The Renaissance Arrives A Very British Renaissance

'When most people think of the Renaissance, they think of Italy -

'a sun-kissed realm of Popes, piazzas and palazzos,

'a place filled with hugely talented artists

'like Leonardo and Michelangelo.

'A generation who, in the 15th century, left the Middle Ages behind

'and created a glorious new kind of art,

'more inventive and more exuberant than anything seen before.

'When most people think of the Renaissance,

'they don't think of Britain.

'While the Italians were busy building a modern world,

'the British were still stuck in the medieval mud.

'The Renaissance is supposed to have passed us by.'

But that isn't true. The British did have a Renaissance

and it was bold, it was beautiful and it was utterly brilliant.

Yet, for some reason, we've all but forgotten it.

'In this series, I want to rediscover

'our forgotten Renaissance.

'A dazzling movement that flourished from around 1500

'to the Civil War 150 years later...

'..that gave us our first great paintings...

'..our first stately homes,

'our earliest scientific breakthroughs

'and, perhaps, the finest writer of them all.

'A movement that catapulted us out of the Middle Ages

'and laid the foundations of a modern British culture

'that still shapes us today.'

This series isn't about Kings and Queens or Tudors and Stuarts,

it's about the painters, sculptors, poets, playwrights, composers,

inventors, explorers and craftsmen

who together revolutionised the way we saw the world.

'And this episode is about how it all got started -

'how a handful of brilliant European artists

'brought the new ideas of the Renaissance to Britain,

'how we learned from their techniques,

'experimented with their ideas

'and, through them, began to develop a voice of our own.'

'OK, so the story of the British Renaissance

'doesn't actually start in Britain.

'It begins in Florence when an Italian sculptor

'accidentally kick-starts our own artistic revolution.'

Pietro Torrigiano was proud, arrogant

and extremely competitive.

He was childhood friends with Michelangelo

but rather than admiring the great man like everyone else,

he was pathologically jealous of him.

'Things came to a head one day

'when both men were in a chapel studying some frescos.'

So they were next to each other, sketching,

when Michelangelo apparently made some snide remark,

and that's when it happened.

That's when years of jealousy bubbled over.

That's when Torrigiano snapped.

"Clenching my fist, I gave him such a punch

"that I felt the bone and cartilage in his nose crumble like a biscuit.

"He will remain marked by me as long as he lives."

'Torrigiano permanently disfigured Florence's favourite son.

'He was left with only one option.

'To flee the city and take his talent elsewhere.

'Some time in about 1507,

'Torrigiano fetched up in what was reported to be

'Europe's most philistine backwater -

'a grubby, dirty, uninspiring little place

'at the end of the known world -

'England.'

When Torrigiano first arrived in England,

it must have felt like he'd stepped back into the past.

The Renaissance had been raging in Italy for almost 200 years

but, here, there was absolutely no sign of it whatsoever.

'After 150 years of bloody wars and infighting,

'the British hadn't had time for a Renaissance.

'They hadn't even had time for art.'

In Britain, artists weren't celebrities

like they were in Italy.

They were anonymous workmen,

paid the same as plasterers and ironmongers.

And as for art, well, the British didn't really know what art was.

They didn't even have a word for painting.

If a painting was on canvas, it was called a "cloth",

and if it was on panel, it was called a "table".

'But Torrigiano wasn't without work for long.

'In 1512, the young King Henry VIII,

'who fancied himself as a patron of new ideas,

'gave this exotic Italian artist a very special commission.'

Torrigiano was offered a staggering £1,500,

that's more than £1 million in today's money,

to make and work "well, cleanly, surely, workmanly,

"curiously and substantially," those are the words in the contract,

a very special artwork.

It would be his masterpiece

and it would be unlike anything the British had ever seen.

'Torrigiano's piece was commissioned for Westminster Abbey.

'A place that pretty much summed up where England was artistically.

'Still stuck in the Middle Ages.

'With its stylised saints and pointed Gothic arches,

'it was thoroughly medieval.

'But what Torrigiano came up with was emphatically different.

'In a quiet chapel at the back of the Abbey, inside an ornate chamber

'is the tomb of King Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York...

'..their life-size effigies rest on an imposing tomb chest

'that's decorated with biblical figures and saints.'

It's a revolutionary piece of work

and I think it's revolutionary for two reasons.

First, Torrigiano did it all.

He conceived it, he designed it, he modelled the figures,

he cast the bronze, he carved the stone, he gilded the surfaces.

He did absolutely everything.

And if that doesn't seem particularly unusual today,

in his time it was unheard of.

In Britain, most tombs, indeed most artworks,

were made by anonymous artisans.

But Torrigiano was no medieval craftsman,

he was a Renaissance artist.

The second revolutionary thing about this tomb is its style.

It is Renaissance through and through.

It's made from white marble and gilt bronze -

the materials that Donatello and Michelangelo would have used.

It's adorned with columns and acanthus leaves

that hark back to the classical ruins of Italy.

The figures of the King and his wife are lifelike,

their hands bulging with veins and dimples.

But for me, the most Renaissance thing of all about this tomb

are these cheeky little chappies.

They're called putti, and they're Italian cherubs.

They were two-a-penny in Italian Renaissance paintings,

but they were completely new in this country.

All in all, it's like a little piece of the Renaissance

has been beamed down into the Middle Ages.

Isn't it?

'Torrigiano's tomb marked a turning point in British art.

'It brought a modern style to a medieval country.

'It proved that artists were much more than mere craftsmen

'and it showed that art itself could finally take centre stage

'in British life.

'Our Renaissance had begun.

'In the few years since Torrigiano had come and gone,

'England had begun to change dramatically.

'Under Henry VIII, it was peaceful for the first time in decades

'and its economy was booming.'

It was now a land of opportunity

and it wasn't long before the finest minds of the Renaissance

came knocking.

'Artists poured into Britain from all over Europe.

'But none of them would have a greater impact

'than the brilliant Swiss-German painter Hans Holbein.'

Hans Holbein arrived in England in the autumn of 1526.

He was just 29 years old.

He came with no friends and family,

he didn't speak a word of the language

and he had virtually no money.

But Holbein had big ambitions.

'Holbein had made his reputation as a portrait painter

'in the Swiss city of Basel -

'a place that was now being torn apart

'by the struggles of the Protestant Reformation.

'He would be the first artist to bring the new techniques and ideas

'of the Renaissance portrait to Britain,

'a place where portrait painting was almost non-existent.

'Holbein would look closer and harder at British faces

'than anyone had done before him.

'He would capture their idiosyncrasies

'and their imperfections

'and in doing so, he would make us think differently about each other

'and ourselves.

'Holbein's genius is best seen not in his finished works

'but in intimate pictures that he hoped few would ever see.

'Today, they are housed at Windsor in the Royal Collection.'

These are some of Holbein's preparatory drawings

for his portraits.

And these really are some of the most breathtaking artworks

I've ever seen.

They were made 500 years ago

and yet these people look like the people you see on the streets today.

'In fact, these are portraits of a new class of people.

'Merchants and scholars and courtiers -

'the people who had taken over from the Church

'as the new patrons of art.'

This is Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,

when he was about 15 years old,

and it is alarming how present he feels.

He stares right out at us, right through us, and it almost feels

that if you look at him long enough, you'll see him blink

and if you lean in close enough, you'll smell his breath.

Howard was executed,

beheaded a few years after this portrait was made,

yet, on this piece of paper, he'll always be alive.

This is the courtier Sir Richard Southwell. He was a famously

unpleasant man and I don't think Holbein liked him either.

He looks pompous and humourless.

His nose is flared with self-regard and Holbein has made sure to include

some scars under his throat

that he got from an infection of the lymph nodes.

But the best bit is this little line in German.

A note from Holbein to himself that translates as,

"The eyes, rather yellow."

'And Holbein's women are just as fascinating -

'beautiful, ethereal

'and so elegantly anxious.'

One of the most impressive things about these drawings

is the technique.

It is so economical.

A simple outline of pen and ink,

a tiny touch of blue chalk for the eyes,

a tiny stroke of pink chalk for the lips

and Holbein lets the paper do the rest.

And it's that delicacy that enables him

to capture the fragile, the fleeting, the transient quality

of life itself.

'Holbein's drawings are the first really lifelike faces

'in the whole of British history

'and they mark the beginning of a major British tradition -

'a warts-and-all preference for reality over beauty

'that has persisted ever since.

'But I think they're even more important than that.'

Holbein's portraits contain the seeds of a new idea.

They mark, I think, a moment when people stopped thinking about

themselves simply as types - as kings, as knights, as courtiers,

and started thinking about themselves as individuals

with their own unique characteristics,

their own unique hopes and fears,

and that birth of the individual

is a defining feature of the Renaissance.

'But the Renaissance wasn't only about looking differently at each

'other, it was also about looking differently at the world itself.

'And Holbein captured this radical world view

'in his most famous painting -

'one of the great paintings of the Renaissance...

'..The Ambassadors.'

And here are the ambassadors themselves -

Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve,

looking proud of their achievements and even prouder of their clothes.

But the first thing you notice about this painting,

the most mysterious thing, the most famous thing,

are not the ambassadors

but this splodge.

If you look at it from this angle,

you'll see it's actually a distorted but anatomically accurate skull.

And it's a reminder that even rich and powerful men like these two

will die like everyone else.

But I don't think this picture is really about the ambassadors.

I think it's about what's right at the very centre -

this cryptic array of objects.

On the top shelf, these objects relate to the heavens -

a celestial glove, two quadrants, a sundial.

On the shelf below,

these objects relate to the earthly realm -

a terrestrial globe, a book of arithmetic,

some musical instruments and a book of hymns

that's painted in so much detail I can actually sing them.

These two shelves depict no less than the entire cosmos,

heaven and earth, together.

Holbein has created an image of a world in which everything

can be charted, measured, quantified, understood -

a world that mankind finally has mastery over.

This is Holbein's most ambitious portrait.

It is a portrait of the Renaissance itself.

'As Holbein assembled his Renaissance stage set,

'he would have looked to his best friend for the props,

'a German mathematician and astronomer

'called Nicholas Kratzer.

'Kratzer represented the other crucial aspect of the Renaissance -

'the spirit of scientific inquiry.

'Kratzer arrived in England in about 1518.

'But his reasons for coming remain a mystery.'

When one friend heard of his visit, he advised Kratzer

to keep his things secret and tell no-one who summoned him.

He's to invent an excuse as far from the truth as possible.

'We may never know Kratzer's true motives.

'He may have been on a secret mission.

'He may have been a spy.

'But we do know that he was immediately employed

'by the King himself as the royal clock-maker.

'Spy or not, when Kratzer came to London,

'he certainly brought secrets with him.

'This is his private notebook

'and it contains diagrams, equations and instructions

'for the instruments he made.'

It's so exciting to be looking through this book

because looking through it is like peering into

Nicholas Kratzer's mind.

And it was clearly a formidable mind.

'It was also a genuinely Renaissance mind -

'a mind that believed in observation and calculation,

'a mind that believed the secrets of the universe could be unlocked

'with precision engineering.

'And for Kratzer and his peers, nothing was quite as precise

'as a sundial...

'..an instrument that harnessed the sun itself, transforming its rays

'into the hands of a mathematically-designed clock.

'Joanna Migdal is one of the few people

'to continue the great art of dialling.'

As an instrument-maker yourself, how do you rate Kratzer?

What was extraordinary about Kratzer was he brought the knowledge

from Europe to this country.

The 50 years that were after Kratzer, the dials became amazing

and so, whatever he did, he changed the consciousness

of understanding of sundials.

-So he really kick-started things in this country?

-Yes, he really did.

I don't think Henry VIII would have brought him over

unless he had something special about him.

Do we know much, Joanna, about Kratzer as a person?

One of the sundials, there's a quotation on it, I think in Oxford,

where he proudly says that he and his stonemason

could drink in the German style, which basically meant they could

drink anyone under the table.

So he was obviously a fun-loving man, too.

'Kratzer evidently could handle his drink

'because he specialised in miniature sundials

'and these required a clear head and a steady hand to make.

'Miraculously, one of them still survives.'

This is a delightful little sundial,

handmade out of gilt brass.

But it doesn't just have one dial, it has nine of them.

Seven along the edge and one on each side.

'Each one of them is perfectly calibrated.

'All are set to a latitude

'of 51.5 degrees north of the Equator

'and that means it was designed to work in London.'

So, to use it, the first thing you need to do

is to orient these gnomons towards the north.

And right at the top of it there's a little hole

and inside that hole there would have been a compass

and that would have helped you position it exactly right.

And when the positioning is right,

the sun...and I'm going to use a torch because we're indoors,

the sun would pass over

the surface of the sundials

and would help you tell the time.

And the really clever thing is that actually,

not just one of these sundials will tell the time, but all of them.

And this was completely new in Britain.

There had been sundials before, there had been pocket sundials,

but nothing as showy, as complex, as sophisticated as this.

And most remarkable of all,

we know for whom this object was made.

Right here, on the stand,

is a little picture of a dinky cardinal's hat,

and that tells us that this sundial was made for Cardinal Wolsey,

King Henry's chief minister.

And, you know, I can just imagine the chubby figure of Wolsey

pulling this out after dinner, passing it around the table

and showing off his fiendishly clever gadget.

'Foreign technology was becoming fashionable,

'reflecting an appetite for scientific knowledge,

'an excitement that was not confined to England.

'Thanks to Scotland's long-running alliance with France,

'the Scottish Stuart kings had embraced the Renaissance with enthusiasm.

'Their base was Stirling Castle,

'part of which they restyled according to the latest fashion.

'They filled it with modish sculptures of European monarchs,

'classical heroes and lots of Italian putti.

'And they invited musicians,

'scholars and scientists from all over Europe to come and work there.

'One of the most eccentric was a young Italian called Giovanni Damiano.

'Or as the Scots called him, John Damian.'

John Damian was an alchemist

and he divided opinion dramatically.

Some people thought he was a charlatan and they accused him

of murdering a priest in Italy and impersonating a doctor in France.

But the king thought he was a genius.

'Damian was a contemporary of Leonardo.

'And both were obsessed with the ultimate Renaissance ambition -

'human flight.

'In fact, Leonardo's famous drawings of flying machines may well

'have inspired Damian to embark on his most audacious experiment.

'It was the morning of 27th September 1507.

'The king had just dispatched two ambassadors to France.

'But as they exited, Damian entered.'

John Damian assembled the court and made a staggering announcement.

He would beat the ambassadors to Paris.

He then strapped on two large wings which he had fashioned from hen feathers.

He stepped up on to those ramparts over there

and when he had everyone's attention, he leapt off.

'In the end, Damian didn't quite make it to France.

'Instead, he landed in a dunghill near the foot of the castle...

'..and broke his leg.'

John Damian's flight could be seen as a miserable failure.

But I disagree.

These ramparts are really, really high and for him to jump off them

and only break his leg, I think he must have flown at least for a bit.

Which would make this one of the first human flights

in British history.

'John Damian's grand ambitions pleased the king,

'but many others at court mocked and insulted him relentlessly.

'And in doing so, they revealed a broader tension

'at the heart of the British Renaissance.'

The British Renaissance had started brilliantly.

But, as I'm sure you've noticed, it had not been very British.

Its greatest sculptor had been Italian.

Its greatest painter had come from Switzerland.

And its greatest inventor had been German.

And this was not lost on the natives.

'For some time, Londoners had been concerned

'that foreigners were stealing their jobs.

'In 1517, this resentment had bubbled over into outright violence.'

It was about 9pm in the evening

when 1,000 angry English apprentices gathered in the city of London.

They broke into Newgate Prison,

liberated several prisoners who had already been arrested for race crimes

and then marched through the streets

looting foreign craftsmen's workshops

and assaulting anyone who got in their way.

'By 3am, the riots had been quelled,

'but the problem would not go away.

'British artists and craftsmen soon realised

'that they would have to move with the times.

'From the 1520s, a new generation began to discover Renaissance ideas for themselves.

'But they wouldn't simply copy Europe.

'They would do things differently.'

On the continent, the Renaissance had typically been elegant and refined.

The British, however, were not a particularly elegant and refined bunch.

So when we did the Renaissance, it was earthy,

visceral and at first, a bit rough around the edges.

'The first of these native pioneers was a young English courtier

'called Thomas Wyatt, captured here by none other than Hans Holbein.'

Thomas Wyatt was a playboy, assassin, spy, diplomat.

He is famous for having had a secret affair with Anne Boleyn.

But the real reason we should remember him is this.

He was, in my opinion,

the man who brought the Renaissance to English literature.

'Before Wyatt, English poetry was stuck in a rut.

'In the 120 years since Chaucer, there hadn't been one original voice

'and poets seemed content to translate French romances

'into bad English verse.

'But Wyatt would turn his back on archaic fairy tales

'and make poetry one of Britain's most dynamic art forms.

'And it all started with a chance encounter.'

It was New Year, 1527. Thomas Wyatt was 24 years old.

He was on the banks of the Thames

when he saw a man preparing a boat for travel.

Wyatt asked the man where he was going

and the man said, "To Italy for the king."

Wyatt absorbed this information and then asked if he could join him.

'The trip would inspire Wyatt,

'but it would also nearly cost him his life.

'The two men arrived in Italy in February

'on a diplomatic mission to meet the Pope.

'But Italy was a lot more dangerous than Wyatt had bargained for.

'While travelling alone to deliver a letter,

'Wyatt was kidnapped by mercenaries,

'held for ransom and finally released.'

At this point, most people would have run home

with their tails between their legs, but not Thomas Wyatt.

Because Wyatt was in love.

'While travelling around, Wyatt had seen the Italian Renaissance

'with his own eyes for the first time

'and he loved everything about it.

'But nothing appealed to him quite like its poetry.

'And most of all, the love lyrics of Petrarch.'

Petrarch was a towering figure of the Italian Renaissance.

In fact, many people think he actually invented the idea of the Renaissance.

But he was also a hopeless romantic.

'Petrarch was a pioneer of the sonnet -

'a short poem made up of one verse and 14 lines.'

Petrarch pretty much reinvented the sonnet as the perfect love poem.

One that could express the true complexity of emotion

in an extremely condensed form.

His first eight lines, they would set up the problem,

which was usually a burning desire for an unattainable woman.

And the last six lines would resolve that desire.

It was short, it was sweet and it was passionate.

And Thomas Wyatt was smitten.

'In May 1527, Wyatt returned to London

'wanting to breathe new life into English poetry.

'Wyatt took the Italian sonnet and put it to bold new use.

'He wrote tortured love poems for his friends in the Tudor court.

'They were very private, often intimate.'

Wyatt's poems were written by hand

on to small, precious pieces of paper.

They were folded, rolled up, wrapped in ribbon

and then furtively passed from person to person,

tucked into a pocket or left under a pillow for a lucky lady to find.

'Unlike Petrarch's spiritual love poems,

'Wyatt's were more passionate, more pained and more human.

'This is a copy of one of his finest.'

"They flee from me that sometime did me seek

"With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

"I have seen them gentle, tame and meek,

"But now are wild and do not remember."

What an explosive start to a poem.

"They flee from me that sometime did me seek."

It is so simple, yet so powerful.

It's about loss. It's about rejection. It's about heartbreak.

And who, ultimately, hasn't felt those things in their life?

And that ultimately is the most amazing thing about this poem.

Thomas Wyatt wrote it 500 years ago

and you can still feel his pain today.

'Wyatt repeatedly explored the pain of rejection.'

"I find no peace, and all my war is done.

"I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice.

"I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise.

"And nought I have, and all the world I season.

"I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.

"I love another, and thus I hate myself.

"I love another, and thus I hate myself."

-That is a great line.

-It is a great line.

How good a poet was he?

I think he was a genius.

If you spend some time with Wyatt's poetry,

the more you look at it, the more impressive it is.

He produced a poetry which is much more human than Petrarchan poetry.

He produced a poem which actually addresses our own human feelings

of frustration, entitlement, bewilderment, rejection, abandonment.

There isn't anybody who could read a Wyatt poem and not feel,

"Yes, I have been there."

'Wyatt also didn't shy away from writing about sex.'

"When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall

"And she me caught in her arms long and small.

"Therewith all sweetly did me kiss,

"And softly said, 'Dear heart, how like you this?'

"It was no dream

"I lay broad waking."

But nobody in medieval poetry went to bed with anybody, only in dreams.

That's why this is such a radical poem.

There is a real Englishness to his poetry, isn't there?

I think he is above all an English poet.

Unlike most of the other architects of the Renaissance, he was English.

Torrigiano was Italian. Holbein was German.

So he had a conscious desire to write in English

and make English a language which was as flexible and as beautiful

and a vehicle for the expression of complex ideas as Latin

or as Greek or as Italian had been.

'Thomas Wyatt died when he was only 39,

'but his influence on English literature was profound.

'He had taken a refined foreign art form

'and made it unmistakably English,

'less concerned with elegance

'than with capturing the messy quality of life as lived,

'setting the tone for English poets from Shakespeare to Philip Larkin.

'If Thomas Wyatt introduced an unglamorous realism to poetry,

'another Englishman was to do the same with painting.

'His name was John Bettes.'

Like so many British artists of this period,

virtually nothing is known about John Bettes.

But it seems he was trained by none other than Hans Holbein.

Now, if that's true, it makes him a crucial figure -

the first Renaissance trained British artist in history.

'Only a handful of his portraits survive.

'One of them of an unknown man

'is the earliest British picture in the Tate collection.'

And this is it.

It was painted in 1545, just two years after Holbein died.

Now, I'll be honest.

It is not as good as Holbein, but it is pretty darn good

and it has got that defining Renaissance feature -

the desire to be realistic.

John Bettes has individually painted

every single curling hair in this man's ginger beard.

He's used wet paint to capture the ruffle of the fur collar.

And the face, well, for maybe the first time in British art,

it's lifelike.

This picture is the beginning of a home-grown renaissance in painting.

But it suggests that our renaissance would not be about beauty,

grace and endless cherubs.

It would instead have a solid and earthy reality.

'But just as British painting was finally about to flourish,

'the country descended into darkness.'

'After the death of Henry VIII,

'the long-standing tensions between the old Catholic Church

'and the new Protestant faith erupted into violence.

'In the 1550s, over 300 innocent men and women

'were cruelly and publicly burnt alive.

'Their crime?

'Being Protestant during the reign of a Catholic monarch.

'The new medium used to document these atrocities

'was the printed book.

'And the man who made it happen was an evangelical London printer

'called John Day...

'..a man who would arguably have a greater impact on the culture

'of this country than anyone of his generation.

'John Day was nearly murdered himself.

'He was a passionate Protestant and during the reign of Catholic

'Mary Tudor he was arrested for publicising the Protestant cause.'

But he was one of the lucky ones.

Day watched in horror as hundreds of other Protestants were

burnt at the stake and he became determined to avenge their deaths.

'When Mary died, Day got his chance.'

In the autumn of 1559,

John Day was approached by a writer called John Foxe.

Foxe was a man on a mission.

For some time, he had been working on a book about the many Protestant martyrs.

It would be a witness to what he believed was an English genocide.

'John Day immediately agreed to print the book at whatever cost

'and crucially, he insisted that it be illustrated

'with nothing censored.

'It has since become known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs

'and it is a milestone in the history of book making.'

1,800 pages,

1.9 million words -

the Book of Martyrs was the longest book in British history

and more than twice as long as the Bible.

However, I think its real genius was not John Foxe's text,

but John Day's illustrations.

'They depict the suffering of Protestants

'and they are vivid and gruesome.

'Burnings, torture, disembowelment.

'Foxe and Day used the shock tactics of modern photojournalism.

'But they weren't out merely to shock.

'They wanted to expose the truth.

'As in the sensational case of a supposed suicide.'

Richard Hun was imprisoned after a minor disagreement with a priest.

A few days after his incarceration,

he was being brought some food in his cell

when he was found dead, hanging from his own belt.

The authorities thought it was a straightforward suicide,

but Foxe and Day did their homework, they even read the coroner's report,

and they thought otherwise.

The report said that a fresh candle

had been found snuffed out in the dead man's cell.

Now, why would Richard Hun have done that?

Why would he have extinguished his candle

before he tied that noose and hanged himself?

For Day and Foxe, that candle was a clinching piece of evidence.

Someone else must have done it.

Someone who wanted to cover their tracks.

Foxe and Day were convinced that these three men

had been sent by the Catholic church to murder Richard Hun

and then make it look like suicide.

'The Book of Martyrs had more impact than Day could ever have imagined.

'It was distributed to churches, schools and even pubs

'and it became the most widely read book in England

'for the next 200 years.'

This book had a profound effect on the English people.

It helped forge the identity of England as a Protestant nation.

And John Day's images were crucial to its success.

They ensured that all British people,

literate and illiterate alike, could understand Foxe's message.

'The Book of Martyrs is a monumental work of the Renaissance,

'but it is also the beginning of a distinctly British tradition -

'a tradition of graphically exposing injustice

'that runs all the way through our culture,

'from William Hogarth to Gerald Scarfe.

'By the middle of the century, British artists

'and writers had not just absorbed the newest ideas from abroad,

'they had brilliantly adapted them to their own tastes.

'Thomas Wyatt had turned the Italian sonnet

'into the classic form of English poetry.

'John Bettes had combined Holbein's impeccable technique

'with an uncompromising realism.

'And John Day had used a renaissance invention

'to teach the English people about their own history.

'In spite of the dark times they had lived through,

'they had proved a match for their continental counterparts.

'But that wasn't enough.'

'Now, with the new Queen, Elizabeth, on the throne,

'and the country more at ease with itself, British artists

'wanted to produce work that was better than anything in Europe.

'And that competitive spirit

'would lead to one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.'

According to one anecdote, sometime in the 1500s,

and Italian song arrived in England for 30 different voices.

On hearing it, one great duke challenged

the composers of England to do the same.

Eventually, one English composer came back with a song,

not for 30 voices, but for 40 voices.

'His name was Thomas Tallis.

'He was an organist and singer for the Royal Court,

'who, over the course of a long life,

'composed music for virtually the entire Tudor dynasty.'

Thomas Tallis' greatest work was the one he produced

as a result of that challenge -

a motet for 40 voices called Spem in Alium.

'Tallis was used to composing the for four, five or six voices.

Composing 40 different melodies, all to be sung at the same time, was a huge leap.

But the result, Spem in Alium, is one of the richest

and most ambitious pieces of choral music in the English canon.

It is so beautiful, I am not going to ruin it by talking.

MUSIC: Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis

'David Hurley has sung Spem in Alium many times.'

So, David, what is it actually like to perform Spem in Alium?

It's quite terrifying, actually.

You either are the person who comes in first,

which in itself is terrifying.

Or you are in choir six or seven and you have to wait around for ages

and work out exactly when it is you're meant to come in.

When all those voices come in at that point in the music,

it must be a euphoric experience. It must be wonderful.

It's an incredible sound both for the people listening

and actually for the people involved.

It's just this... this wall of sound -

an ancient Renaissance version of surround sound before its time.

Was there a broader feel at the time that the English were

competing with what was coming from the continent?

Yes, I think we have a little bit of an inferiority complex.

Their way of dealing with it was to make England

this incredibly important place artistically.

English music is very much an important part

of showing how wonderful England was.

'In rising to the Italian challenge,

'Tallis had created a work that was as sophisticated as anything

'on the continent, but at the same time, distinctly English -

'a breathtaking feat of virtuosity that was

'a sign of the country's growing confidence.

'By the 1560s, the British Renaissance had serious momentum.

'And yet, if you walked through any town you would be

'forgiven for thinking you were still in the Middle Ages

'because our buildings were still resolutely medieval.

'That finally began to change when a few builders started to

'dabble in the new classical style of the European Renaissance.

'And they got their ideas from architectural pattern books

'from France and Italy.'

When it comes to classical architecture, there is

pretty much everything here you could ever want.

So what have we got?

We have Doric columns like those used on the Parthenon.

We have Ionic columns and you can always tell an Ionic column

because it has these little curls on the top.

And we have Corinthian columns.

Corinthian columns with their acanthus leaf capitals.

'There are also pediments, domes, temple fronts

'and triumphal arches like those built by the Roman emperors.

'But it took one determined, even obsessive, Englishman

'to bring all these ideas together

'and to create something that was both utterly unique

'and unmistakably British.

'His name was John Thynn.

'John Thynn was born in 1515.

'He was the son of a Midlands farmer.

'But he had grand designs.

'He married the Lord Mayor of London's daughter

'and with his wife's fortune, bought a former priory in Wiltshire

'and proceeded to turn it into his family seat.'

John Thynn was frankly pretty unpleasant.

He was famously impatient and had a ferocious temper.

But he was also ambitious and single-minded.

And when he set his mind on something, he never gave up.

'He wanted a house to suit his ego.

'It had to be new. It had to be modern.

'And for John Thynn, that meant it had to be classical.

'Thynn was so determined to get his house just right

'that he wrote letters to his builders every single day.'

"Would you not forget to mend the lanes with gravel

"in such places as need or require.

"Also, let there be haste made with the top of my tower.

"Further, would you not forget to get planks sawn from my doors?"

Every single detail of his house, he is writing about.

He must have been a nightmare employer.

'But John Thynn's obsessive attention to detail eventually paid off.

'In 1568, after 30 years of building and rebuilding

'and rebuilding again, he finished his house.

'It is still standing today.

'It is called Longleat.

'And it's the first of England's great stately homes.

'Longleat is completely unlike the fortified manor houses of its time.

'It's symmetrical and it's smothered in classical features.'

'But it's also unlike any classical building in Europe.

'It doesn't slavishly follow the architectural pattern books.

'It mixes everything up, creating an eclectic,

'exuberant and rule-breaking English style.

'Thynn loved to take his guests behind the scenes of his lavish home.

'For he had a surprise to show them.'

After dinner, John Thynn would lead his guests up this staircase.

They can't have had a clue where he was taking them.

'But it was worth the climb.'

This is the roof at Longleat and when John Thynn's guests

came up here, they must have been completely overwhelmed.

It must have been like nothing they had ever seen before

because it is filled with columns and statues and domes

and John Thynn's land stretches out for as far as the eye can see.

It is utterly amazing and back then it must have felt like

the entire Renaissance had been assembled

and then set down on top of one house.

But John Thynn had another trick up his sleeve.

'He would present his guests with a very special work of art -

'exquisitely designed sculptures, some of them covered in gold.

'They were phenomenally fashionable and phenomenally expensive.'

These are sugar sculptures

and they would have appeared at any self-respecting renaissance banquet.

They are exquisite little things and the best thing of all is that

everything here is edible, even the plates.

'But that was just the icing on the cake.

'Longleat itself is a seminal masterpiece.

'Impossible without foreign inspiration,

'yet like so much in our Renaissance,

'quintessentially British.

'It was 60 years since Pietro Torrigiano

'had stepped foot on English soil.

'But Britain was no longer a cultural backwater.

'It was on the verge of becoming a cultural superpower.

'And this was only the beginning.

'Next time, as the nation's confidence grows,

'its artists turn away from Europe completely.

'They fill their paintings with secret signs

'and their buildings with riddles.

'And finally, they set sail, taking their Renaissance to the New World.'