0:00:09 > 0:00:13Welcome to the Low Countries - a vast flatland
0:00:13 > 0:00:18where continental Europe threatens to slide into the North Sea.
0:00:20 > 0:00:24If it weren't for the dikes and the continual pumping away of water,
0:00:24 > 0:00:27thousands of square miles would simply be washed away.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37The region of the Low Countries has always been
0:00:37 > 0:00:41a place of shifting borders and uneasily coexisting tribes.
0:00:41 > 0:00:44It can't be pinned down to a single nation
0:00:44 > 0:00:46or even a particular mother tongue.
0:00:46 > 0:00:50Labels like Dutch, Netherlandish, Flemish, Walloon,
0:00:50 > 0:00:54they're nebulous, they meant different things at different times.
0:00:54 > 0:00:56And there's the paradox.
0:00:56 > 0:00:58This place, which sometimes seems
0:00:58 > 0:01:01as difficult to grasp as water itself,
0:01:01 > 0:01:04has exerted an enormous tangible influence
0:01:04 > 0:01:07on the whole course of Western civilisation.
0:01:07 > 0:01:11And if you want to understand how this watery world has
0:01:11 > 0:01:16shaped our modern world in terms of politics, science,
0:01:16 > 0:01:20the advancement of learning, economics, history, I think there's
0:01:20 > 0:01:25no better way to begin than by exploring the rich story of its art.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35Behind the obvious cliches - the beer and the moules frites,
0:01:35 > 0:01:40the chocolate and waffles, the windmills and clogs,
0:01:40 > 0:01:42lies a vivid, complex tale
0:01:42 > 0:01:46encapsulated in some of the world's most compelling works of art.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53From the world of medieval Flanders, rich and poor,
0:01:53 > 0:01:56sacred and secular...
0:01:56 > 0:02:00to the glories of the Dutch Golden Age...
0:02:00 > 0:02:05to the somewhat tortuous emergence of modern Holland and Belgium.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10It's the art of an Atlantis in reverse,
0:02:10 > 0:02:14a land that rose from beneath the water
0:02:14 > 0:02:17to reach the pinnacle of civilisation.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53The Zwin Estuary - this is the spot where modern day Belgium
0:02:53 > 0:02:57and the Netherlands meet each other, and the sea.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03Despite thousands of years of human presence here,
0:03:03 > 0:03:07it still feels uncanny - a strange, shifting land.
0:03:10 > 0:03:13To the Romans, this coastline was frontierland,
0:03:13 > 0:03:17the uncouth edge of Empire, the arse-end of the world.
0:03:17 > 0:03:21The Roman historian Tacitus described this tidal,
0:03:21 > 0:03:26watery region as "a place somewhere between land and sea,
0:03:26 > 0:03:31"inhabited by wretched natives leading primitive lives."
0:03:31 > 0:03:34For heat, they burned clods of dried earth,
0:03:34 > 0:03:40and for sustenance they had little more than this...
0:03:47 > 0:03:51Modest beginnings, perhaps, but the marshy mix of water and land
0:03:51 > 0:03:54that disgusted the Romans
0:03:54 > 0:03:57was the very thing that the "wretched herring-eating natives"
0:03:57 > 0:04:00would eventually turn to their advantage.
0:04:00 > 0:04:02By the 10th century, they were building dikes,
0:04:02 > 0:04:07man-made humps to fence off parcels of land from the sea.
0:04:07 > 0:04:11Bit by bit, the threat of floods was replaced with stable farmland,
0:04:11 > 0:04:14then towns, then cities.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19Through sheer hard graft,
0:04:19 > 0:04:23the Lowlanders created a sophisticated society from almost nothing.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32But I think what made the whole culture of the Low Countries
0:04:32 > 0:04:36unique was that this really was a civilisation built on a network,
0:04:36 > 0:04:40a trading network, and a network of canals,
0:04:40 > 0:04:42the gentle terrain of the Lowlands,
0:04:42 > 0:04:44the fact that it was a civilisation
0:04:44 > 0:04:47that had been conjured from water, against all odds,
0:04:47 > 0:04:50was also the thing that enabled it to become
0:04:50 > 0:04:52a great flourishing civilisation.
0:04:52 > 0:04:55From the late Middle Ages on well into the Renaissance,
0:04:55 > 0:04:59Men from Flanders were known for their skill at managing water.
0:05:08 > 0:05:11It's nice to see the city from the water, because you can feel
0:05:11 > 0:05:13how the houses actually face this way.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Naturally, these beautiful little gardens all facing on to the water.
0:05:22 > 0:05:26Location was crucial - canals connected the Low Countries
0:05:26 > 0:05:30with sea lanes north to the Baltic,
0:05:30 > 0:05:34west to the British Isles,
0:05:34 > 0:05:37south to Iberia and the Mediterranean.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41By the 1300s, the Low Countries
0:05:41 > 0:05:46dominated trade in Northern Europe, and this city, Bruges,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50was at the heart of one of the greatest trading centres in the world.
0:05:50 > 0:05:55It was the economic powerhouse of a place known as Flanders,
0:05:55 > 0:05:58part of a Low Countries patchwork of mini-states.
0:05:59 > 0:06:03Low Countries success was founded, above all, on cloth.
0:06:06 > 0:06:09As these people had woven land and sea to create the world
0:06:09 > 0:06:16they lived in, so they wove their identity into their fabrics.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19And when does it really start to get busy? About midday?
0:06:21 > 0:06:25Flanders became an international byword for quality textiles -
0:06:25 > 0:06:31none brighter or finer.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34So it's entirely fitting that Lowlanders found their first
0:06:34 > 0:06:37great artistic expression not in paint,
0:06:37 > 0:06:38but in cloth -
0:06:38 > 0:06:44threading vivid images into the medium of tapestry.
0:06:51 > 0:06:54A little to the east of Bruges in the Belgian town of Mechelen
0:06:54 > 0:06:57is the De Wit Royal Manufacturers of tapestry.
0:06:58 > 0:07:03Housed inside a 15th century building is a truly superb
0:07:03 > 0:07:06collection of these Flemish masterpieces,
0:07:06 > 0:07:10displayed just as they might have been by their original owners.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15Now this room is where they keep some of the very earliest
0:07:15 > 0:07:17tapestries in the whole De Wit collection,
0:07:17 > 0:07:21including this one - it's perhaps the smallest piece in the collection
0:07:21 > 0:07:25but it's one of the most important because it's phenomenally early,
0:07:25 > 0:07:29it's possibly as early as the 1430s, certainly no later than the 1450s.
0:07:29 > 0:07:34It was created in Tournai in what is now Southern Belgium.
0:07:35 > 0:07:39It's an object of immense preciousness.
