's a carnival-esque relish
0:49:16 > 0:49:19in the world turned upside down.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22Here the mice are burying the cat.
0:49:24 > 0:49:30It's laughter in the dark with a few vodkas to help the party along.
0:49:38 > 0:49:41People might have dreamed of change
0:49:41 > 0:49:45but old Russia was, for centuries, static,
0:49:45 > 0:49:49inward-looking...
0:49:49 > 0:49:51fossilised.
0:49:53 > 0:49:56Russia had remained essentially isolated
0:49:56 > 0:49:59from the outside world ever since the fall of Kiev.
0:50:03 > 0:50:05But one man would change everything,
0:50:05 > 0:50:10a tsar who came to power nearly a century after Ivan the Terrible.
0:50:10 > 0:50:13His name...
0:50:13 > 0:50:15Peter the Great.
0:50:24 > 0:50:26It's a measure of Russia's insularity
0:50:26 > 0:50:31that Peter was the first tsar in history to travel abroad.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37I'm going to the city he created in his name.
0:50:37 > 0:50:40It, too, is the product of a journey.
0:50:45 > 0:50:50In 1697, Peter had embarked on a tour of Northern Europe
0:50:50 > 0:50:53immersing himself in art, culture and science.
0:50:55 > 0:50:59He wanted finally to undo the consequences of the Mongol invasion
0:50:59 > 0:51:02and reconnect Russia to the West.
0:51:02 > 0:51:05There was time for some extracurricular exploits along the way.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15It's a little known fact that Russia's greatest tsar
0:51:15 > 0:51:18spent part of his reign on an extended bender
0:51:18 > 0:51:20in Deptford, South London.
0:51:20 > 0:51:26The diarist John Evelyn lent him his house so that Peter could inspect the shipyards at nearby Greenwich,
0:51:26 > 0:51:28but soon Evelyn's housekeeper
0:51:28 > 0:51:32was complaining that the place was full of right nasty people.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36Apparently Peter and his new friend, the astronomer Edmund Halley,
0:51:36 > 0:51:38who discovered Halley's Comet,
0:51:38 > 0:51:40were spending the evenings getting drunk,
0:51:40 > 0:51:42pushing each other round the garden in wheelbarrows
0:51:42 > 0:51:44and throwing up in the flower beds.
0:51:44 > 0:51:47When the Tsar and his entourage finally left,
0:51:47 > 0:51:50Evelyn found that all the doors had been broken down,
0:51:50 > 0:51:54the locks had been smashed and his pictures were full of bullet holes.
0:51:55 > 0:51:59But despite all the high jinks, Peter really was a man on a mission,
0:51:59 > 0:52:03the result of which would be the complete transformation of Russia.
0:52:10 > 0:52:13Peter was dazzled by his travels in Europe,
0:52:13 > 0:52:17by the new technology and ideas he experienced there,
0:52:17 > 0:52:22and he came to think of his own nation as backward and primitive.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26He had himself painted again and again
0:52:26 > 0:52:29by the great court painters of Northern Europe
0:52:29 > 0:52:33but, ultimately, it was Russia itself that was to be fitted out
0:52:33 > 0:52:36in a new suit of European clothes,
0:52:37 > 0:52:42He started by laying the foundations for a new capital city.
0:52:42 > 0:52:43A gateway to Europe.
0:52:47 > 0:52:50He could hardly have chosen a less promising place -
0:52:50 > 0:52:54barren marshlands by the banks of the River Neva,
0:52:54 > 0:52:58facing the Gulf of Finland on the fringes of the Baltic Sea.
0:52:58 > 0:53:04Tens of thousands of workers would die erecting a whole city on these barren mudflats.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14650km north-west of Moscow,
0:53:14 > 0:53:18St Petersburg represented not just a huge geographical reorientation
0:53:18 > 0:53:22of Russia but an immense political and cultural shift.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27This great fortress represents
0:53:27 > 0:53:29the very beginning of Peter's great project
0:53:29 > 0:53:34and at its centre is the spire of St Peter and Paul's Cathedral,
0:53:34 > 0:53:36like a great exclamation mark,
0:53:36 > 0:53:42a needle piercing the sky saying this is the city that Peter built.
0:53:51 > 0:53:55The Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul was the first building
0:53:55 > 0:53:59constructed to reflect Peter's grand European vision.
0:53:59 > 0:54:02It was designed by an architect from the West called Trezzini
0:54:02 > 0:54:06and it marks a sharp break with Russian tradition.
0:54:08 > 0:54:11You have to come round the side of the building
0:54:11 > 0:54:13to see that perched on its central cupola
0:54:13 > 0:54:15there's a tiny little onion dome.
0:54:15 > 0:54:19Now to me it looks rather like a boiled sweet,
0:54:19 > 0:54:21an embarrassed concession to the old Russian ways,
0:54:21 > 0:54:23because in all but name
0:54:23 > 0:54:27this is an Italian baroque cathedral transplanted to Russian soil.
0:54:27 > 0:54:30Look at the sexy curve of its facade,
0:54:30 > 0:54:33those Borromini hips jutting out.
0:54:33 > 0:54:36But I think if you really want to understand just how sharp a break
0:54:36 > 0:54:41it marks with the old conventions of orthodoxy, you have to go inside.
0:54:53 > 0:54:59This is such a far cry from the old homely humble churches of Muscovy.
0:54:59 > 0:55:02Here I feel almost as if I'm in a secular palace.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06There's something almost sickly about the surfeit of decoration in here.
0:55:06 > 0:55:09Look at those great trompe l'oeil classical columns.
0:55:09 > 0:55:11They're almost like sticks of barley sugar.
0:55:11 > 0:55:14I think you have to come to the far end of the church
0:55:14 > 0:55:18to really appreciate the magnitude of the transformation that's taken place here.
0:55:18 > 0:55:21Yes, there is still an iconostasis,
0:55:21 > 0:55:24that great Russian innovation, but it's been transformed
0:55:24 > 0:55:28into a huge piece of gilded baroque stage scenery.
0:55:28 > 0:55:33And yes, there are still icons, but a lot fewer of them and painted in a Western style.
0:55:33 > 0:55:35And there's something almost cursory about them.
0:55:35 > 0:55:40They feel to me almost like postage stamps that have been stuck into the pages of an album.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52It wasn't only the Russian church that was being transformed.
0:55:54 > 0:55:58Peter ordered Russian men to shave off their beards
0:55:58 > 0:56:00and wear European clothes.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09He also changed the Russian calendar to synchronise with the West.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15But the most dramatic shift in Russian ways of thinking,
0:56:15 > 0:56:20seeing and being was announced by a single painting.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25A work of art that today hangs in the State Hermitage.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31This is Rembrandt's Jonathan and David,
0:56:31 > 0:56:33a very intimate telling of the biblical story
0:56:33 > 0:56:35from the First Book of Samuel.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37It's a moment of parting.
0:56:37 > 0:56:40Prince Jonathan, son of King Saul, is telling David
0:56:40 > 0:56:44that he must flee the kingdom or his father will kill him.
0:56:44 > 0:56:46It's a religious painting
0:56:46 > 0:56:50but unlike any work of art created by an icon painter.
0:56:50 > 0:56:53You've got chiaroscuro, light and shade.
0:56:53 > 0:56:56You've got a space you can enter. You've got this...
0:56:56 > 0:57:00deeply complicated sense of human psychology and suffering.
0:57:00 > 0:57:05None of those things are present in the shadowless world of the icon.
0:57:05 > 0:57:10This picture represents everything that Western artists had been doing for half a millennium
0:57:10 > 0:57:13and everything that Russian artists were simply unaware of
0:57:13 > 0:57:19in their world of small wooden churches, their forest refuges.
0:57:19 > 0:57:24And when this picture came to Russia, it marked a seismic shift.
0:57:24 > 0:57:25That moment of cultural exchange
0:57:25 > 0:57:29meant that nothing would ever quite be the same again.
0:57:29 > 0:57:32Russian artists would respond to this type of realism,
0:57:32 > 0:57:34this type of space
0:57:34 > 0:57:38with their own fantastic immediate deep tradition of realism.
0:57:38 > 0:57:42Russian collectors would suddenly respond to European art.
0:57:42 > 0:57:43Russian taste would be transformed
0:57:43 > 0:57:49and the reason why this picture is so significant is it's one of Peter the Great's very first acquisitions.
0:57:49 > 0:57:54He actually bought this picture and it's the first Rembrandt ever to come to Russia.
0:58:07 > 0:58:09Peter had opened the floodgates.
0:58:09 > 0:58:12And here in the grand galleries of the Hermitage,
0:58:12 > 0:58:14you're surrounded by his legacy.
0:58:14 > 0:58:18A deluge of provocative Western art.
0:58:19 > 0:58:24Art infused with eroticism and sensuality.
0:58:24 > 0:58:28A far cry, indeed, from the world of the icon.
0:58:29 > 0:58:32Russia really would never be the same again.
0:58:41 > 0:58:45Peter opened Russia up to the West and to modernity
0:58:45 > 0:58:47but it would be a mixed blessing
0:58:47 > 0:58:49and even today there are Russians who say
0:58:49 > 0:58:51"yes, he created a window onto Europe,
0:58:51 > 0:58:54"but what a shame he didn't double-glaze it."
0:58:54 > 0:59:00Peter set his nation on a new course but it would be a stormy journey.
0:59:04 > 0:59:07Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:59:07 > 0:59:10E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk