0:00:09 > 0:00:12When your world is collapsing,
0:00:12 > 0:00:13when everything is closing in...
0:00:18 > 0:00:20..what you want is to be somewhere else.
0:00:24 > 0:00:26Somewhere you can breathe in peace.
0:00:29 > 0:00:33A scrap of beauty, far from the noise and ugliness.
0:00:36 > 0:00:41But, if there is no escape, then you go there in your dreams...
0:00:43 > 0:00:47..and you paint that landscape into existence.
0:00:50 > 0:00:56This is what happened in China in the 1970s to the artist Mu Xin.
0:00:59 > 0:01:02During Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution,
0:01:02 > 0:01:03he was an obvious target.
0:01:03 > 0:01:08Middle-class, intellectual, a lover of decadent, Western art.
0:01:10 > 0:01:13Mu Xin was subjected to solitary confinement,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16forced labour and then house arrest.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22But the paper supplied for weekly confessions
0:01:22 > 0:01:24became the material of his liberation.
0:01:32 > 0:01:37Mu Xin broke out of his confinement by making visible,
0:01:37 > 0:01:39albeit in deadly secrecy,
0:01:39 > 0:01:45the landscapes which unfolded in his mind.
0:01:45 > 0:01:49The art memory of China, its peaks and its valleys.
0:01:51 > 0:01:54The culture which had given the rest of the world,
0:01:54 > 0:01:591,000 years before, true landscape art.
0:02:00 > 0:02:05While everything else was being smashed up, he was determined
0:02:05 > 0:02:10that art - now judged a reactionary crime - would survive.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15Like nature itself,
0:02:15 > 0:02:18landscape art has always been an antidote
0:02:18 > 0:02:21to the anarchy wrought by the hand of man.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27Yet it's rarely a depiction of the way the world is,
0:02:27 > 0:02:30but a vision of the way we would like it to be.
0:02:33 > 0:02:36Sometimes it delivers a sense of harmony
0:02:36 > 0:02:39between nature and humanity.
0:02:40 > 0:02:43Sometimes, it's a picture of a nation's home.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49Sometimes, it's a dream of heaven writ in fabric.
0:02:51 > 0:02:53Or glimpsed through a lens.
0:02:55 > 0:02:59But, most of all, it's a way to understand our civilisation
0:02:59 > 0:03:04and to behold that most terrifying and thrilling of all truths -
0:03:04 > 0:03:07our place in the cosmos.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56"The nation is broken, but mountains and rivers remain."
0:04:00 > 0:04:04Those words could have come from Mu Xin in the 1970s,
0:04:04 > 0:04:07but, actually, they were written 1,000 years earlier.
0:04:11 > 0:04:16In the early 10th century, China was torn apart by endless civil war.
0:04:16 > 0:04:19As feuding states vied for power,
0:04:19 > 0:04:22they burned cities and towns, and slaughtered their people.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30Yet it was out of this anarchy and chaos that the Chinese tradition
0:04:30 > 0:04:33of landscape painting first blossomed
0:04:33 > 0:04:35as the great subject of art.
0:04:41 > 0:04:45For the Song dynasty, who finally triumphed in the year 960,
0:04:45 > 0:04:50landscape art represented both a glimpse of a better world
0:04:50 > 0:04:53and a means to unite this shattered country.
0:05:02 > 0:05:07I'm looking at a document that attests to a profound alteration
0:05:07 > 0:05:11in human sensibility, because it was in Song China that,
0:05:11 > 0:05:16for the first time, landscape painting with ink and brush
0:05:16 > 0:05:21became the true and absolute sign of what civilisation was,
0:05:21 > 0:05:25both for those who practised it and for those who owned
0:05:25 > 0:05:28these precious scrolls.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33This painting is more than 1,000 years old.
0:05:33 > 0:05:36And it's thought to be by one of the first truly great
0:05:36 > 0:05:39landscape artists, Li Cheng.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43Dominating the scroll are mountains,
0:05:43 > 0:05:45symbols of the Song dynasty.
0:05:46 > 0:05:50The biggest, most imposing peak is the Emperor,
0:05:50 > 0:05:52the lesser peaks are his ministers.
0:05:54 > 0:05:58Li Cheng's message is that this is the protecting force
0:05:58 > 0:06:01beneath which China can recover its harmony
0:06:01 > 0:06:04and rebuild its civilisation.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09He's an absolutely brilliant painter
0:06:09 > 0:06:12of human activity, from man on a donkey
0:06:12 > 0:06:14to people having their meal,
0:06:14 > 0:06:18to perhaps dumplings being cooked in the back kitchen there.
0:06:18 > 0:06:21And this bottom half of the scroll is crowded,
0:06:21 > 0:06:24not just with people, there's all sorts of things going on.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28This is our world, this is the place we inhabit.
0:06:31 > 0:06:33This is more than mere propaganda.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38Li Cheng asks profound questions,
0:06:38 > 0:06:40which go to the heart of our relationship
0:06:40 > 0:06:42with the world around us.
0:06:43 > 0:06:48As our eye ascends through the painting,
0:06:48 > 0:06:50so our whole approach to it
0:06:50 > 0:06:54also ascends to a higher order of question.
0:06:56 > 0:07:00Right in the visual centre of this beautiful painting
0:07:00 > 0:07:04is the temple itself, and the temple is almost more important
0:07:04 > 0:07:06than the whole mountain.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09It is the place of equipoise, the place of peace.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17Above the temple, there is no human action at all,
0:07:17 > 0:07:21and Li Cheng has changed the wash of the ink.
0:07:21 > 0:07:25It's lighter, finer, more ethereal.
0:07:25 > 0:07:29So this is a borderland between the human and the spiritual world,
0:07:29 > 0:07:35and gradually we move up and face the greatest questions of all.
0:07:37 > 0:07:38What is nature?
0:07:39 > 0:07:42What lies beyond surface appearance?
0:07:42 > 0:07:45What truly moves the universe?
0:07:45 > 0:07:50And how, above all, does the dialogue between flowing water
0:07:50 > 0:07:54and the adamant face of that eroded rock
0:07:54 > 0:08:00bring us harmony and bring us what everybody in China wanted -
0:08:00 > 0:08:02happiness and peace?
0:08:06 > 0:08:09Li Cheng offers us a glimpse of who we are
0:08:09 > 0:08:14by linking the comings and goings of our little lives
0:08:14 > 0:08:16to the majesty of the cosmos.
0:08:16 > 0:08:21And that sense of fit between things mortal and things eternal
0:08:21 > 0:08:26fills the mind with the ancient Confucian sense of rightness.
0:08:26 > 0:08:28Everything in its ordained place.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32This is how life is supposed to be.
0:08:37 > 0:08:40So powerful was the message that, within a century,
0:08:40 > 0:08:45landscape art had sunk deep roots into the culture of Song China.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49New painting academies flourished where it was practised.
0:08:49 > 0:08:53Weighty tomes were written about its philosophy and technique.
0:08:56 > 0:08:59To be Chinese meant to be civilised
0:08:59 > 0:09:03and to be civilised meant to paint,
0:09:03 > 0:09:05above all, landscapes.
0:09:12 > 0:09:15In the more intimate, private pleasures of the hand scroll,
0:09:15 > 0:09:19the painted landscape evolved into something new.
0:09:20 > 0:09:23Hand scrolls were river-shaped journeys,
0:09:23 > 0:09:27stories revealed as you unrolled the scroll
0:09:27 > 0:09:32and travelled almost cinematically through space and time.
0:09:39 > 0:09:43This hand scroll was painted by the artist Qiao Zhongchang.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51It was based on one of the most famous Chinese poems,
0:09:51 > 0:09:54written by a government official,
0:09:54 > 0:09:57a man of culture and refinement, called Su Shi.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03Su Shi had been exiled after a political purge
0:10:03 > 0:10:08and spent his days writing about excursions he took with his friends
0:10:08 > 0:10:09up the Yangtze River.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16Here he is carrying fish and wine
0:10:16 > 0:10:19as his wife sees him off on the journey.
0:10:23 > 0:10:27We turned the boat loose to drift with the current.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31All around was deserted and still.
0:10:32 > 0:10:35A lone crane flew overhead.
0:10:43 > 0:10:46The painting evokes both the pleasures of friendship
0:10:46 > 0:10:49and the melancholy of the exile.
0:10:50 > 0:10:54A dream, but one with a bittersweet taste.
0:11:15 > 0:11:20But landscape painting wasn't always about escape.
0:11:20 > 0:11:23Sometimes, artists captured the violence of history.
0:11:25 > 0:11:29200 years after Su Shi wrote his poems,
0:11:29 > 0:11:32China's Song dynasty had fallen to Mongol invaders.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37The painter Wang Meng refused to serve the Mongol emperors,
0:11:37 > 0:11:41preferring to retreat to a very particular place,
0:11:41 > 0:11:45his family's estate in the Qingbian mountains.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50Those mountains became the subject of his greatest painting.
0:11:58 > 0:12:02Well, when you're in the presence of a bona fide masterpiece,
0:12:02 > 0:12:05which this is, words somehow struggle to be formed.
0:12:05 > 0:12:07But I'm going to do my best.
0:12:07 > 0:12:11Not least because this is an extraordinary painting
0:12:11 > 0:12:14because it belies all the pleasing stereotypes
0:12:14 > 0:12:16we have about Chinese landscapes.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18When you think of Li Cheng,
0:12:18 > 0:12:22you think of that first generation of northern Song painters
0:12:22 > 0:12:26and it is all about feeling protected by the Imperial mountain.
0:12:26 > 0:12:30None of this is happening with Wang Meng.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34This is, above all, a painting about turbulence.
0:12:34 > 0:12:39It's full of a kind of restless, writhing, sensuous, intense energy.
0:12:41 > 0:12:43There's a reason for this turbulence.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46By the time he painted this,
0:12:46 > 0:12:49Wang Meng's family mountain retreat was right in the middle
0:12:49 > 0:12:54of a battlefield fought over by armies 200,000 strong.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00The reality was marauding and massacre.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05These are not mountains which protect us.
0:13:05 > 0:13:08Instead, they trap and threaten us.
0:13:14 > 0:13:18Here is a man beautifully painted, picked out with a conical cap,
0:13:18 > 0:13:21which is a cap of this particular region,
0:13:21 > 0:13:24and is echoed by the shape of the peak.
0:13:24 > 0:13:26So, you think the man belongs to the mountains,
0:13:26 > 0:13:28but the man has nowhere to go.
0:13:28 > 0:13:30There are paths which make no sense at all.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34He moves his way through scrubby pines.
0:13:35 > 0:13:39Wang Meng has lit this dramatically to make it more difficult,
0:13:39 > 0:13:44to make it more exciting, to make it more perilous and energised.
0:13:45 > 0:13:50Eventually, we see one isolated, tiny figure, alone.
0:13:53 > 0:13:56And this huge orchestration,
0:13:56 > 0:14:00musical energy, these animated, pulsing rocks,
0:14:00 > 0:14:03look as though they're about to topple down on him.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12What's happened to landscape painting in the hand of Wang Meng
0:14:12 > 0:14:15is that it's gone from being not just a place of calm,
0:14:15 > 0:14:20but to an intensely personal expression of his own mood
0:14:20 > 0:14:24and his own feeling of insecurity.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28So, everything that is coursing through the imaginative energy
0:14:28 > 0:14:31of the artist gets registered
0:14:31 > 0:14:35in these sudden, jabbing, repeated strokes.
0:14:35 > 0:14:41This, then, is a state of mind rather than a state of mountain.
0:14:44 > 0:14:49If this painting depicts Wang Meng's deepest anxieties,
0:14:49 > 0:14:51then his sense of foreboding was well founded.
0:14:52 > 0:14:54Shortly after completing it,
0:14:54 > 0:14:58he fell victim to his political enemies and died in prison.
0:15:01 > 0:15:06Sometimes, the vision of boundless space will set you free.
0:15:07 > 0:15:12But, sometimes, the mountain walls close in and shut out the light.
0:15:22 > 0:15:24Further west, in the Islamic world,
0:15:24 > 0:15:27landscapes came to have a very different meaning.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32They were not cherished for their remote vistas, but, instead,
0:15:32 > 0:15:35for the way nature was made part of life in town.
0:15:36 > 0:15:41And the form that oasis of peace took was a garden.
0:15:41 > 0:15:45A welcome, shady retreat from the heat and dust of the day.
0:15:47 > 0:15:52To the faithful, this was more than a collection of plants and pools.
0:15:52 > 0:15:55It was an earthly reflection of the heavenly realm.
0:15:58 > 0:16:03The Islamic garden evolved from a much older Persian tradition,
0:16:03 > 0:16:07the enclosed garden, called the paridaiza,
0:16:07 > 0:16:09which gave us the word paradise.
0:16:12 > 0:16:16Islamic rulers from the Nasrids in Spain to the Mughals in India
0:16:16 > 0:16:20laid out their gardens according to the Koran's description
0:16:20 > 0:16:21of the afterlife.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27Four quarters, bounded by four rivers,
0:16:27 > 0:16:30which, in paradise, it was said,
0:16:30 > 0:16:34would flow with water, wine, milk and honey.
0:16:36 > 0:16:40Flora and fauna, the fertile attributes of God's blessing,
0:16:40 > 0:16:44also found their way into decorations on the pavilions
0:16:44 > 0:16:47and palaces which gracefully stand amidst the gardens.
0:16:53 > 0:16:58But the art of the paradise garden found its richest expression
0:16:58 > 0:17:02in a form that sprang, like Islam itself, from the desert.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08It was the garden you could carry with you -
0:17:08 > 0:17:09the carpet.
0:17:22 > 0:17:25For the nomadic tribes of the Middle East, everything in life -
0:17:25 > 0:17:29talking, eating, praying - was done close to the ground.
0:17:29 > 0:17:33Carpets made life not just bearable, but civilised,
0:17:33 > 0:17:36especially when woven with an image of paradise.
0:17:40 > 0:17:42By the late Middle Ages,
0:17:42 > 0:17:46the garden carpet had migrated from its humble origins in Arabia and
0:17:46 > 0:17:51Central Asia to become a symbol of luxury and sophistication
0:17:51 > 0:17:54in the royal court of the Persian Shah.
0:17:57 > 0:18:00The 16th and 17th centuries were a golden age
0:18:00 > 0:18:02for Persian garden carpets.
0:18:04 > 0:18:08And this is an extremely rare, fragile survival.
0:18:08 > 0:18:12Known as the Wagner Carpet, after a recent German owner,
0:18:12 > 0:18:16it is crammed with every kind of living thing,
0:18:16 > 0:18:18teeming through the foliage.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28There are butterflies and birds.
0:18:31 > 0:18:33A leopard pounces on a goat.
0:18:39 > 0:18:42Fish swim in the four legendary watercourses
0:18:42 > 0:18:45which meet in a central pool.
0:18:49 > 0:18:53The garden carpet was more than an oasis of super-abundance.
0:18:55 > 0:19:00Any Muslim who sat upon it, whether emperor or humble tribesman,
0:19:00 > 0:19:04found themselves in that most uplifting of all places,
0:19:04 > 0:19:05the heart of heaven.
0:19:14 > 0:19:16In Christian Medieval Europe,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19paradise gardens came with a health warning.
0:19:19 > 0:19:25After all, the whole mental world of Christendom turned on a single,
0:19:25 > 0:19:27fateful moment back in Eden.
0:19:29 > 0:19:34That moment when the serpent tempted Eve and set in motion
0:19:34 > 0:19:37the great epic of sin and salvation,
0:19:37 > 0:19:41culminating in the crucifixion of Christ.
0:19:44 > 0:19:47But, in 14th-century Siena,
0:19:47 > 0:19:51anxieties about dangers lurking in the vegetation
0:19:51 > 0:19:56gave way to an exercise in the self-congratulation of urban rulers
0:19:56 > 0:20:00who, in this fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
0:20:00 > 0:20:04ride out to enjoy the fruits of wise government.
0:20:05 > 0:20:10The satisfying sight of the contadini, Italian peasants,
0:20:10 > 0:20:14sewing and harvesting in peace and fruitfulness.
0:20:14 > 0:20:16Two seasons in one painting.
0:20:19 > 0:20:23In the Renaissance, this rural test of urban leadership
0:20:23 > 0:20:26found its vindication in the rediscovery
0:20:26 > 0:20:30of pagan classical writings about the landscape.
0:20:32 > 0:20:37Rusticating townsmen turned to their favourite Latin author, Virgil,
0:20:37 > 0:20:41whose nature poem, The Georgics, written for urbanites, of course,
0:20:41 > 0:20:44extolled the pleasures of country life and labour.
0:20:46 > 0:20:48"If they but knew!
0:20:48 > 0:20:51"They're steeped in luck, country people
0:20:51 > 0:20:54"Far removed from the grinds of war
0:20:54 > 0:20:57"Where earth that just showers them
0:20:57 > 0:20:59"With all they could ever ask for
0:21:02 > 0:21:05"What they have is the quiet life -
0:21:05 > 0:21:09"Carefree, no deceit, wealth untold -
0:21:09 > 0:21:12"Their ease among the cornucopia."
0:21:13 > 0:21:19Virgil is looking hard in only the way that only a real countryman can.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23He's sort of poking the pigs and checking the flocks and herds.
0:21:23 > 0:21:25There is a wonderful line in The Georgics
0:21:25 > 0:21:27when it's coming on to rain,
0:21:27 > 0:21:32and he talks about a heifer looking suspiciously at the sky,
0:21:32 > 0:21:36working his nose to sniff the wind.
0:21:36 > 0:21:40You really feel the flavours and the sounds
0:21:40 > 0:21:42and the perfumes of rustic life here.
0:21:42 > 0:21:46Virgil is staring at the soar of a lark and listening
0:21:46 > 0:21:50to the croak of frogs down in the mud.
0:21:53 > 0:21:57For Italian nobles of the 16th century who'd read their Virgil,
0:21:57 > 0:22:02that vision of a balanced life in the countryside proved irresistible.
0:22:03 > 0:22:07They took their identity as gentlemen farmers seriously,
0:22:07 > 0:22:11and the ground floor of their villas was where carts and scythes
0:22:11 > 0:22:14and even some animals were kept.
0:22:14 > 0:22:18But the rest of the villa was for a different kind of rustication -
0:22:18 > 0:22:20the play of intellect.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25But that didn't always preclude a sense of humour.
0:22:30 > 0:22:35This is the Villa Barbaro, built around the 1560s in the Veneto,
0:22:35 > 0:22:37the countryside surrounding Venice.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44The man responsible for this gem was Daniele Barbaro,
0:22:44 > 0:22:48a wealthy cleric in the unstrenuous Venetian style,
0:22:48 > 0:22:51but also the epitome of a Renaissance man,
0:22:51 > 0:22:53learned in pretty much everything.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59To create this little realm of a well-ordered Arcadia,
0:22:59 > 0:23:04Daniele turned to his friend, the architect Andrea Palladio,
0:23:04 > 0:23:07who designed the villa so that its horizontal lines
0:23:07 > 0:23:10would rhyme with the lay of the land.
0:23:12 > 0:23:14The two of them, Daniele and Palladio,
0:23:14 > 0:23:18co-opted the genius of a third for their collaboration -
0:23:18 > 0:23:20the painter Paolo Veronese.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26His brief was to cover the villa walls with frescoes.
0:23:31 > 0:23:36What makes this villa special is its sense of playfulness.
0:23:36 > 0:23:39Now, Daniele Barbaro is a heavyweight intellectual,
0:23:39 > 0:23:43and, so, in his way, of course, is Andrea Palladio.
0:23:43 > 0:23:47They read all the textbooks on optics and perspectives,
0:23:47 > 0:23:49and actually written some of them,
0:23:49 > 0:23:54and Daniele's translated the great classical work on architecture.
0:23:54 > 0:23:59And what you expect from all this obsession with musical intervals
0:23:59 > 0:24:01and harmony and mathematics,
0:24:01 > 0:24:05almost a kind of algorithmic approach to the perfect house,
0:24:05 > 0:24:10is to have that translated in painting by Veronese into allegory.
0:24:10 > 0:24:14The planets and the gods, cavorting on the ceiling.
0:24:14 > 0:24:16And, yes, that's what we have.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20We have a mysterious white woman in the middle.
0:24:21 > 0:24:25We have the gods of abundance and family life.
0:24:28 > 0:24:32And, then, suddenly, you catch sight of a parrot.
0:24:34 > 0:24:38And then you notice the woman, almost certainly Marcantonio,
0:24:38 > 0:24:39the brother's wife,
0:24:39 > 0:24:42in a gorgeous, haute couture number.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45And, next to her, a nurse, with the fantastic, leathery skin,
0:24:45 > 0:24:47a woman of the ordinary people.
0:24:47 > 0:24:51And you think, "Hang on a minute, they don't belong with the gods."
0:24:54 > 0:24:56Something extraordinary is going on here.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00We have a mix of the immortals and the mortals,
0:25:00 > 0:25:03of reality and illusion, and that goes right through
0:25:03 > 0:25:06everything we see in the villa.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09Real windows and fake windows,
0:25:09 > 0:25:11and the villa turns into
0:25:11 > 0:25:16a spectacularly teasing kind of fun house.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Now, whatever you think about Renaissance painting,
0:25:19 > 0:25:22you don't usually go for it for jokes, really.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25But jokes can be graceful and elegant,
0:25:25 > 0:25:28and that was Veronese's cast of mind.
0:25:28 > 0:25:33And you also see that he's cutting into all this dense theory
0:25:33 > 0:25:36with what he could do best, with what Venice did best.
0:25:36 > 0:25:41Gorgeous colours, sensational, sensuous brushwork,
0:25:41 > 0:25:43having fun with the brush,
0:25:43 > 0:25:47even if you're doing it in fresco rather than oils.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50And you turn round and you've got an extraordinary sense of the place
0:25:50 > 0:25:55still being inhabited because we've also got people down at our level,
0:25:55 > 0:25:59people coming at you, behind you - hello!
0:25:59 > 0:26:02Here's our friend coming through a door which isn't quite a door,
0:26:02 > 0:26:07and you realise the whole place is alive with mischief.
0:26:10 > 0:26:13But though the columns and the vistas they frame
0:26:13 > 0:26:15are eye-teasing fakes,
0:26:15 > 0:26:17the mind-set is real enough.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20Happy, horsey comings and goings.
0:26:20 > 0:26:22An avenue of graceful trees,
0:26:22 > 0:26:26the unhurried pleasures of a country house weekend.
0:26:31 > 0:26:33Villa Barbaro, with its frescoes,
0:26:33 > 0:26:36is a perfect slice of Renaissance escapism,
0:26:36 > 0:26:39a blend of the serious and the witty,
0:26:39 > 0:26:42created at a moment when, in the countryside beyond,
0:26:42 > 0:26:45there were harvest failures and peasant riots.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48And the once-great Venetian Republic was in retreat
0:26:48 > 0:26:51from the Ottoman Turks.
0:26:52 > 0:26:57But, here at Villa Barbaro, it was always spring or summer.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01The grapes would always be ripening, the lutes would always be playing.
0:27:01 > 0:27:07Daniele and Andrea Palladio would go for long, philosophical walks,
0:27:07 > 0:27:11and the great entertainer Paolo Veronese could take a break
0:27:11 > 0:27:16and shoot a pheasant or two, his dog trotting at his heels.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19His landscapes on the walls were dreamscapes,
0:27:19 > 0:27:24and you could stare and stare and stare at them
0:27:24 > 0:27:27and feel warm inside forever.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36As landscape painting came off the walls,
0:27:36 > 0:27:39it turned its back on the bucolic dreamworld.
0:27:41 > 0:27:43And it happened in a place which couldn't be more different
0:27:43 > 0:27:47from the glowing, sunlit stone of the villas of the Veneto.
0:27:54 > 0:27:58It was in the 1500s, in the dark, primeval forests of Bavaria
0:27:58 > 0:28:02in southern Germany that European landscape art
0:28:02 > 0:28:04really came into its own.
0:28:10 > 0:28:14Albrecht Altdorfer was a painter who'd spent his career depicting
0:28:14 > 0:28:19religious scenes, albeit ones strangled in greenery.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24But the undergrowth began to take over,
0:28:24 > 0:28:30until Altdorfer made nature itself, by itself, the whole story.
0:28:37 > 0:28:42It may seem a bit over the top to describe this scrappy, tiny,
0:28:42 > 0:28:47sketchy little thing as constituting a revolution in art, but, you know,
0:28:47 > 0:28:49that's pretty much what it is.
0:28:49 > 0:28:53Because with this little painting, the landscape suddenly happens.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56By which I mean, landscape, the word,
0:28:56 > 0:29:00stops being a description of background, of setting,
0:29:00 > 0:29:03and becomes the work of art itself.
0:29:05 > 0:29:06What is that revolution?
0:29:06 > 0:29:09Well, what Altdorfer has done is something extraordinary.
0:29:09 > 0:29:14He's removed from the picture any semblance of a story,
0:29:14 > 0:29:16any kind of characters.
0:29:16 > 0:29:18Yes, there is one little fellow here,
0:29:18 > 0:29:22which gives this watercolour painting its title, Woodcutter.
0:29:22 > 0:29:25And if you look very, very closely,
0:29:25 > 0:29:27he's on lunch break. He's got a jug of something.
0:29:27 > 0:29:30It's the German world, it's got to be beer, I would think.
0:29:30 > 0:29:32And he's laid his axe down.
0:29:32 > 0:29:33If you look really carefully,
0:29:33 > 0:29:37he's got a devastating pair of scarlet stockings on there,
0:29:37 > 0:29:41but he's not really the kind of character you expect
0:29:41 > 0:29:44when you see landscape as background.
0:29:44 > 0:29:47There, the characters are full and frontal.
0:29:49 > 0:29:54There is, of course, a heroic character in this painting.
0:29:54 > 0:29:58A monster, a giant, and it is the tree itself,
0:29:58 > 0:30:02dwarfing the little figure sitting at its base.
0:30:04 > 0:30:08And doesn't that tree remind you of someone else?
0:30:08 > 0:30:12Of the twisted torso of the crucified Christ
0:30:12 > 0:30:15on his wooden cross, arms outstretched?
0:30:16 > 0:30:20What we've got here, in effect, is a disguised religious picture,
0:30:20 > 0:30:23and I think there's a reason for the disguise.
0:30:23 > 0:30:27Altdorfer is actually in a sticky position.
0:30:27 > 0:30:31He was living in a Catholic town at the beginnings of the eruption
0:30:31 > 0:30:33that was the Protestant Reformation.
0:30:33 > 0:30:38He'd been involved in organising town ceremonies and pilgrimages,
0:30:38 > 0:30:42and part of the force of Protestantism
0:30:42 > 0:30:46was about the so-called idolatry of images.
0:30:48 > 0:30:49With this painting,
0:30:49 > 0:30:53he neatly sidesteps the whole issue
0:30:53 > 0:30:57of brutal and bitter partisan religious conflict.
0:30:57 > 0:31:01We have religion implied by the body of the Christ in the tree,
0:31:01 > 0:31:04rather than frontally represented.
0:31:07 > 0:31:10This is a very stylish picture,
0:31:10 > 0:31:15but it is also very raw and rough and coarse.
0:31:15 > 0:31:18It's almost at times as if he painted it
0:31:18 > 0:31:21with a pointed, sharpened twig.
0:31:21 > 0:31:26There is a kind of slashed, cut element to some of the details
0:31:26 > 0:31:29over which the paint drips and hangs
0:31:29 > 0:31:31when it describes these leaves.
0:31:35 > 0:31:37This is a portable thing.
0:31:37 > 0:31:39It's not stuck in a church, like an altar piece.
0:31:39 > 0:31:42It's not stuck on a wall, like a fresco.
0:31:42 > 0:31:45You can own this, you can carry it around.
0:31:45 > 0:31:50A new kind of art is born here, and Altdorfer knows that very well.
0:31:53 > 0:31:57Altdorfer's landscapes managed to dodge religious schism
0:31:57 > 0:31:59by disguising it in nature.
0:31:59 > 0:32:02But they did something else as well.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06They tapped into a Teutonic sense of identity.
0:32:06 > 0:32:10The notion of a natural German homeland in the forest.
0:32:13 > 0:32:16When Altdorfer used woodcuts to reproduce his paintings,
0:32:16 > 0:32:20the audience for landscape art dramatically increased.
0:32:22 > 0:32:25And what his audiences were buying into
0:32:25 > 0:32:28were landscapes loaded with symbolism.
0:32:28 > 0:32:31The sacred tree, the Gothic wood.
0:32:33 > 0:32:37Mostly, though, they were devoid of human beings.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50But, in Flanders, in the Low Countries,
0:32:50 > 0:32:54a different artist would crowd his landscapes with people.
0:32:58 > 0:32:59In 1565,
0:32:59 > 0:33:02the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel
0:33:02 > 0:33:04painted a set of landscapes which
0:33:04 > 0:33:07reinvented that traditional medieval
0:33:07 > 0:33:09cycle, the labours of the months.
0:33:10 > 0:33:14These, of course, are on an epic scale.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21But, here, there's not a single feudal lord to be found.
0:33:23 > 0:33:27The man who commissioned them came from bustling, commercial Antwerp,
0:33:27 > 0:33:29a merchant called Nicolaes Jonghelinck
0:33:29 > 0:33:32who wanted them to decorate the grand dining space
0:33:32 > 0:33:34of his suburban villa.
0:33:38 > 0:33:40Perhaps this was Jonghelinck's way
0:33:40 > 0:33:43of identifying with the ordinary folk,
0:33:43 > 0:33:46because what we have, for the first time,
0:33:46 > 0:33:49is a credible vision of country society,
0:33:49 > 0:33:53real villages with people working and playing together.
0:33:55 > 0:33:58Bruegel himself was no brush-wielding yokel.
0:33:58 > 0:34:01He was learned and well-travelled.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05He'd taken a trip over the Alps to Italy, sketching as he went.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11Some of those Alpine peaks appear, incongruously,
0:34:11 > 0:34:14alongside depictions of his low-lying, Flemish home.
0:34:16 > 0:34:21But that only increases the telescopic sense of deep space
0:34:21 > 0:34:24Bruegel gives us, using those tree lines
0:34:24 > 0:34:28and the curve of the peaks to send our vision plunging,
0:34:28 > 0:34:30like the flight of that bird,
0:34:30 > 0:34:33from huge vistas to the smallest detail.
0:34:35 > 0:34:41Along with that optical drama, we get another kind of perspective,
0:34:41 > 0:34:46a philosophical confrontation with our relationship to nature itself -
0:34:46 > 0:34:50unsentimental, rugged, which demands a closer look.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57I know you've all seen this on countless Christmas cards,
0:34:57 > 0:35:02but was there ever an image less brimming with Yuletide cheer?
0:35:04 > 0:35:08Those hunters haven't got much to show for their trouble.
0:35:08 > 0:35:10A skinny fox suspended from their poles.
0:35:11 > 0:35:16The exhausted dogs, trying to lift their legs out of the heavy snow,
0:35:16 > 0:35:19feel the pain as much as their masters.
0:35:20 > 0:35:25Bruegel painted these compendious, visually inexhaustible masterpieces
0:35:25 > 0:35:28after the coldest, most frigid Flemish winter
0:35:28 > 0:35:32that anybody could remember in their lifetime.
0:35:32 > 0:35:34But he also painted them on the cusp of a long,
0:35:34 > 0:35:38terrible civil war that would divide the Netherlands between
0:35:38 > 0:35:40Protestant and Catholic, north and south,
0:35:40 > 0:35:43the Spanish Empire and the free Dutch Republic.
0:35:43 > 0:35:47And Bruegel would actually find himself right in the middle
0:35:47 > 0:35:49of all those troubles.
0:35:49 > 0:35:53But, while we're looking at these glorious landscapes,
0:35:53 > 0:35:55none of that history seems to matter.
0:35:56 > 0:35:58For Bruegel, the natural world
0:35:58 > 0:36:02is a consolation for the traumas afflicting civilisation.
0:36:02 > 0:36:05Whatever happens in our human world,
0:36:05 > 0:36:08the God-given seasons will still roll around,
0:36:08 > 0:36:11the cattle will still return to their winter pasture.
0:36:12 > 0:36:14Let's just think for a minute
0:36:14 > 0:36:18about the way he wants us to look at these paintings.
0:36:18 > 0:36:20It's a dialogue, in a way,
0:36:20 > 0:36:23between the universal and the particular.
0:36:23 > 0:36:27On the one hand, wherever the eye travels,
0:36:27 > 0:36:32we are invited into a wealth of detail of work and play.
0:36:34 > 0:36:37The trudge through the snow,
0:36:37 > 0:36:40the glide of the skaters across the ice.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45And wherever we travel with our eye through the landscape,
0:36:45 > 0:36:48we're carried to dramatically different places.
0:36:48 > 0:36:52From a Flemish village huddled against the hillside,
0:36:52 > 0:36:56out to a storm-tossed river estuary,
0:36:56 > 0:36:58out to the broad, open sea.
0:37:00 > 0:37:06An experience of looking at these paintings becomes, surely,
0:37:06 > 0:37:09like the experience of all of our lives.
0:37:09 > 0:37:13On the one hand, we're immersed in the here and now.
0:37:13 > 0:37:15We have no choice. We go from minute to minute,
0:37:15 > 0:37:19hour to hour, task to task. It's our daily routine.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22But, then, something else happens.
0:37:22 > 0:37:27We stop and we contemplate and we look at the whole picture,
0:37:27 > 0:37:33like that one bird, perching on that naked, leafless branch.
0:37:36 > 0:37:40And everything, somehow, is pulled together.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44The whole of our life is laid out in front of us, and, with it,
0:37:44 > 0:37:47the entirety of human society.
0:37:47 > 0:37:48And we're very, very lucky.
0:37:48 > 0:37:53It all adds up, the whole human condition,
0:37:53 > 0:37:58and our particular, special, little place inside it.
0:38:03 > 0:38:08Bruegel was an encyclopaedist of the human comedy,
0:38:08 > 0:38:12and, as we cross the frozen pond, we find, for me,
0:38:12 > 0:38:16one of the most unforgettable characters in all of European art.
0:38:22 > 0:38:25A tiny, stooped figure, an old woman,
0:38:25 > 0:38:28bent with the burden of branches,
0:38:28 > 0:38:33meant for fuel or thatching, plodding home to her winter hearth,
0:38:33 > 0:38:37the prospect of which makes that burden just about bearable.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43It's a lesson in the perseverance of the poor.
0:38:43 > 0:38:46For what alternative does she really have?
0:38:48 > 0:38:52Through these landscape paintings, what Bruegel is really doing
0:38:52 > 0:38:57is offering us a profound glimpse not into the natural world,
0:38:57 > 0:38:59but into the human condition.
0:39:03 > 0:39:07Bruegel died in 1569, spared the worst
0:39:07 > 0:39:10of a war for religious and local liberty in the Netherlands.
0:39:10 > 0:39:13He couldn't know it would last for 80 years.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16But he evidently feared the worst.
0:39:16 > 0:39:20A painting pretending to be a Biblical massacre of the innocents
0:39:20 > 0:39:22is done in contemporary dress,
0:39:22 > 0:39:27with a documentary awareness of what was in store for those countryfolk
0:39:27 > 0:39:29when Spanish troops arrived.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36What happened was what always happens in such calamities -
0:39:36 > 0:39:40a frantic, mass migration of refugees.
0:39:40 > 0:39:44The Netherlands became split along the lines of the military slog -
0:39:44 > 0:39:47Protestant north, Catholic south.
0:39:50 > 0:39:53But, as so often in our story,
0:39:53 > 0:39:55the most astonishing flowerings happen
0:39:55 > 0:39:57in the midst of human disaster.
0:40:00 > 0:40:02In the Protestant Dutch Republic,
0:40:02 > 0:40:06as art was purged from churches branded as idolatry,
0:40:06 > 0:40:09it simply shifted location into other places,
0:40:09 > 0:40:11especially private homes.
0:40:15 > 0:40:19In the years when they were most beleaguered by war,
0:40:19 > 0:40:20the Dutch became most prolific
0:40:20 > 0:40:26at buying pictures which reminded them of what they were defending.
0:40:26 > 0:40:30It was the first mass-market for landscape art,
0:40:30 > 0:40:35precisely the kind of low art which Italians condescended to.
0:40:36 > 0:40:38Willow-hung streams.
0:40:39 > 0:40:41The life of the rustics.
0:40:41 > 0:40:45It was what the Dutch were most passionately attached to.
0:40:47 > 0:40:49The simple face of their homeland.
0:40:53 > 0:40:57Now, the reason why the Dutch felt so emotionally invested
0:40:57 > 0:41:02in this landscape was because they had been responsible
0:41:02 > 0:41:05for physically making so much of it.
0:41:06 > 0:41:09There's this old saying that God made the world,
0:41:09 > 0:41:11but the Dutch made Holland.
0:41:11 > 0:41:15And exactly at the time where they reinvent landscape painting,
0:41:15 > 0:41:17this was literally true.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23This was an area called the Beemster.
0:41:23 > 0:41:28200,000 acres of what had been the inland sea of the Zuiderzee
0:41:28 > 0:41:36were turned into this glorious pasture between 1607 and 1612,
0:41:36 > 0:41:38while the Dutch were at war.
0:41:40 > 0:41:44It was reclaimed with the aid of 43 windmills,
0:41:44 > 0:41:47pumping the water out.
0:41:51 > 0:41:55This wasn't just topography, wasn't just land,
0:41:55 > 0:41:57it was their homeland.
0:42:00 > 0:42:04So, when the Dutch felt that, under God's protection,
0:42:04 > 0:42:07they were making a part of Holland,
0:42:07 > 0:42:11it had this deep, psychological effect on them.
0:42:11 > 0:42:16They owned this countryside in a way which was absolutely special,
0:42:16 > 0:42:20and which gave their painters the sense that they were painting their
0:42:20 > 0:42:23country in both senses - the countryside,
0:42:23 > 0:42:26and their newborn nation at the same time,
0:42:26 > 0:42:31and the pictures they would produce would belong to the whole people.
0:42:36 > 0:42:39A new class of jobbing artists emerged
0:42:39 > 0:42:43to service this popular demand for landscape art.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46Jan van Goyen was one of those workhorses.
0:42:46 > 0:42:50He produced more than 2,000 paintings and drawings
0:42:50 > 0:42:52during a 40-year career.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58Van Goyen's was a deliberately modest art,
0:42:58 > 0:43:00unashamed of its simplicity.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03But it's the realism with which he paints the natural world
0:43:03 > 0:43:06which makes Van Goyen's paintings remarkable.
0:43:09 > 0:43:14You forget what an amazing breakthrough this represents.
0:43:14 > 0:43:18Landscapes had been all about fantasy and colour and
0:43:18 > 0:43:21drenched in gold.
0:43:21 > 0:43:23This is drenched in mud, and even though we know
0:43:23 > 0:43:26that Van Goyen really had to work fast
0:43:26 > 0:43:30and with rubbish materials that didn't cost him very much money,
0:43:30 > 0:43:32he's so always in debt,
0:43:32 > 0:43:36there's a credible convergence between what he's painting
0:43:36 > 0:43:38and how he's painting it. It's like a sketch.
0:43:38 > 0:43:43It's like an immediate note from his own vision,
0:43:43 > 0:43:46and everything in it that's kind of rough and raw
0:43:46 > 0:43:50and crude and clay-like and meagre about it
0:43:50 > 0:43:53actually makes you feel there.
0:43:55 > 0:44:00There are tops of houses, the roofs,
0:44:00 > 0:44:02and you don't see anything else of the house. Why?
0:44:02 > 0:44:05Because they're actually below the water line.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12This delivers a world, the kind of silvery quality of the canals,
0:44:12 > 0:44:15little boat floating past,
0:44:15 > 0:44:20and you think you're waking up and you can smell the peat turned over.
0:44:20 > 0:44:24It's a kind of raw day in the middle of winter.
0:44:24 > 0:44:29And you're absolutely enveloped by the wind,
0:44:29 > 0:44:31the dark, lead-coloured light.
0:44:33 > 0:44:39But this still, in its scraped-away authenticity, is a kind of home.
0:44:41 > 0:44:43Tastes changed.
0:44:43 > 0:44:46As the Dutch Republic became the richest country on Earth,
0:44:46 > 0:44:49so the moneyed wanted more sophisticated visions
0:44:49 > 0:44:51of their homeland.
0:44:54 > 0:44:56Every so often, a genius came along
0:44:56 > 0:45:01who could make masterpieces out of the same, modest subject matter.
0:45:03 > 0:45:08Jacob van Ruisdael's great medium was the dappling Dutch light,
0:45:08 > 0:45:12so that the skies, which in the work of Van Goyen had been wet and dim,
0:45:12 > 0:45:16now became a grand opera of light and shade
0:45:16 > 0:45:20with huge, rolling clouds as its cast of characters.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26Ruisdael loved to exaggerate features,
0:45:26 > 0:45:28to make them more theatrical.
0:45:29 > 0:45:36The romance of ancient ruins, the sinister darkness of a boggy wood.
0:45:37 > 0:45:38And, in this painting,
0:45:38 > 0:45:44the great emblem of Holland has become a hero in its own right.
0:45:46 > 0:45:51Ruisdael's great gift was to take something homely and familiar -
0:45:51 > 0:45:53and it doesn't get more homely, does it, than a windmill,
0:45:53 > 0:45:59and big it up to the max until it is something epic, heroic,
0:45:59 > 0:46:02almost spiritually meaningful to everybody who's going to look at it.
0:46:03 > 0:46:08Ruisdael was essentially a dramatist of the landscape,
0:46:08 > 0:46:12and this is high theatre.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15Now, there really is a windmill at this town called Wijk bij Duurstede,
0:46:15 > 0:46:19but he's made it absolutely enormous.
0:46:19 > 0:46:21It has a kind of authority to it.
0:46:23 > 0:46:24The sky is heavy.
0:46:24 > 0:46:27There is dirty weather ahead.
0:46:27 > 0:46:31These clouds are boiling up into what might be a storm.
0:46:32 > 0:46:36There are deep shadows hanging over the landscape.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39These women, with their bonnets covering their faces,
0:46:39 > 0:46:40are hurrying home.
0:46:42 > 0:46:45And then I think of the date.
0:46:45 > 0:46:48This painting was done in 1670,
0:46:48 > 0:46:51and that was a moment of tension and nervousness
0:46:51 > 0:46:54that the Dutch had about going it alone in Europe.
0:46:56 > 0:47:00You think, correctly, that the great powers out there,
0:47:00 > 0:47:04jealous of your prosperity in the world, are plotting against you,
0:47:04 > 0:47:06England and France, as indeed they were.
0:47:06 > 0:47:09And, two years after this painting was done,
0:47:09 > 0:47:13the Dutch Republic was almost engulfed by a pincer movement
0:47:13 > 0:47:16between those two hostile states.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19And there's no doubt that that windmill,
0:47:19 > 0:47:21with the light shining on it,
0:47:21 > 0:47:23is a guardian against peril.
0:47:25 > 0:47:27The sails of the mill,
0:47:27 > 0:47:31not accidentally, form the cross of the Redeemer.
0:47:31 > 0:47:34There's a saviour, and the saviour is the windmill.
0:47:34 > 0:47:37And that cross, just in case you're wondering,
0:47:37 > 0:47:42is echoed visually by an opening in the sky,
0:47:42 > 0:47:45down which this gorgeous light falls,
0:47:45 > 0:47:48the only warm bit in the painting,
0:47:48 > 0:47:51and, if you're Dutch, you remember an old saying which says,
0:47:51 > 0:47:56"Just as a windmill needs the wind to move its sails,
0:47:56 > 0:48:00"so man needs the breath of God to act."
0:48:00 > 0:48:04The moral is never forget the word of God.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07You have a covenant with God.
0:48:07 > 0:48:10You are his modern, chosen people.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13Just remember that when you look at the mill.
0:48:18 > 0:48:23When nations feel threatened, or when they're actually torn apart,
0:48:23 > 0:48:28the sense of God-protected homeland, somehow sheltered from catastrophe,
0:48:28 > 0:48:29comes swimming into view.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36Civil wars, as we've seen over and again,
0:48:36 > 0:48:38are the nurseries of great landscape painting.
0:48:39 > 0:48:42What held for the tight-bounded Dutch Republic,
0:48:42 > 0:48:46looking heavenwards to its boundless skies,
0:48:46 > 0:48:51was magnified on a continental scale in the 1860s,
0:48:51 > 0:48:53in the bitterly divided American republic.
0:48:55 > 0:48:59Though the American Civil War was in part a war about land
0:48:59 > 0:49:04and the right to extend slavery into new western territories,
0:49:04 > 0:49:07it was possible, in the mind's eye at least,
0:49:07 > 0:49:11to gaze west towards the setting sun
0:49:11 > 0:49:13and see an unclouded Eden.
0:49:16 > 0:49:21Some truly lurid panorama paintings were produced in the name of these
0:49:21 > 0:49:26paradise illusions, all shining with the stage lighting of Providence.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31All of these efforts, like most propaganda,
0:49:31 > 0:49:34were sentimentally forgettable once the war was over.
0:49:38 > 0:49:40But one great painting
0:49:40 > 0:49:43came out of the craving for landscape consolation.
0:49:45 > 0:49:49And it was a distinctly unromantic elegy,
0:49:49 > 0:49:52both tragic and hopeful at the same time.
0:49:56 > 0:50:00The Veteran In A New Field was the work of the greatest, in my view,
0:50:00 > 0:50:03of all 19th-century American artists.
0:50:05 > 0:50:09Winslow Homer was then just 29 and fresh from the battlefield.
0:50:12 > 0:50:15As a war illustrator for magazines and newspapers,
0:50:15 > 0:50:18he'd seen the carnage first-hand.
0:50:20 > 0:50:24Unlike the starry-eyed painters of expansive horizons,
0:50:24 > 0:50:26with their Olympian points of view,
0:50:26 > 0:50:33Homer's picture comes down to earth and plants us deep in the soil.
0:50:33 > 0:50:37That soil is both infinitely fertile, bursting with gold,
0:50:37 > 0:50:42but also, of course, deeply blood-soaked.
0:50:42 > 0:50:45Homer painted it in 1865,
0:50:45 > 0:50:49just a few months after the bloodiest war in all US history
0:50:49 > 0:50:51had come to an end.
0:50:52 > 0:50:55The traumatic shock of Lincoln's assassination, too,
0:50:55 > 0:50:58was still raw in Homer's mind.
0:51:00 > 0:51:03In the solitary, epic figure of the veteran, there is, of course,
0:51:03 > 0:51:07something of the lonely nobility of the martyred president -
0:51:07 > 0:51:11thanklessly toiling, and, I believe, also something of Homer himself.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15Like his namesake from classical antiquity,
0:51:15 > 0:51:20Homer conjures the great themes of sacrifice and regeneration and,
0:51:20 > 0:51:25of course, the endless regiments of the fallen, embodied in the wheat.
0:51:27 > 0:51:30But, most of all, it's a picture of American gold.
0:51:30 > 0:51:33Perhaps the only gold which truly mattered -
0:51:33 > 0:51:36the gold of the endless prairies,
0:51:36 > 0:51:40standing beneath an infinitely blue harvest sky.
0:51:42 > 0:51:47Tragedy, coloured by an impassioned religious faith in a boundless
0:51:47 > 0:51:51American future, planted in boundless American space.
0:51:55 > 0:51:59Lincoln himself never lost that faith.
0:51:59 > 0:52:00Even before the war was over,
0:52:00 > 0:52:03he pushed through a law to protect and bequeath
0:52:03 > 0:52:07one particular landscape, one American Eden,
0:52:07 > 0:52:09to the people for all posterity.
0:52:11 > 0:52:14While America's wounds would stay livid and open
0:52:14 > 0:52:16for generations to come,
0:52:16 > 0:52:21this would be at least one place of miraculous healing.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada.
0:52:27 > 0:52:29Very rapidly,
0:52:29 > 0:52:33Yosemite became America's most sensational tourist destination.
0:52:33 > 0:52:38Its lonely beauty instantly compromised by its popularity.
0:52:44 > 0:52:48And the images which promoted it made sure to represent it
0:52:48 > 0:52:53as they did much of America - as empty of native people.
0:52:53 > 0:52:57The Miwok Indians were either moved on or painted out.
0:53:01 > 0:53:06And when Yosemite eventually found its ultimate visual poet,
0:53:06 > 0:53:09he too cleared the view of humans.
0:53:13 > 0:53:15In 1916,
0:53:15 > 0:53:20a teenager from San Francisco visited Yosemite for the first time.
0:53:22 > 0:53:25Ansel Adams was always going down with something -
0:53:25 > 0:53:28the flu, measles, a nasty cough -
0:53:28 > 0:53:31the sort of thing budding pianists bent over the keyboard
0:53:31 > 0:53:34were supposed to get, and Adams was one of those.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39But, while he was wheezing and hacking,
0:53:39 > 0:53:43he'd read a book about Yosemite and when a get-well trip was suggested,
0:53:43 > 0:53:45he'd go nowhere else.
0:53:49 > 0:53:55Visiting Yosemite was an epiphany for Adams, like falling in love.
0:53:55 > 0:53:57Gradually, the music faded
0:53:57 > 0:54:01and surrendering to the drama of the Sierra Nevada light,
0:54:01 > 0:54:04photography became everything.
0:54:05 > 0:54:09Ansel Adams' miracle moment came in 1927.
0:54:09 > 0:54:13He climbed to 4,000 feet in deep snow,
0:54:13 > 0:54:16to the precipitous spot known as the Diving Board.
0:54:16 > 0:54:19With the light failing and down to one glass plate,
0:54:19 > 0:54:25he had the inspired idea of using a dark red filter to turn the sky
0:54:25 > 0:54:30almost black, and create an extreme contrast between snow and mountain.
0:54:32 > 0:54:35And he produced one of the greatest masterpieces
0:54:35 > 0:54:37of American, or any other, art.
0:54:40 > 0:54:43Adams called it his visualisation.
0:54:43 > 0:54:48Not what his eye but the inner lens of his imagination, could see.
0:54:51 > 0:54:54He became not just Yosemite's photographer
0:54:54 > 0:54:57but its great artist,
0:54:57 > 0:55:01the high priest of its temple, of its stone, its light and its water.
0:55:01 > 0:55:05And what he produced in those landscape altarpieces -
0:55:05 > 0:55:07because that's what they surely were -
0:55:07 > 0:55:13was an America irradiated with luminous majesty.
0:55:13 > 0:55:15Taller than the highest skyscraper,
0:55:15 > 0:55:19more powerful than the mightiest business corporation.
0:55:19 > 0:55:23And he wanted Yosemite to be for everyone.
0:55:26 > 0:55:28This is our land.
0:55:30 > 0:55:33# This land is your land
0:55:33 > 0:55:36# And this land is my land
0:55:36 > 0:55:38# From California
0:55:38 > 0:55:40# To the New York island
0:55:40 > 0:55:43# From the redwood forest... #
0:55:43 > 0:55:46It was in the 1950s that Adams' photographs built into
0:55:46 > 0:55:48a mission for mankind,
0:55:48 > 0:55:52a protest against the damage that could be done to the Earth
0:55:52 > 0:55:55by the lust for a fast buck.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59It culminated in This Is The American Earth,
0:55:59 > 0:56:03a hymn to the beauty of the natural world, and an instant bestseller.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09More and more, Adams' photographs became preachy,
0:56:09 > 0:56:13but those visual sermons were ecstatic, radiant, mystical,
0:56:13 > 0:56:17passionate statements about how humanity could be redeemed
0:56:17 > 0:56:19through its encounter with nature.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24In his later years, he became a kind of patriarch of environmentalism,
0:56:24 > 0:56:27and, every so often, he'd put down his camera
0:56:27 > 0:56:29and even leave his beloved Yosemite
0:56:29 > 0:56:33to go and try and persuade presidents to his point of view.
0:56:33 > 0:56:34But, throughout it all,
0:56:34 > 0:56:37he remained steadfast to his core belief
0:56:37 > 0:56:41that his job in life was to give visual expression
0:56:41 > 0:56:46to that silken cord tying together the fate of man
0:56:46 > 0:56:48with the fate of the Earth.
0:56:51 > 0:56:57In 1977, the photographer as prophet had his moment.
0:56:57 > 0:57:00Nasa prepared to launch its Voyager spacecraft
0:57:00 > 0:57:02on a mission to outer space.
0:57:02 > 0:57:06On board was the Golden Record.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09It contained pictures depicting human civilisation
0:57:09 > 0:57:11and the natural world.
0:57:12 > 0:57:16Adams' paradise images were among them.
0:57:16 > 0:57:19If they weren't the whole truth about our civilisation,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23then his photographs weren't a beautiful lie either.
0:57:23 > 0:57:27Like all landscape art, they sprang from the eye, the mind,
0:57:27 > 0:57:31and the invention of the human heart.
0:57:31 > 0:57:36"We all move on the fringes of eternity," Adams wrote,
0:57:36 > 0:57:38"and are sometimes granted vistas."
0:57:42 > 0:57:44As Voyager prepared to leave our solar system,
0:57:44 > 0:57:49it turned around its camera for one final time.
0:57:49 > 0:57:53The result was the ultimate landscape photograph,
0:57:53 > 0:57:56one that has given us a new perspective
0:57:56 > 0:57:58on our place in the cosmos.
0:57:58 > 0:58:00Our lonely planet.
0:58:00 > 0:58:03The pale blue dot.
0:58:11 > 0:58:15The Open University has produced a free poster that explores
0:58:15 > 0:58:19the history of different civilisations through artefacts.
0:58:19 > 0:58:21To order your free copy, please call...
0:58:25 > 0:58:27Or go to the address on screen
0:58:27 > 0:58:29and follow the links for the Open University.