0:07:39 > 0:07:41We know from inventories of the time
0:07:41 > 0:07:44that something like this would have been valued far more highly
0:07:44 > 0:07:47because of the sheer amount of labour that went into it,
0:07:47 > 0:07:49than a painting or a sculpture,
0:07:49 > 0:07:54even objects made of gold or silver - tapestry was number one luxury item.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59So here we've got this image of Christ on the cross.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03Wonderful details - here's the bad thief with his lost soul
0:08:03 > 0:08:07on its way to hell at the moment of his death.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12This character was a centurion who's said to have pierced Christ's
0:08:12 > 0:08:15side with his sword, and as the blood gushed forth -
0:08:15 > 0:08:18look at that wonderful red blood - some of it
0:08:18 > 0:08:24went in Longinus' eye and he was miraculously cured of his blindness.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27If you look in close detail, and this is very, very rare to have
0:08:27 > 0:08:32survived, you can see that there are gold threads in the haloes.
0:08:33 > 0:08:40I think it reminds us that this was a culture simultaneously
0:08:40 > 0:08:45in love with luxury and wedded to a profound sense of piety.
0:08:56 > 0:08:58The tension between piety and luxury
0:08:58 > 0:09:01had its origins in the very creation of the Low Countries.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08This was a society ultimately built and owned by merchants
0:09:08 > 0:09:11and businessmen - secular people.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14But the foundations had been laid by monks and nuns.
0:09:15 > 0:09:19The ruins of the 13th century Cistercian Abbey at Orval,
0:09:19 > 0:09:22in what is now the French-speaking part of southern Belgium,
0:09:22 > 0:09:27might seem to evoke the otherworldly nature of the monastic life.
0:09:27 > 0:09:30Yet it was the practical know-how developed in monasteries
0:09:30 > 0:09:36that first made possible the region's rise from mud and poverty.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39It was monks who first reclaimed the land,
0:09:39 > 0:09:43and harnessed water for human use.
0:09:43 > 0:09:45In a society with no social services,
0:09:45 > 0:09:49monasteries were at the forefront of public health and welfare.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53And part of that was turning water into beer.
0:09:59 > 0:10:04Today, a community of Trappist monks continues Orval's brewing tradition.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08In some respects, the methods and ingredients are unchanged,
0:10:08 > 0:10:12but they also use state-of-the-art equipment, making them
0:10:12 > 0:10:16every bit as progressive as their 13th century predecessors.
0:10:19 > 0:10:23'Brother Xavier is the manager of Orval Abbey's brewery.'
0:10:23 > 0:10:26IN FRENCH:
0:10:29 > 0:10:31- Hops!- Special aromatiques.
0:10:33 > 0:10:34Mmm!
0:11:08 > 0:11:11Du pain liquide! That's a great phrase!
0:11:11 > 0:11:15Liquid bread, they called it because it had this sustaining ability.
0:11:25 > 0:11:26The monks of medieval Flanders
0:11:26 > 0:11:29only brewed enough beer for their own use.
0:11:29 > 0:11:32But the entrepreneurial Lowlanders knew how to turn monastic
0:11:32 > 0:11:35ingenuity into commercial success.
0:11:39 > 0:11:44By the 14th century, the Low Countries were the continent's biggest exporters of ale.
0:11:47 > 0:11:51Entrepreneurs also turned monastic art into big business.
0:11:55 > 0:11:58The illuminated manuscript, for centuries
0:11:58 > 0:12:02made by monks in the sanctity of their abbey scriptoria,
0:12:02 > 0:12:05was taken to a height of sophistication by secular
0:12:05 > 0:12:08Flemish artists whose workshops were in Flemish town centres.
0:12:11 > 0:12:15By the 1400s, all of Europe's ruling elite were commissioning
0:12:15 > 0:12:18manuscripts from Flanders -
0:12:18 > 0:12:23portable luxury objects even more precious than tapestries.
0:12:24 > 0:12:28The Mayer van den Bergh Museum in Antwerp houses what I think of
0:12:28 > 0:12:32as the single most brilliant illuminated book ever created.
0:12:32 > 0:12:35It was made in around 1500,
0:12:35 > 0:12:38probably as a wedding gift for the Queen of Portugal.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46Now, Claire, I think of this as possibly the finest
0:12:46 > 0:12:52illustrated manuscript produced by the whole Flemish tradition
0:12:52 > 0:12:55and I have to admit that when I put in a request that we might
0:12:55 > 0:12:59actually look at it, I didn't imagine that you would get it out
0:12:59 > 0:13:02and that we would actually be allowed to turn the pages.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05And you've started with an image of Christmas?
0:13:05 > 0:13:10Yes. It is one of the most beautiful illuminations
0:13:10 > 0:13:14here in the manuscript but there are lots of miniatures like this
0:13:14 > 0:13:18because it's a prayer book, a book of hours.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22Normally it was made for monks to use during the year.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24- Well, that's, that's where it began, isn't it?- Yes.
0:13:24 > 0:13:26But by the time we get to an object such as this,
0:13:26 > 0:13:31- these books are being distributed to very rich people... - Yes, it is.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35..across Europe to aid them in their personal prayer.
0:13:35 > 0:13:40- Yes. - And it's interesting to me that the faces seem very Flemish.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45It's that medieval or late medieval habit of imagining the scene
0:13:45 > 0:13:46as if it's happening in your own time.
0:13:46 > 0:13:50- Yes, it is because it doesn't look like Jerusalem or Bethlehem. - No.- Not at all.
0:13:50 > 0:13:53It's happening in Bruges or Flanders.
0:13:53 > 0:13:56I can see down here exactly what you're saying because this is...
0:13:56 > 0:14:00I think this is Mary and Joseph being told there's no room at the inn?
0:14:00 > 0:14:03- Yes, it is, yeah. - But it's a Bruges inn.
0:14:03 > 0:14:06And these buildings are built of brick and they've got those
0:14:06 > 0:14:09very, very characteristic Flemish windows.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12Yes, you even can see here at the background a tower,
0:14:12 > 0:14:15which could be a church in Bruges.
0:14:15 > 0:14:18Can we look some more?
0:14:20 > 0:14:23Where are you going to take us now?
0:14:23 > 0:14:26I can show you this one.
0:14:26 > 0:14:31- It's just a decoration for... - Just a... - ..a normal page, just decoration.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34- Yeah.- But it's so beautiful because it's jewellery
0:14:34 > 0:14:39with beautiful gems hanging here on hooks.
0:14:39 > 0:14:41It's an amazing thing, isn't it,
0:14:41 > 0:14:43cos it's almost like an imaginary jewellery box.
0:14:44 > 0:14:47The new queen of the King of Portugal.
0:14:47 > 0:14:49Nothing's too good for her, is it?
0:14:52 > 0:14:56- And we have here a very beautiful...- Wow!
0:14:56 > 0:15:00..illumination where you can see all the apostles
0:15:00 > 0:15:02and Holy Mary with the blue...
0:15:02 > 0:15:04There again with the blue.
0:15:04 > 0:15:09..gown looking at the clouds where you can see disappearing just...
0:15:09 > 0:15:11and only the feet of Christ.
0:15:11 > 0:15:13There he goes, up to heaven.
0:15:13 > 0:15:14- And where...- His feet.
0:15:14 > 0:15:18..he started you can see but very, very little one,
0:15:18 > 0:15:20his two feet.
0:15:20 > 0:15:22Ah!
0:15:22 > 0:15:23- In the rocks.- His footprints.
0:15:23 > 0:15:25His footprints, yes.
0:15:26 > 0:15:30No-one can imitate this quality now
0:15:30 > 0:15:36because we don't have the, the art and also not the materials...
0:15:36 > 0:15:40It's a sobering thought that yes, I think you're exactly right -
0:15:40 > 0:15:46no-one will ever perhaps draw with that fineness...
0:15:46 > 0:15:48- No.- ..ever again.
0:15:59 > 0:16:04Flemish illuminators achieved unsurpassed levels of immediacy
0:16:04 > 0:16:06and imagination.
0:16:06 > 0:16:09It's often hard to know who the artists responsible were,
0:16:09 > 0:16:12because their names are rarely recorded.
0:16:12 > 0:16:15But throughout Flanders during the 15th century, the skills
0:16:15 > 0:16:19developed within the borders of a book's page would increasingly
0:16:19 > 0:16:22be applied to the more public medium of painting.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33And the first great painter to translate Flemish illumination
0:16:33 > 0:16:37on to this far grander scale would have such an impact on the whole
0:16:37 > 0:16:42course of Western art that we most certainly know his name.
0:16:42 > 0:16:44Jan van Eyck.
0:16:44 > 0:16:48Van Eyck may himself have started out as an illuminator.
0:16:49 > 0:16:51He lived and worked in Bruges,
0:16:51 > 0:16:55but it was another nearby city that he created his most spectacular work.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02Well, I'm in Ghent and it's raining.
0:17:02 > 0:17:03It's another grey day
0:17:03 > 0:17:07in the Low Countries, but then again who needs sunshine when there's
0:17:07 > 0:17:12so much light and colour in the art, and in the church behind me,
0:17:12 > 0:17:16there is, for my money, the most radiant Flemish masterpiece of the lot.
0:17:28 > 0:17:33In 1432, Jan van Eyck completed a commission for this cathedral -
0:17:33 > 0:17:37possibly begun by his brother, Hubert, but essentially his work.
0:17:40 > 0:17:43It was a chance for van Eyck to show off his breathtaking discovery,
0:17:43 > 0:17:49something never seen before - a way of applying layers of translucent
0:17:49 > 0:17:53oil paint to create astonishing illusions of depth and light.
0:18:00 > 0:18:05This work is now so cherished it's kept behind bulletproof glass
0:18:05 > 0:18:09under carefully controlled climate and lighting conditions.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17So here it is - van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece,
0:18:17 > 0:18:20one of the very greatest paintings in the whole world.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22And what does it represent?
0:18:22 > 0:18:26Well, essentially it's a vision, it's a fantasy,
0:18:26 > 0:18:31it's a dream of what might happen at the end of the world.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34Everything converges on a sacred centre,
0:18:34 > 0:18:40here the sacred centre is that astonishing solemn, severe hieratic
0:18:40 > 0:18:45figure of Christ the judge and God the father rolled into one.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51And at the extreme edge on either side we have Adam
0:18:51 > 0:18:57and Eve represented with tremendous lack of idealism -
0:18:57 > 0:18:59these are real human bodies.
0:18:59 > 0:19:02And that's the whole point
0:19:02 > 0:19:05because it is their sin that has condemned us to live in a world of
0:19:05 > 0:19:13mortal time and that is what in this moment is being redeemed by Christ.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18This is the moment when all of the blessed, as described in the Book of
0:19:18 > 0:19:25Revelations, gather to enter the New Jerusalem, paradise, eternal life.
0:19:26 > 0:19:30They're all converging on that central mystical vision
0:19:30 > 0:19:34of the lamb of God, symbol of Christ, shedding his blood
0:19:34 > 0:19:39on an altar while angels bear the symbols of his Passion.
0:19:39 > 0:19:44It's like a church service taking place in a garden of utter beauty and delight.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50But what makes this picture truly extraordinary?
0:19:50 > 0:19:55What makes it one of the great works of art ever painted?
0:19:55 > 0:19:58I think it's partly to do with van Eyck's sense of composition
0:19:58 > 0:20:03and the way in which he's imagined heavenly perfection as this
0:20:03 > 0:20:06perfectly symmetrical universe of form.
0:20:08 > 0:20:12You can almost imagine the picture having just been painted one half
0:20:12 > 0:20:16and then folded over and the other half mirrors it perfectly.
0:20:18 > 0:20:21And yet when you look more closely into the picture,
0:20:21 > 0:20:25there are these wonderful lightning flashes of realism,
0:20:25 > 0:20:27these faces that jump out at you,
0:20:27 > 0:20:33beards that you feel you can touch, flowers that you feel you can smell.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36And how did van Eyck achieve this?
0:20:36 > 0:20:41Well, Giorgio Vasari, the great Italian art historian, tells us
0:20:41 > 0:20:46he invented a new form of art, it was called oil painting.
0:20:46 > 0:20:49Now, generations of modern art historians have said that
0:20:49 > 0:20:51that's a myth, of course van Eyck didn't invent oil painting,
0:20:51 > 0:20:52it was already around.
0:20:52 > 0:20:57But the fact is that van Eyck DID in effect invent oil painting -
0:20:57 > 0:21:01certainly he discovered the things that could be done with pigment,
0:21:01 > 0:21:06when it was suspended in this medium of oil.
0:21:06 > 0:21:10And this picture is a kind of encyclopaedia of his talents,
0:21:10 > 0:21:13"Look!" he's saying, look what I can do with oil paint.
0:21:13 > 0:21:19I can paint ermine-trimmed robes, I can paint each separate
0:21:19 > 0:21:26hair in a horse's mane, I can paint geology, architecture, I can
0:21:26 > 0:21:32paint the reflection in somebody's eye - it all started here.
0:21:34 > 0:21:39Now the first people who saw this picture were so stunned by it,
0:21:39 > 0:21:41so taken aback by it,
0:21:41 > 0:21:46they could not believe that an image that was made of nothing
0:21:46 > 0:21:53but paint applied to boards of wood could seem to them like life itself.
0:21:53 > 0:22:00So much so that the rumour was put about in Ghent, in Bruges,
0:22:00 > 0:22:06van Eyck's home town, that this painter wasn't just an artist,
0:22:07 > 0:22:10he was a magician, some kind of necromancer.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23Van Eyck's innovations would be enormously influential.
0:22:23 > 0:22:27Oil painting, the medium that he had pioneered, would be taken up all
0:22:27 > 0:22:32over Europe, from Venice to Northern and Central Italy, to Spain and beyond.
0:22:32 > 0:22:38And as generation after generation of painters
0:22:38 > 0:22:46explored its effects, art itself would be transformed forever.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51Van Eyck's mastery of oil paint made him one of the richest,
0:22:51 > 0:22:56most highly respected artists of his day.
0:22:58 > 0:23:03But where he used the medium to conjure up an entire world of vivid detail,
0:23:04 > 0:23:07it was another great Flemish artist who went beneath that
0:23:07 > 0:23:12glistening surface, to explore the far depths of human emotion.
0:23:15 > 0:23:17Brussels-based Rogier van der Weyden,
0:23:17 > 0:23:20believed to have portrayed himself here as St Luke,
0:23:20 > 0:23:24patron saint of artists, was described by his contemporaries
0:23:24 > 0:23:27as "the greatest", "the most noble" of painters.
0:23:32 > 0:23:37In his almost unbearable portrayal of Christ's Descent from the Cross,
0:23:37 > 0:23:41van der Weyden explored every last trick of oil paint -
0:23:41 > 0:23:46above all its ability to capture tears, and blood - to render
0:23:46 > 0:23:50the full horror of Christ's death immediate and shocking.
0:23:51 > 0:23:56This is pain, grief and sorrow made visible - almost tangible.
0:24:01 > 0:24:05In 1443, the founders of this hospital commissioned
0:24:05 > 0:24:08Rogier van der Weyden to paint what would be one of the great
0:24:08 > 0:24:13jewels in the crown of Flemish art -
0:24:13 > 0:24:19a consolation, or was it perhaps a warning, for those who lay sick
0:24:19 > 0:24:23and dying in a world of barely imaginable harshness and hardship.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30Smallpox and cholera were endemic, plague a regular terror.
0:24:32 > 0:24:36Monks who tended the sick were themselves at constant risk.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45But this wasn't just a hospital for curing bodies,
0:24:45 > 0:24:50it was a hospital for saving souls, and its focal point,
0:24:50 > 0:24:52placed at the end of the room of the sick,
0:24:52 > 0:24:59facing all of those beds, was this great picture, a Flemish altarpiece.
0:24:59 > 0:25:03It was painted by Rogier van der Weyden about 11 years after
0:25:03 > 0:25:05van Eyck painted the Ghent altarpiece
0:25:05 > 0:25:09and what it shows us is in effect the prequel to the Ghent
0:25:09 > 0:25:15altarpiece, because this is the moment of the Last Judgement.
0:25:15 > 0:25:21Christ sits in majesty over the world in a cloud of gold.
0:25:23 > 0:25:30In the centre, Saint Michael, depicted as a pale-faced Flemish
0:25:30 > 0:25:34prince of Justice, holds up the scales with which
0:25:34 > 0:25:38he will weigh the souls of all mankind.
0:25:40 > 0:25:44The heavier of the two souls represents sin -
0:25:44 > 0:25:46"peccata" is written on the painting.
0:25:46 > 0:25:51And he screams because he knows he's going to hell forever.
0:25:51 > 0:25:56Whereas the soul on the right looks almost complacent, kneels
0:25:56 > 0:26:00in prayer, rises up, he's a light soul, on his way to heaven.
0:26:02 > 0:26:08And as the four angels blow the last trump, the earth cracks open
0:26:08 > 0:26:14and the dead rise from their graves to discover their fate.
0:26:15 > 0:26:23Those on Christ's left are dragged vomiting, screaming, wailing,
0:26:23 > 0:26:28weeping into the flames of hell.
0:26:30 > 0:26:34On the right-hand side, it's all rather more tranquil.
0:26:34 > 0:26:41We can see, here, they troop off towards the heavenly city.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47I like this detail here - as the angel ushers them through the door,
0:26:47 > 0:26:49we know where they're going.
0:26:49 > 0:26:55They're going to that heavenly paradise garden depicted in van Eyck's altarpiece.
0:26:55 > 0:26:59It's, so to speak, "This way for the Ghent altarpiece".
0:27:00 > 0:27:05Now to a superstitious Christian in the 15th century,
0:27:05 > 0:27:09the purpose of this picture would have been eminently practical.
0:27:11 > 0:27:16Most of the people in those beds, in times of plague for sure,
0:27:16 > 0:27:17were going to die.
0:27:19 > 0:27:23Before they did so, each one of them would be
0:27:23 > 0:27:28instructed to come forward into the chapel at the end of the room,
0:27:28 > 0:27:31and to contemplate this picture.
0:27:31 > 0:27:37And the picture basically is there to give them a choice -
0:27:37 > 0:27:38where do you want to end up?
0:27:39 > 0:27:46To Christ's left, down in the flames of hell, or Christ's right,
0:27:46 > 0:27:48on your way to paradise?
0:27:48 > 0:27:51Makes the choice pretty unambiguous, I'd say.
0:27:51 > 0:27:56Having seen it, you're filled with terror.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01It's a cinemascope vision of what might happen to you.
0:28:01 > 0:28:04So you go back to your bed, you call the confessor,
0:28:04 > 0:28:10you confess your sins, and if you confess all of them, you're saved.
0:28:13 > 0:28:16It's an astonishing picture,
0:28:16 > 0:28:21it's one of the great masterpieces of Flemish art,
0:28:21 > 0:28:25it absolutely represents that great flowering of painting that
0:28:25 > 0:28:29took place in Flanders in the first half of the 15th century.
0:28:31 > 0:28:35And yet, and here's the sting in the tail, it's not actually in Flanders.
0:28:35 > 0:28:41It's hundreds of miles south, in a country we now call France.
0:28:54 > 0:28:59Our modern borders bear little relation to 15th century geography.
0:28:59 > 0:29:02This hospital, known as the Hotel-Dieu de Beaune,
0:29:02 > 0:29:06once stood at the heart of the powerful Duchy of Burgundy.
0:29:08 > 0:29:11The ambitious Dukes of Burgundy coveted the great
0:29:11 > 0:29:13riches of Flanders to the North.
0:29:14 > 0:29:17Through strategic marriages and clever alliances,
0:29:17 > 0:29:21they began to extend their power into the Low Countries.
0:29:23 > 0:29:27It took the Dukes of Burgundy a few generations to take over.
0:29:27 > 0:29:31They had to absorb each independent mini-state, one by one.
0:29:31 > 0:29:34By the mid 1400s, Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck
0:29:34 > 0:29:38and all their fellow Low Countrymen had become the subjects
0:29:38 > 0:29:42of the most illustrious Burgundian Duke of them all, Philip the Good.
0:29:44 > 0:29:48In fact, Philip wanted culturally rich Flanders so much that he
0:29:48 > 0:29:52even relocated his ancestral court 300 miles north, to Brussels.
0:30:11 > 0:30:14Philip the Good was good news for Flemish art.
0:30:14 > 0:30:17He was an enthusiastic patron,
0:30:17 > 0:30:20especially of great talents like van Eyck and van der Weyden.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25And he was no oppressive autocrat -
0:30:25 > 0:30:28he pretty much gave the Low Country states freedom to
0:30:28 > 0:30:31conduct their business and their lives the way they wished.
0:30:34 > 0:30:39Flemish society revolved around the upwardly mobile merchant classes.
0:30:39 > 0:30:42They'd grown used to the finer things in life,
0:30:42 > 0:30:44and they wanted their art to reflect that.
0:30:47 > 0:30:50They commissioned portraits of themselves,
0:30:50 > 0:30:53immortalised in all their finery, as evidence that they had made it.
0:30:55 > 0:31:00The most extraordinary portrait of all is also the oldest.
0:31:00 > 0:31:02Painted by none other than
0:31:02 > 0:31:05the first great Flemish pioneer of oil painting,
0:31:05 > 0:31:07it's the secular counterpart
0:31:07 > 0:31:09to his Ghent Altarpiece -
0:31:09 > 0:31:12not a vision of heaven, but a depiction
0:31:12 > 0:31:16of an inscrutable man and his wife in the comfort of their bedroom.
0:31:18 > 0:31:25Painted in 1434, this entrancing picture by Jan van Eyck opens
0:31:25 > 0:31:33the door to the private world of the wealthy Flemish merchant class.
0:31:33 > 0:31:37It used to be called The Arnolfini Wedding.
0:31:37 > 0:31:41It used to be thought that it depicted Giovanni Arnolfini,
0:31:41 > 0:31:45a wealthy banker from Lucca based in Bruges, and his wife.
0:31:47 > 0:31:49That's by no means certain,
0:31:49 > 0:31:55but I think we can say that these people were extremely well off.
0:31:55 > 0:32:02They were representative of this new upsurge of Flemish wealth
0:32:02 > 0:32:03and prosperity.
0:32:03 > 0:32:08But it would be a mistake to see this picture,
0:32:08 > 0:32:15for all its realism, as some kind of snapshot of their domestic world -
0:32:15 > 0:32:21it's a highly charged, symbolic, ritualised depiction of two people.
0:32:21 > 0:32:23There's something extremely solemn about it.
0:32:25 > 0:32:29If Jan van Eyck was a necromancer, a magician using paint,
0:32:29 > 0:32:34I think of this portrait very much as a kind of spell or
0:32:34 > 0:32:40incantation designed to bring good fortune on this couple.
0:32:40 > 0:32:47The dog stands at the couple's feet, stands for loyalty,
0:32:47 > 0:32:51for obedience, for fidelity.
0:32:51 > 0:32:57Behind the bride hangs a broom - symbol of purity, cleanliness.
0:32:58 > 0:33:02And around that beautiful convex mirror,
0:33:02 > 0:33:06there are painted scenes of Christ's passion,
0:33:06 > 0:33:12as if to indicate that this is a union blessed in the eyes of God.
0:33:13 > 0:33:16A single candle burns in the chandelier,
0:33:17 > 0:33:21emblem of the love that shall never be extinguished.
0:33:23 > 0:33:28And just above that pair of clasped hands,
0:33:28 > 0:33:31van Eyck has intruded another significant detail -
0:33:33 > 0:33:35a grinning, gurning gargoyle
0:33:35 > 0:33:39carved into the arm of the chair
0:33:39 > 0:33:41at the back of the room.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44And I think that gargoyle
0:33:44 > 0:33:46is here to do exactly the same job
0:33:46 > 0:33:50as gargoyles on the fronts of churches -
0:33:50 > 0:33:53namely to scare off evil spirits.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57To ward off all evil from damaging this union.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02Look on the window ledge, and look on the sideboard.
0:34:02 > 0:34:04A little cluster of fruit.
0:34:06 > 0:34:09Her belly is round - not because she's pregnant,
0:34:09 > 0:34:10because she's wearing a stomacher,
0:34:10 > 0:34:12but I think the hope is
0:34:12 > 0:34:15that this union will itself bear fruit.
0:34:17 > 0:34:21And on the back wall, Jan van Eyck has signed the picture
0:34:21 > 0:34:26in wonderful curlicue script.
0:34:26 > 0:34:31The inscription says, in Latin, "Jan van Eyck was here."
0:34:33 > 0:34:36And if you look just below it, if you look into that reflection
0:34:36 > 0:34:40in the convex mirror, so beautifully painted, what do you see?
0:34:40 > 0:34:44You see the couple from the back.
0:34:45 > 0:34:50And if you look closely enough, you can see a shadowy figure,
0:34:50 > 0:34:51perhaps two figures.
0:34:53 > 0:35:00I wonder if one of them is not meant to be Jan van Eyck himself.
0:35:00 > 0:35:07The painter, preserving forever this moment when he looks at them
0:35:07 > 0:35:09and they look at him.
0:35:09 > 0:35:12I wonder if this picture wasn't his wedding gift
0:35:12 > 0:35:15to the couple in the painting?
0:35:15 > 0:35:18If so, I do hope they were grateful.
0:35:28 > 0:35:32Flemish art's change of focus from sacred to secular
0:35:32 > 0:35:36was part of a seismic shift taking place across all of Europe,
0:35:36 > 0:35:38but especially in the Low Countries.
0:35:41 > 0:35:45Even under Burgundian rule, Lowlanders clung fiercely
0:35:45 > 0:35:48to their localised customs and independent ideas.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53Far from the shadow of the Vatican, there were religious
0:35:53 > 0:35:57movements - like the Brethren of Common Life - who were not afraid to
0:35:57 > 0:36:02criticise the Church, to challenge authority they saw as corrupt.
0:36:04 > 0:36:08This was a strange, unsettling time, especially when seen through
0:36:08 > 0:36:13the eyes of a medieval man of faith - like the artist Hieronymus Bosch.
0:36:15 > 0:36:19As far as we know, he spent his whole life in and around the small
0:36:19 > 0:36:23Dutch town from which he took his name - 's-Hertogenbosch.
0:36:25 > 0:36:28Yet his most famous work - known to us as The Garden
0:36:28 > 0:36:31of Earthly Delights - includes some of the weirdest objects
0:36:31 > 0:36:36and creatures, from worlds both known and unknown, ever seen in art.
0:36:43 > 0:36:48Painted around 1500, its meaning seems at first sight
0:36:48 > 0:36:52disturbingly obscure - and may never be fully explained.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59On the left we see Christ with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
0:36:59 > 0:37:02but it's an Eden unlike any other.
0:37:04 > 0:37:06There's a giraffe and an elephant -
0:37:06 > 0:37:09but also some rather frightening hybrid animals.
0:37:18 > 0:37:21On the right, some of art's most inventive
0:37:21 > 0:37:25impressions of the fate that awaits the damned.
0:37:25 > 0:37:30A pot-headed bird eats sinners and excretes them into the abyss.
0:37:30 > 0:37:34Instruments and forms of torture scatter the blackened landscape.
0:37:38 > 0:37:41But what does the central panel show us?
0:37:41 > 0:37:43The corruption of our earthly world?
0:37:44 > 0:37:49If so, what do the outsized fruit and birds represent?
0:37:51 > 0:37:54And why is it filled with the bizarrest of rituals?
0:38:03 > 0:38:07Might it be significant that Bosch painted this claustrophobic enigma
0:38:07 > 0:38:11just a decade after Columbus discovered the riches of America?
0:38:15 > 0:38:19One of my favourite details in Bosch's strange teeming
0:38:19 > 0:38:23panorama of a picture shows a little group of people holding up
0:38:23 > 0:38:29a gigantic strawberry - almost like the cult devotees worshipping
0:38:29 > 0:38:31this object, this exotic thing.
0:38:31 > 0:38:34And I think when you look at Bosch's painting,
0:38:34 > 0:38:37it's important to remember this was the first time anyone in Europe
0:38:37 > 0:38:41had ever seen a strawberry, it was an object of wonderment to him.
0:38:41 > 0:38:43It was as if the world that they'd known for
0:38:43 > 0:38:46so many centuries had suddenly been changed - they suddenly realised
0:38:46 > 0:38:50there was another whole universe out there, a new world.
0:38:50 > 0:38:53And I think Bosch's picture is in part an attempt to imagine
0:38:53 > 0:38:55what that new world might be like,
0:38:55 > 0:39:00this is a Pandora's box moment in the history of human civilisation.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20Bosch lived at a great turning point in history -
0:39:20 > 0:39:24a moment when the medieval mind, obsessed with the terrors of hell
0:39:24 > 0:39:29and damnation, was giving way before a modern world of rapidly
0:39:29 > 0:39:33expanding horizons,
0:39:33 > 0:39:35of science and knowledge,
0:39:35 > 0:39:38a world where the old order was being challenged
0:39:38 > 0:39:40by dangerous new ideas.
0:39:42 > 0:39:47These were the things made flesh as the beasts of Bosch's imagination.
0:39:50 > 0:39:53In his own highly original way, Bosch expressed
0:39:53 > 0:39:56both the fascinations and the anxieties of his age.
0:40:04 > 0:40:08And if you want to see his own solution to those anxieties,
0:40:08 > 0:40:13I think you have to turn to one of his simpler, least cryptic pictures.
0:40:13 > 0:40:17A work that hangs in the Fine Arts Museum in Ghent.
0:40:22 > 0:40:27This fairly small, fairly dark image of Christ carrying the cross
0:40:27 > 0:40:32is one of Bosch's cruder pictures,
0:40:32 > 0:40:39but I think it takes you right to the centre of what he has to say.
0:40:40 > 0:40:43It takes you to the centre of his vision of the world.
0:40:43 > 0:40:49Here, he sees the world as a kind of sea of malevolence,
0:40:49 > 0:40:56weirdness, evil, through which Christ has to pass.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00Look at that crowd.
0:41:00 > 0:41:03These three blokes down here including the evil thief -
0:41:03 > 0:41:08I suppose you might see them today on the street corner, drinking
0:41:08 > 0:41:12their Tennent's full strength lager at ten in the morning.
0:41:12 > 0:41:15Here's a fat-jowled soldier.
0:41:15 > 0:41:20A curious image of a witch with a hat
0:41:20 > 0:41:25that reminds me of Pink Floyd album covers, of
0:41:25 > 0:41:27their middle to late period weirdly enough.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31Up here, the hook-nosed mercenary.
0:41:32 > 0:41:35Here we see another soldier clutching the cross
0:41:35 > 0:41:40with his fingers - who knows why.
0:41:40 > 0:41:44And at the centre of it all, the image of Christ.
0:41:44 > 0:41:48I think you can just see a tear coming out of that,
0:41:48 > 0:41:51leaking out of his right eye.
0:41:52 > 0:41:56It's as if he is passing through this world
0:41:56 > 0:41:58as if it were a bad dream.
0:41:58 > 0:42:01He's right at the centre.
0:42:01 > 0:42:07And I think what Bosch is saying to us, is in this age of anxiety,
0:42:07 > 0:42:12uncertainty, religious unrest, intellectual change,
0:42:12 > 0:42:17geographical exploration, this world where we suddenly no longer
0:42:17 > 0:42:24know where we are, that's the one thing we CAN be sure of.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27That IS the one thing we can be sure of.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30In that sense Bosch is still a man of the Middle Ages,
0:42:30 > 0:42:35he does believe in God as the one route to salvation.
0:42:35 > 0:42:40And I think he gives us a little clue here, because there is actually
0:42:40 > 0:42:43other than Christ, one other good figure in the painting and
0:42:43 > 0:42:48that is Saint Veronica. She's got the veil, the veil that she used to
0:42:48 > 0:42:52wipe the brow of Christ - it's what lies behind the Turin shroud myth -
0:42:52 > 0:42:57on which is miraculously imprinted the image of Christ's face.
0:42:57 > 0:43:00She is on her way out of this maelstrom of evil -
0:43:00 > 0:43:03she's found her escape route, because her escape route
0:43:03 > 0:43:07is the image of Christ that she's holding in her heart.
0:43:07 > 0:43:11And Bosch is saying to all of us looking at the picture,
0:43:11 > 0:43:14"Do what she does."
0:43:15 > 0:43:17"Look at his face.
0:43:17 > 0:43:20"Burn it into your mind's eye -
0:43:20 > 0:43:24"because it's the only path through
0:43:24 > 0:43:28"this evil world, it's the only way out of these troubled times."
0:43:35 > 0:43:39The tides of change swept on regardless.
0:43:39 > 0:43:43Soon after Bosch's death in 1516, the Reformation shook
0:43:43 > 0:43:46the established Church to its foundations.
0:43:46 > 0:43:49Art too turned critical.
0:43:49 > 0:43:51The subtleties of oil paint,
0:43:51 > 0:43:55once used to conjure beauty or flatter the wealthy,
0:43:55 > 0:43:59were now deployed as weapons against corruption and ugliness.
0:44:01 > 0:44:03Satire was the order of the day.
0:44:03 > 0:44:08Grotesques that ridiculed the well-to-do as vain and pompous.
0:44:08 > 0:44:11Caricatures of the jobsworth bureaucrats
0:44:11 > 0:44:13who propped up unpopular rulers.
0:44:14 > 0:44:19The flames of unrest were fanned by a tyrannical new regime.
0:44:19 > 0:44:23In 1555, King Philip II of Spain inherited
0:44:23 > 0:44:27the Low Countries from his Burgundian ancestors.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30A fanatic Catholic, he was determined to stamp out heresy.
0:44:34 > 0:44:39The attempted clampdown only provoked more unrest.
0:44:39 > 0:44:41Free thinkers multiplied.
0:44:45 > 0:44:48Perhaps the most quietly radical idea of all was hatched in the
0:44:48 > 0:44:54imagination not of a philosopher or a scientist, but a painter who took
0:44:54 > 0:44:58his inspiration from the rituals and festivities of the common man.
0:45:00 > 0:45:04Well the architecture's changed a bit, the angels might be wearing
0:45:04 > 0:45:07peroxide Shirley Temple wigs, and the floats might be
0:45:07 > 0:45:11made of polystyrene, but otherwise remarkably little has changed.
0:45:11 > 0:45:14The fact is that the people of the Low Countries have been
0:45:14 > 0:45:18participating in popular religious festivals like this
0:45:18 > 0:45:22since the Middle Ages. This festival here in Mechelen, which celebrates
0:45:22 > 0:45:27the saving of the city from plague by the blessed Virgin Mary in 1272,
0:45:27 > 0:45:31has been going for more than 700 years.
0:45:31 > 0:45:34But the funny thing is that ordinary people doing this
0:45:34 > 0:45:37kind of thing simply don't appear in Flemish art
0:45:37 > 0:45:40until the middle years of the 16th century, and it's one man,
0:45:40 > 0:45:46Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who puts the common people centre stage.
0:45:52 > 0:45:55Pieter Bruegel painted peasants going about their business -
0:45:55 > 0:45:59feasting, laughing, dancing, drinking.
0:46:02 > 0:46:05Bruegel's work was popular, and no doubt the wealthy clients who
0:46:05 > 0:46:10bought his paintings found comical entertainment in the rich detail.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15But there's also a gently subversive warmth
0:46:15 > 0:46:17and empathy for these ordinary people.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20It's as though Bruegel is saying that it's NOT just
0:46:20 > 0:46:22the high and mighty who are important -
0:46:22 > 0:46:26there's nobody who's an unworthy subject for art.
0:46:37 > 0:46:40This is one of the most famous pictures associated with
0:46:40 > 0:46:43the name of Pieter Bruegel the Elder -
0:46:43 > 0:46:47in fact people come specially on pilgrimage here to the Musee
0:46:47 > 0:46:52des Beaux Arts in Brussels just to see this one celebrated image.
0:46:54 > 0:46:59At first sight it's quite a baffling, disorientating picture.
0:47:00 > 0:47:05The eye is immediately drawn to this figure of the ploughman
0:47:05 > 0:47:10plodding along his modest patch of earth,
0:47:10 > 0:47:15ploughing it up into these meaty chunks, following his horse.
0:47:15 > 0:47:22Behind him is a shepherd, with his dog, and they both seem absorbed
0:47:22 > 0:47:27by something or other, we can't quite tell what, in these trees.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30Over here is another character,
0:47:30 > 0:47:35another person from ordinary life absorbed in an ordinary activity,
0:47:35 > 0:47:37fishing.
0:47:37 > 0:47:39Behind, there are ships.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42But then, you look at the title of the painting
0:47:42 > 0:47:47and you see Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus.
0:47:47 > 0:47:49Icarus, that character from mythology,
0:47:49 > 0:47:53the boy who makes himself wings from feathers and wax, flies
0:47:53 > 0:47:58too close to the sun, the wings melt and he falls to his death.
0:47:59 > 0:48:01Where's Icarus?
0:48:02 > 0:48:05You look all over the painting -
0:48:05 > 0:48:10and then suddenly, if you look hard enough,
0:48:10 > 0:48:14it's a sort of Breugelian "Where's Wally?" moment.
0:48:14 > 0:48:18There he is - a pair of white, floppy legs,
0:48:18 > 0:48:24splashing into this emerald green ocean.
0:48:26 > 0:48:33But what an extraordinary image of that mythological event this is.
0:48:33 > 0:48:38Here he's imagining what it actually feels like to be someone
0:48:38 > 0:48:40who's outside history.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46In a way it's a picture about the spear carriers,
0:48:46 > 0:48:51the people who aren't the heart of the action.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54But they are at the heart of their own lives, and it's a picture
0:48:54 > 0:48:57about the disjunction between big history and little history,
0:48:57 > 0:49:00and the little history doesn't even notice that the big history
0:49:00 > 0:49:04is going on, it's a picture about not looking, not seeing.
0:49:04 > 0:49:09And WH Auden wrote a wonderful poem about this picture.
0:49:13 > 0:49:17"Everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster.
0:49:17 > 0:49:21"The ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
0:49:21 > 0:49:24"but for him it was not an important failure.
0:49:26 > 0:49:29"The sun shone, as it had to,
0:49:29 > 0:49:34"on the white legs disappearing into the green water.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37"And the expensive delicate ship that must have seen something
0:49:37 > 0:49:41"amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
0:49:41 > 0:49:46"had somewhere to get to, and sailed calmly on."
0:49:48 > 0:49:53And I think the subversive implication behind it,
0:49:53 > 0:49:57perhaps for someone living in the Low Countries,
0:49:57 > 0:50:01someone unhappy with Spanish rule,
0:50:01 > 0:50:03the implication behind it is that
0:50:05 > 0:50:10if you don't like the history that's given to you
0:50:10 > 0:50:14by the great, perhaps the not so good,
0:50:14 > 0:50:17by kings from elsewhere, those
0:50:17 > 0:50:21coming into your world from outside, a little bit like Icarus -
0:50:21 > 0:50:24if you don't like their history,
0:50:24 > 0:50:27perhaps you're allowed to create your own.
0:50:34 > 0:50:39In reality, the lives of ordinary people went from bad to worse.
0:50:40 > 0:50:44When the Low Countries openly rebelled against Philip II's rule
0:50:44 > 0:50:48in the late 1560s, he tried to crush them with Spanish troops.
0:50:51 > 0:50:56Thus began a bloody 80-year war against Spanish oppression
0:50:56 > 0:51:00that would split the Low Countries in two.
0:51:03 > 0:51:05No-one would escape the fallout.
0:51:05 > 0:51:08Massacres on an epic scale,
0:51:08 > 0:51:14widespread famine, cities besieged till their starving citizens
0:51:14 > 0:51:16boiled shoe leather for food.
0:51:22 > 0:51:26This darkest of times would produce one last great
0:51:26 > 0:51:30flowering of Flemish art -
0:51:30 > 0:51:35the work of an Antwerp painter called Peter Paul Rubens,
0:51:35 > 0:51:38which for me represents both the end
0:51:38 > 0:51:41and the encapsulation of the whole Flemish tradition.
0:51:54 > 0:51:58Rubens was the supreme master of a new, bold style
0:51:58 > 0:52:02emerging from the Catholic Counter-Reformation - the Baroque.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07He spent most of his glittering career
0:52:07 > 0:52:09travelling Europe at the behest of his
0:52:09 > 0:52:14seriously impressive client list, painting grand state allegories
0:52:14 > 0:52:19of power for among others the royal families of France and England.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26At the public level, Rubens had lived out a personal version
0:52:26 > 0:52:29of the history of the Low Countries -
0:52:29 > 0:52:32trading with foreign powers, rising from low origins
0:52:32 > 0:52:34to achieve astonishing wealth.
0:52:36 > 0:52:40This is his house in Antwerp - the palace of a prince.
0:52:42 > 0:52:47But if you look behind its facade to the private Rubens,
0:52:47 > 0:52:50you discover that his most intimate dream
0:52:50 > 0:52:54was surprisingly humble, touchingly simple.
0:53:05 > 0:53:10Now, Rubens painted that piercing self-portrait in 1630.
0:53:10 > 0:53:15He was 53 years old, and on the face of it he had it all,
0:53:15 > 0:53:19he'd just been knighted by King Charles I of England.
0:53:19 > 0:53:24He's the painter to kings, princes, queens all across Europe.
0:53:24 > 0:53:28He is the single most powerful and influential artist who has
0:53:28 > 0:53:33ever lived, and at this point, he does something truly extraordinary.
0:53:33 > 0:53:38He decides to marry the 16-year-old daughter of a merchant
0:53:38 > 0:53:41here in Antwerp - she's called Helene Fourment,
0:53:41 > 0:53:45he's completely besotted with her, they'll have five children -
0:53:45 > 0:53:48and he decides to retreat completely from public life.
0:53:49 > 0:53:52He writes about it in a letter, he says,
0:53:52 > 0:53:55"I have decided to do myself a kind of violence.
0:53:55 > 0:54:00"I have decided to cut the golden knot of my own ambition."
0:54:01 > 0:54:04He retreats away from the world,
0:54:04 > 0:54:10and during his last 10 years he creates an extraordinary,
0:54:10 > 0:54:15deeply personal body of work. Highly idiosyncratic, utterly unique,
0:54:15 > 0:54:18and yet also, I think,
0:54:18 > 0:54:23the ultimate expression of a fantasy that had obsessed
0:54:23 > 0:54:27the imagination of people here in the Low Countries for centuries.
0:54:34 > 0:54:37Some of those final works are rapturous allegories
0:54:37 > 0:54:39of marital joy,
0:54:39 > 0:54:41invariably bursting with
0:54:41 > 0:54:46Rubens' characteristically voluptuous, fleshy bodies.
0:54:46 > 0:54:48Here we see Rubens himself
0:54:48 > 0:54:52gazing in adoration at his rosy-cheeked young bride.
0:54:55 > 0:54:57Everything in Rubens's late paintings
0:54:57 > 0:55:00seems to speak of desire - no-one had ever expressed it
0:55:00 > 0:55:04more urgently, more carnally.
0:55:04 > 0:55:07But I think it's essentially that same desire for colour,
0:55:07 > 0:55:10life, light and blessedness
0:55:10 > 0:55:13that had always infused the tapestries,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17illuminated books and paintings of Flanders right from the beginning.
0:55:17 > 0:55:21But for me, there's one work above all in which he revealed
0:55:21 > 0:55:24his true Low Country soul.
0:55:32 > 0:55:37Painted on an epic, panoramic scale, Rubens' Landscape With A Rainbow
0:55:37 > 0:55:42is quite simply one of the greatest landscapes ever painted.
0:55:42 > 0:55:45Like all of his pictures it's a cornucopia,
0:55:45 > 0:55:50a hymn to plenty and abundance. Ripeness is all.
0:55:54 > 0:56:00Look at those ducks - literal symbol of the fat of the land -
0:56:00 > 0:56:03clucking and quacking and waggling their feathers
0:56:03 > 0:56:05and diving into the water.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09The cows seem to be multiplying before our very eyes,
0:56:09 > 0:56:12and there, as so often in Rubens' art,
0:56:12 > 0:56:15a real touch of human carnality.
0:56:15 > 0:56:20There's a milkmaid, with her ewer balanced
0:56:20 > 0:56:23very ingeniously on her head,
0:56:23 > 0:56:26simultaneously flirting with a peasant,
0:56:26 > 0:56:28and giving us a wink at the same time,
0:56:28 > 0:56:32her companion flirting with the other peasant,
0:56:32 > 0:56:35the hay wain, as he winds his way into the picture.
0:56:35 > 0:56:39Constable, who painted The Hay Wain, loved this work of art.
0:56:42 > 0:56:47Look at that slab of yet to be cut hay.
0:56:47 > 0:56:50It could almost be a slab of butter.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54Look at the way the landscape has been laid out before us
0:56:54 > 0:56:58almost like a fertile body.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04A windmill's sails, glittering on the far distance.
0:57:04 > 0:57:10Even Rubens' sky is abundantly stocked with clouds.
0:57:10 > 0:57:16It's a dream of peace, and a dream of plenty.
0:57:16 > 0:57:23And I think that Rubens wants us to recognise that it IS a dream.
0:57:23 > 0:57:29Flanders in his day was not a place of utmost peace and prosperity
0:57:29 > 0:57:34and I think that's why he's included the rainbow,
0:57:34 > 0:57:37an old divine symbol of hope,
0:57:37 > 0:57:40of something that might come to pass in the future.
0:57:40 > 0:57:43I think Rubens himself knows that what he's depicted is a world
0:57:43 > 0:57:47that does indeed lie beyond the far end of the rainbow.
0:57:47 > 0:57:51A world that he hopes may one day come into being.
0:57:52 > 0:57:59So yes, the painting is a beautiful dream -
0:57:59 > 0:58:02but it's also a prophecy.
0:58:02 > 0:58:05Because not too far to the north,
0:58:05 > 0:58:11another upstart nation of the Low Countries, the Dutch Republic,
0:58:11 > 0:58:16would be attempting to turn that dream into a reality.
0:58:16 > 0:58:18But that's another story.
0:58:40 > 0:58:42Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd