Travel Rococo: Travel, Pleasure, Madness

Oh, my word!

Ooh la la!

Ah!

Hey!

Eek!

The rococo age occupied most of the 18th century.

It went from roughly 1700 to roughly 1790 or so.

You can't really be much more precise.

It's not a precise movement,

more of a tendency, a tone, an inclination.

Rococo's reputation tends to be frilly and unserious.

When you think of rococo art, you think of this, don't you?

Or this.

Or this.

WOMAN GIGGLES

But it wasn't just frilly and pink.

Rococo was all sorts of other things as well.

What I want to do in this series

is convince you of its wider achievements -

its punch, its determination,

its intoxicating beauty.

Yes, it was frilly and pink at times, but not always,

and never for nothing.

This first film

is about the exciting impact of travel on rococo art.

That's why I'm stomping up

this very long rococo staircase in Germany,

towards that very lovely rococo church at the top.

Travel was one of the great inventions of the rococo age.

Of course, people had travelled before, but far fewer of them,

and not with the same crazy enthusiasm.

Travel as one of life's most exciting pleasures

was a rococo idea.

I've got three books here that I'm sure you've heard of.

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, published 1726.

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, published 1719.

And these little delights here,

1001 Arabian Nights - Aladdin,

Scheherazade, Ali Baba,

translated and published in France in 1717.

So that's three of the most famous travel adventures of all time,

and every one of them a rococo book.

So travel had a big impact on the rococo.

And that impact influenced art in various ways.

I'm stomping through Germany with my trusty pilgrim's stick,

because in rococo times,

pilgrimage became such a powerful creative force.

Especially here, in Bavaria.

Ah, Bavaria, what a place. Great rococo art in every direction.

That's the Nymphenburg in Munich, a fabulous rococo palace.

And in there lives a man who some think should be the king of Britain.

This is him, Francis II of England and Scotland,

or, as they call him here, Franz, Duke of Bavaria.

Now, he's descended from James II,

the last Catholic King of England,

who was overthrown by William and Mary.

But James' followers, the Jacobins, as they're called,

have never given up hope that one day,

the King Over The Water, as they call him,

the rightful King of England and Scotland,

Franz, Duke of Bavaria, will one day regain the English throne.

Dream on, all you Jacobins, it'll never happen.

The Dukes of Bavaria have always been much too Catholic

to rule Britain.

In Bavaria, Catholicism is the state religion,

defended fiercely against the wicked Protestants in the north.

And all this glorious rococo architecture

dotted about Bavaria by its madly Catholic dukes

was aimed at that particularly energetic rococo traveller,

the pilgrim.

Pilgrims were the dukes' primary audience.

Their spending bankrolled the entire rococo expansion.

A pilgrim on the trail was a travelling money box.

And politically, the more Catholic Bavaria became,

the less opposition there was to its Catholic dukes.

So the Protestants were shoved out, sometimes brutally.

And the Catholics were pampered, enticed, seduced

by some of the most heady

and exquisite architecture ever constructed.

This is Vierzehnheiligen in northern Bavaria,

The Basilica Of The 14 Holy Helpers, to give it its official title.

And slap in the middle, there they are,

the 14 saints who made this church

an extra-special Bavarian destination.

All pilgrimage churches have something in them

that attracts the pilgrims, a reason to go there.

And Vierzehnheiligen had 14 reasons.

The story goes that on 24th September 1445,

a shepherd saw a baby crying in a field, exactly here.

But as he stooped down to pick the baby up,

it suddenly disappeared.

Later, he saw it again, this time with a red cross on its chest,

so he knew immediately it was the baby Jesus.

The final time the baby appeared, he was accompanied by 13 other babies.

And this time, the baby spoke to the shepherd,

and it said "We are the 14 helpers,

"and we wish to erect a chapel here, where we can rest."

So that's what happened.

The locals erected a chapel on this exact spot,

and the miracles began.

Pilgrims began to flock here in their thousands.

And in this field by a river, where previously there was nothing,

this great pilgrimage church was built.

I love the way religion can turn nowhere into somewhere.

What a power that is.

I mean, this was just a field on a hill. Now look at it.

To build the new church, they brought in an architect of genius,

Balthasar Neumann.

And at Vierzehnheiligen, Neumann gave us his rococo masterpiece...

A building that twists hither and thither across the cosmos...

before plunging down so dramatically to the great shrine at its centre.

As for the pilgrims, they couldn't have been better served.

When you came to Vierzehnheiligen,

one of these 14 saints was sure to help you.

So if you suffer from migraine, like me,

you prayed to St Denis here, the patron saint for headaches.

And if you were having a baby, there was St Margaret,

to help you with your childbirth.

A saint for every occasion.

All this is spectacular -

that's obvious.

But why is it rococo?

And what does rococo actually mean?

Well, I don't know if you remember

a series I did about the baroque age

and how I explained the difference

between the renaissance and the baroque with two pearls.

Now, this pearl here,

the round one,

that's like the renaissance.

Perfect.

Precise.

What about the baroque?

Well, baroque comes from the Portuguese word barroco,

which means a misshapen pearl.

So that's like this one -

blobby, organic, bulging.

So that's the renaissance,

and that, the baroque.

But what about the rococo?

Well, the rococo...

that was like the arrival in arts...

of the entire sea bed!

Rococo is actually a combination of two words -

the French word "rocaille", which means "shell work",

like those ornate effects with shells

you get on grottos and fountains -

and at the end "coco" comes from "barroco" again.

As so often happens with the names of art movements,

it was originally an insult.

The new style was so over the top, said the critics, so shapeless,

it was like crazy shell work.

The baroque gone mad.

Rococo.

The rococo implies an art

that's shapeless and overloaded,

an art without sensible or logical boundaries.

And it's definitely true.

Sometimes the rococo went too far

in its search for freedom and looseness.

But other times, the results were glorious,

breathtaking.

Some of the world's most exciting interiors are rococo interiors.

Oh, how they fidget and shimmer and twinkle!

But if the rococo was only a style of gorgeous interior,

that wouldn't be enough.

To be genuinely significant

the fidgety and playful spirit of the rococo

needed to infiltrate all the other arts, as well.

Particularly, painting.

So it made a beeline

for this especially popular rococo destination,

where reality feels dreamy

and dreams feel real -

the shimmering city...

Venice.

You can come to Venice for all sorts of excellent rococo reasons.

To read a bit of Casanova, for instance.

He was Venetian, of course.

CHURCH BELLS RING

To listen to Vivaldi

who was born in this square,

and baptised in that church.

But since this is a film about travel,

the first thing we need to do

is to tackle the definitive travel artist,

the incomparable Canaletto.

We're often guilty of underestimating Canaletto.

He's famous, yes.

But in top art-historical circles,

the suspicion lingers that he was just a painter of postcards.

But he wasn't. He really wasn't.

Canaletto was a brilliant tinkerer with reality.

An artistic master chef,

who turned the raw ingredients of Venice

into irresistible new recipes.

Now, of course, Venice is really beautiful,

but it's not as beautiful as this!

Nowhere is.

And, of course, the Venetians can be very charming and lively,

but they're never as charming and lively

as Canaletto's Venetians.

All this needed to be concocted.

He was actually born there,

where that hotel is,

in 1697.

His father, Bernardo Canal,

was a painter of stage scenery.

Very well-known.

He worked in carnival shows and theatres.

So to differentiate himself from his dad,

the son began calling himself Canaletto.

Little Canal. Or Canal Junior.

There are only two portraits of him - this is one of them.

And Little Canal's first pictures of Venice,

are as theatrical as anything his dad ever designed.

This is the island of San Michele,

the cemetery island Of Venice,

and just look at all the thunder and drama

which the young Canaletto

called down from its skies.

These first Canalettos are so unexpectedly gothic.

Here's the Rio Mendicanti.

Today it's a pleasant place to hang out...

but you wouldn't want to hang out in Canaletto's Rio Mendicanti -

it's too tense and grubby,

and attracts the wrong sort of people.

Don't worry, it was only water!

I was just trying to evoke Canaletto's first moods.

But then, lo and behold,

a transformation.

Suddenly, in about 1728, 1730,

Canaletto's art

grows sunny, lucid.

It's as if his output has come out from behind a cloud,

revealing a new Venice -

brighter,

grander,

sunnier.

What happened is, he found himself a new market -

the English market.

And he adapted his art to suit it.

Canaletto's sunny new Venice was aimed chiefly

at those privileged English travellers

who'd embarked upon that awful circuit

called the Grand Tour.

The Grand Tour was a kind of gap year for the rich and landed,

an educational holiday

for those rococo travellers who could afford it,

and in Florence, Rome, Naples

they explored the ruins and the art galleries,

but in Venice...

they explored the gambling dens,

the brothels,

the rococo's nether world.

In rococo times,

Venice was a very naughty place.

If you've read any Casanova at all,

you'll know that in real life,

the Grand Tourists came here

for the gambling,

the dressing up,

the sex.

But in art, they wanted another kind of illusion -

a Venice full of sunlight and lucidity.

So beautiful,

it could never have existed.

And that's what Canaletto began painting for them.

An imaginary Venice,

with the stains removed.

So how did he get that real look,

that sense of the truth,

such a marvellous feature of this art.

Well, he used one of these.

The camera obscura.

"Dark chamber" in Latin.

If you've ever wondered where the word "camera" comes from,

it comes from this.

Lots of artists in history have used the camera obscura in their work,

but none as busily as Canaletto.

It's basically a pinhole camera which throws

an exact image onto this screen

and you can then trace around it

for a precise record of the scene.

This is the old naval dockyard in Venice, the Arsenale.

It's hardly changed since Canaletto painted it -

with those big lions there,

and the dramatic towers.

I'm not very good at this...

but Canaletto was.

And because of the shape of the camera obscura

you only do, like, half the scene at once,

so after you've done this half here,

Canaletto would move the camera obscura over...

..and do the other half.

And then put the two parts together

for the whole scene.

With such marvellous results!

Back in the studio, he'd improve the proportions,

put in some perfect weather,

and add some of those fabulous little Canaletto people

who scamper so charmingly about his art.

First, he records reality,

then he tinkers with it.

Starting with the truth

he ends up with a fantasy,

and that's the rococo for you.

A rhino.

Yes, a rhino.

Why?

Because it's a very rococo sight!

In rococo times, this particular rhino,

rhinoceros unicornis,

the great Indian rhino,

went from being an animal that hardly any European had ever seen,

to one that hardly any European had NOT seen!

They called it rhino mania.

Suddenly, rococo art was overrun by rhinos.

Or so it seemed.

In fact, it was the same rhino painted lots of times.

Her name was Clara.

She arrived in Europe from India in 1741,

and spent the rest of her life

on a kind of Grand Tour of all the big European capitals -

London,

Warsaw, Paris,

Berlin...

And everywhere Clara went,

the artists of the rococo flocked to see her.

This fascinating armoured beastie

appears in more art than any rococo king or hero.

Clara's story was pure Disney.

When she was just a few months old,

her mother was killed by Indian hunters,

but the poor little rhino was saved

by a Dutch chap from the East India Company

who brought her up in his own house

until she was too big to fit into it.

The Dutch chap sold her to a passing sea captain,

who brought her back to Europe.

And that's when Clara set off on her Grand Tour.

In Venice, she was painted by Pietro Longhi,

that cheeky observer of Venetian society

who admired the way she pooped,

and the striking contrast she offered

to the masked ladies of the carnival.

In France, she stayed in Versailles with Louis XV

and was painted life-size

by Jean-Baptiste Oudry.

And she's said to have inspired

the latest French hairstyles.

But the Clara I like best

is the one preserved by the Germans,

who put a large Turk on her back

and pretended she was domesticated,

but deep inside, she wasn't.

The rococo is always presented

as this great age of enlightenment,

when science triumphed

and Linnaeus classified the natural world, and all that.

But if you look at the art of the period,

at all these strange animals that keep popping up in it,

you'll notice a definite taste for the inelegant and the primitive,

the clumsy and the oversized.

The rococo could have chosen any bird it fancied

to put above its fireplace.

It could've chosen the peacock,

or the resplendent quetzal.

But no, it chose the ostrich.

All over the rococo age

these unexpected animals keep popping up.

I mean, why put an ostrich above the most important mantelpiece

in the grandest room in your palace?

It's as if the rococo -

famous for its elegance and its sophistication -

was looking for the opposite in the animals it favoured.

In England, the great horse painter George Stubbs

did a fabulous sideline in wonky beasts.

Here's his zebra -

a white pony with black stripes painted on.

And, no, that's not a giant hairbrush,

it's a yak.

And I love Stubbs's magnificent cheetah

in the Manchester City Art Gallery.

But, basically, it's just an extra large tabby, isn't it?

Remember, this was still the pre-Darwinian world.

David Attenborough hadn't even been born yet.

All this was genuinely strange,

genuinely new and exciting.

This isn't science,

it's not biology

or zoology.

This is the opening of a fabulous goodie box,

filled with exotic sights

and wondrous spectacles.

For the best part of three millennia,

European art had relied on the same limited catalogue of images.

Now, suddenly,

a whole new consignment of them,

had arrived at the port.

And to record it,

to do it justice,

the rococo needed to invent a new art form.

The resplendent art form that is fancy porcelain.

To be honest,

I'm not usually an admirer of fancy porcelain.

It's too frilly for my tastes.

I'm a mug man by instinct.

But what changed my mind,

what really opened my eyes to the power of porcelain,

was what they produced up there in the Albrechtsburg castle.

That fabulous Turk sitting on a rhino

with the brooding portrayal of Clara -

that was made in here.

So was this.

And this.

When you say the word Meissen,

you say so much.

It all goes back to one man,

Augustus the Strong,

ruler of Saxony, King of Poland,

and a man obsessed with China.

They called him Augustus the Strong for two reasons,

one, because he was a brute of a man

who could bend a horseshoe with his bare hands,

and, two, because Augustus was a legendary seducer of women.

Estimates vary about how many illegitimate children

Augustus fathered,

but it was somewhere around the 350 or 360 mark.

Amazingly, though, this huge appetite for women

wasn't Augustus's most debilitating weakness -

somehow he found time for another terrible affliction.

Because Augustus was also addicted

to Chinese porcelain.

The French called his illness "maladie de porcelaine".

But that makes it sound gentler than it was.

When it came to porcelain,

Augustus was deranged.

The addiction was so severe that Augustus once swapped

an entire regiment of Saxon dragoons

for 48 Chinese vases.

And to house this enormous collection he'd amassed,

he built himself a fake Oriental palace

and filled it with 20,000 rare and expensive examples

of Chinese porcelain.

"China," wept the court mathematician,

lamenting the state of the national finances,

"has become the bleeding bowl of Saxony."

Europeans had been lusting after Chinese porcelain for centuries,

not just because it was so delicate and refined,

but also because porcelain was thought to have magic properties.

People believed it could resist fire and repel poison.

That made it particularly attractive, of course,

to a king as unpopular as Augustus the Strong,

who was frittering away the national fortune on Chinese pots.

The obvious solution was to stop importing

expensive porcelain from China,

and to start making it here in Meissen.

But that was easier said than done.

The Chinese had been making porcelain since the 6th century,

but the secret of how it was done was zealously guarded.

Various European despots,

desperate not to be poisoned by their subjects,

had had a go at reproducing it and failed.

But none of them was as fanatical as Augustus the Strong.

To help him realise his dream,

and start making his own porcelain,

Augustus imprisoned -

yes, imprisoned -

a young alchemist called Johann Friedrich Bottger.

He's the heroic one -

the one with his shirt off.

Amazingly, Bottger actually did it.

He worked out that the secret of porcelain,

was to bake the clay at exciting new temperatures.

And by 1710, here at the Albrechtsburg castle in Meissen,

porcelain was being manufactured in Europe for the first time.

The real alchemy begins when you start painting

this hard, white porcelain -

bake it, put colour on it -

that's when it bursts into life

with this exciting rococo vividness.

Colours had never been as explosive as this before in art.

Sculpture had never been this nimble.

This wasn't just the production of porcelain in Europe,

this was the invention of a new art form,

with new rules, and new possibilities.

And it was so portable and compact.

With porcelain,

the rococo imagination

became internationally unstoppable,

intrepid, nomadic.

It began travelling wildly across the continents,

crazily imagining all the different worlds out there.

Different animals,

different people,

different excitements.

India,

China,

Japan...

All these faraway locations were jumbled together

to form one rich and gorgeous imaginary kingdom.

A porcelain orient

filled with rococo goodies.

This taste for a mythical orient,

a fantastical new world

that existed only in the rococo imagination,

wasn't confined to porcelain.

It seeped out into all the other arts as well...

with spectacular results.

When Augustus the Strong built his Japanese palace

on the banks of the Elba, to house his porcelain collection,

he was trying to imitate the powerful Oriental emperors

he'd heard about in the garbled stories about the East

circling through the courts of Europe.

None of these people had actually been to the east,

or had actually visited China.

It was all hearsay and rumour.

Augustus had heard somewhere that Oriental potentates

built special palaces for their porcelain, so that's what he did.

He'd heard that the Emperor of China

drank from a porcelain cup to guard against poison,

so he did the same.

Now why did the Germans become

the most fanatical China-lovers in Europe?

I don't know, but they did.

And here at Sanssouci, Frederick the Great of Prussia

built himself this splendid and unlikely approximation

of a Chinese pavilion.

Of course nothing in China

actually looked anything like this -

you'd never get a Chinese building

with a gold statue on top, of a man holding an umbrella.

Or with life-size gold figures of musicians

playing invented instruments?

Or with a roof supported by Middle Eastern palm trees.

No-one in China had ever built

a building like this.

This was a European invention.

And that's the thing about Chinoiserie,

as they called this oriental illness.

It wasn't about China at all,

but about Europe.

What we're actually watching here

is the freeing of the European imagination,

an unleashing of sensuous

European desires.

And I think this freeing of the European id,

these dreams of paradise thinly disguised as images of the East,

constitute a glorious breakout by the European spirit.

A joyous dash for freedom and excitement,

which should be recognised

as one of the rococo's greatest achievements.

The Wurzburg Residence -

Palace of the Prince Bishops of Wurzburg.

Wurzburg is quite a small town,

and this massive palace

feels as if it's a couple of sizes too big for it.

It was designed by that man again -

Balthasar Neumann -

giant of the rococo.

Neumann became the court architect in Wurzburg in 1720,

and this was his first official commission.

Before that he'd been in the army, designing cannons,

so he came late to architecture

and promptly designed this.

The Prince Bishops of Wurzburg had plenty of money,

plenty of power,

and plenty of artistic ambition.

This vault when you enter is a very strange space.

It feels too low for its width,

like an underground garage or something.

But it's actually a brilliant piece of engineering.

With this impossibly shallow vault,

Neumann created enough space

for a horse and carriage to turn around here

without hitting anything,

without hitting any columns,

and that's very clever.

And because he squeezed all this space down here, made it so low,

he created more space on top...

for that.

The grand staircase at Wurzburg.

Walking up here,

mounting this staircase,

is a fantastic piece of rococo drama.

As you ascend, you gradually become aware

of something momentous happening above you.

And this extraordinary spectacle begins to open up.

This film is about travel,

and we've watched the impact of different kinds of travel

on the rococo -

the Grand Tour with Canaletto,

the great Bavarian pilgrimages,

travel in the mind to all those exotic places.

But there's another kind of travel that was crucial,

and that's the journeys made by artists

from one place to another -

from country to country,

spreading their influence like migrating birds

spreading their seeds.

This fresco here,

this monumental achievement of the German rococo,

was painted by an Italian, a Venetian,

the greatest fresco painter of the 18th century.

The incomparable Tiepolo.

It's the largest continuous ceiling fresco ever painted.

A truly remarkable achievement...

by an Italian in Germany.

When Tiepolo arrived here in 1750,

lured out of Italy by huge amounts of Wurzburg money,

he got over 60 times what a master mason would earn in a year -

all this was bare plaster.

It took him about a year to do this, that's all.

We're looking up at the sky, it's dawn,

and Apollo, the god of the sun,

is about to set off in his chariot

across the heavens.

So the sun's rising,

and it's rising above the whole world,

the four continents that were known at the time.

They've been painted around the edges,

and as you come up the stairs

the first continent you see is America.

That's her there,

embodied by a topless Indian

riding a crocodile.

And I like this rococo superman

with another casual croc thrown over his shoulder.

On the left as you come up the stairs, Africa -

there she is riding a camel.

Oh, and look, there's another ostrich

with a monkey pulling its tail.

The longest wall is up there - Asia,

and she is riding an elephant

with that ridiculous trunk,

like the hose of a vacuum cleaner.

Remember, the world was still being mapped in the rococo age.

There was still a sense of discovery out there.

And you sense it in Tiepolo.

He pretends he knows all these exotic places and animals,

but he doesn't.

So there's Europe up there.

The most developed of the continents.

She's surrounded by musicians,

listening to a concert.

And all the other arts are in attendance, as well.

Look, there's painting, with the palette.

She has just finished that portrait floating up to heaven

of the man who commissioned the great Tiepolo,

Prince Bishop Karl Philipp von Greiffenclau.

This Europe scene is particularly interesting

because it includes portraits of all the artists

who worked on this great staircase.

So, sprawled beside the cannon up there,

is Balthazar Neumann, the architect.

Tiepolo himself, is over here in the corner

looking rather strained.

Then, next to him, his son Domenico Tiepolo,

his brilliant apprentice.

That figure standing on the edge of the parapet,

the haughty one in the white cloak, that's Benigno Bossi,

another travelling Italian and a stucco genius.

Perhaps the greatest there's ever been,

and he did all this.

Three great creatives,

one great opportunity,

equals a gigantic rococo achievement.

All this travelling about by rococo artists,

led to some unexpected confrontations.

Very unexpected.

I mean who could ever have imagined that the great Canaletto

would come to London and paint this view?

And then turn around and paint this one.

Canaletto arrived in London in 1746,

and he lived here for nine years.

So what the hell was he doing here?

Well, back in Venice, the market for his pictures had dried up.

The English just weren't travelling as much as they used to.

So the mountain decided to come to Mohammed.

He was also keen to invest some money in stocks and shares.

He was a Venetian, after all,

so money was important to him.

And London, then as now, was Europe's financial hub.

Right from the start, he was up to his old rococo tricks again.

In Canaletto's London,

the Thames is always wider and grander

than nature intended.

And look how the skies are clearer and sunnier

than London's smog-filled skies ever were.

And how all those playful boats bobbing across the river

seem to have inherited some of the happy insouciance of the gondola.

When he first got here, Westminster Bridge,

the first new bridge across the Thames since the Middle Ages,

was still being built,

and in typical Canaletto fashion,

he couldn't resist painting it.

The city in flux had been one of his favourite subjects from the start -

new bridge, new view,

and a playful new bucket swinging across the vista,

adding a cheeky note of incompletion.

There are lots of things I like about Canaletto,

but his sense of fun is right up there.

Canaletto's critics like to have a go at his English pictures.

He was basically painting Venice-on-Thames they complained.

And it's true.

He was.

But that's because he was a rococo artist,

and rococo artists paint with their spirits,

not just their brushes.

At first, he concentrated on these magnificent river views.

The Thames was his Grand Canal,

and London was modified into somewhere he knew.

But then the curiosity kicked in.

He began prowling the backstreets,

painting gripping vistas of a city in flux.

From about here, in Whitehall,

he painted the view from the first floor window of Richmond House

which isn't there any more, but which stood where I am now.

Rickety, scruffy, low-slung...

..this is London behind the scenes,

an urban sprawl looking for a form.

I recognise the steeple of St Martin-in-the-Fields

in the background,

and that's about it.

London was changing furiously,

and the rococo gods had fixed it

for the great Canaletto

to come to England

and to paint what may be his finest picture.

This is where he lived,

in Soho, at the centre of the Italian community.

Canaletto was up on the first floor.

This is the other portrait of him,

painted in London when he was about 50.

But look how boyish he looks.

How charming and up-for-it.

When he finished with London,

he began scouring the rest of England for views.

Here's Eton college,

looking extra tall in the afternoon sun.

And in this moody view of the old bridge at Walton,

he lets some genuine British weather into his art, at last.

But his most fruitful wanderings across England,

brought him here to Warwick Castle.

When Canaletto got to Warwick,

the castle was in the middle of an ambitious rebuild.

The owner, Francis Greville, Earl of Warwick,

had decided to make his castle look more gothic

and then to place this gothic castle in a rococo garden,

designed by the celebrated Capability Brown.

Capability Brown liked to make his gardens look natural.

As if nature had created them, rather than him.

And in Canaletto's first view of Warwick,

you can actually see a new hill being put in.

A few years later,

when the alterations were more or less finished,

the Earl of Warwick invited Canaletto back,

and this time he painted this splendid view

before Capability Brown's new trees got in the way!

And then he painted this view,

which is even better.

These gorgeous views of Warwick Castle in the sunshine,

feel so vivid and real,

but, of course, they aren't.

The only place you get skies like that in England,

is in your dreams.

And that's what's so exciting about the rococo's passion for travel.

So much of the best voyaging was done in the mind.

BIRDSONG

Back in Bavaria, meanwhile,

a humble pilgrim is back on the plod.

I'm afraid I've been a very naughty boy,

because I've saved the best till last.

There are so many lovely things to see in rococo Bavaria,

but most people will tell you the loveliest of them all

is that church on the horizon.

The Wieskirche, or meadow church,

plopped down here

in the middle of nowhere.

CHURCH BELL TOLLS

It's the inside of the Wieskirche that makes it so special,

but will you look at the outside, as well.

With its gentle simplicity

and that gorgeous apricot colour,

like a tasty apricot sorbet!

Imagine being an exhausted pilgrim

who's tramped all the way through Bavaria,

and then, on the horizon,

deliberately positioned against the hill, so you can't miss it,

a lovely pilgrimage church of Weis,

beckoning irresistibly.

Wies is here, because one day a girl in the village

saw this wonky statue of Jesus crying...

and that was that.

Within a few months,

Wies had become a must-go pilgrimage destination.

Two local brothers, the Zimmermans,

were commissioned to build this rococo masterpiece.

Just look at it.

How light it feels,

and insubstantial.

If you blow at it, it might all blow away.

It's all done with stucco -

painted plaster -

the rococo's secret ingredient.

So light and adaptable.

See those columns?

Stucco.

See those saints?

Stucco.

See that roof?

Stucco.

With stucco you can defy gravity.

What shape do you think that vault is?

It looks like a huge expansive dome, doesn't it?

But if you go outside again...

..out here in the meadow,

and if we look up at that roof from outside,

we'll see that it's actually an ordinary sloping roof -

straight-sided, made of wood.

So all that bulging space in there,

all that billowing heaven inside...

Let's go back in and have another look.

..has actually been painted on a simple, pointy roof.

It's that rococo ingenuity again.

I'll show you how they did it on this diagram.

So that's the roof there...

And suspended from it,

the vault -

hanging down by a simple rope!

So it weighs nothing!

It's a brilliant rococo illusion.

And up on the ceiling, painted by Johann Baptist Zimmermann

the illusions continue

with an enormous message of hope.

The resurrected Jesus is sitting on a rainbow,

that most hopeful of symbols,

and is pointing at the cross

so we know he's already saved us with his sacrifice.

But look over here, the throne of judgment -

it's empty.

Jesus hasn't sat down on it yet,

so there's still time for us to mend our ways.

But not much time.

Because over here...the gates of eternity are still closed.

Heaven hasn't actually opened for business yet.

Old Father Time has completed this journey,

but who goes in and who doesn't,

is still up for grabs.

So, imagine you are a rococo pilgrim

and you've travelled all this way,

and you come in here, into this gorgeous space,

you must've thought you'd already arrived in heaven.

But then, you look up, and instead of salvation,

there's this enormous choice.

What's it to be, sinner?

Salvation or damnation?

Do you repent, or don't you?

That's the rococo for you -

it's full of honey traps.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

It's 35 years since my last confession.

I've done all sorts of terrible things, Father.

Where should I start?

In the next film, we'll be looking at that archetypal rococo subject -

pleasure.

And asking why the rococo

produced some of the most sensuous art ever made.

That's The Rococo And Pleasure,

the next film in the story of the rococo.

Ooh-la-la!