The Long Shadow Treasures of Ancient Greece


The Long Shadow

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The art of the Ancient Greeks has dazzled the world.

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With their mastery of technique and their fascination with the

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human form, they reached new heights of beauty and sophistication.

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But the story of Ancient Greek art didn't die with the Ancient Greeks.

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Their legacy has shaped the art and culture,

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the history and politics of the Western world.

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But I believe that the influence of Greek art can be summed up

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in the story of just a handful of masterpieces.

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And in this programme, I will be travelling across Europe to

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reveal the extraordinary afterlives of five key works of art.

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The Aphrodite of Knidos,

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the first naked woman in Western art and the mother of a million nudes.

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The Laocoon, a dramatic study in suffering that inspired

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Michelangelo and helped shape the Renaissance.

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The Hamilton vases,

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whose discovery created a new style for domestic design in Britain.

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The bronze horses of St Mark's in Venice,

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which became pawns in an imperial game.

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And the naked discus thrower, the Discobolus,

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bought by Adolf Hitler,

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paraded as an emblem of Aryan supremacy.

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Together they tell a fascinating story,

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how succeeding generations rediscovered and reinterpreted

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Greek art for themselves,

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finding in it inspiration for their own ambitions.

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And how it continued to shape Western civilisation

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long after Ancient Greece was no more than a memory.

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Early in the second century AD, the Emperor Hadrian built himself

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a pleasure palace at Tivoli, outside Rome.

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This ambitious Roman wanted his palace to be

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the epicentre of sophistication in his empire.

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He looked to his greatest predecessors,

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the Ancient Greeks, for inspiration.

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And he filled this vast site with hundreds of copies

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of Greek masterpieces.

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One work in particular was more infamous than any other.

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When it was created in the fourth century BC, it sparked a sensation

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because it was so provocative and also ground-breaking.

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It marked a real sea change in the history of art,

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inspiring some 60 scandalous direct copies,

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as well as countless titillating variations.

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It was Western art's first full-sized female nude.

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She is known as the Aphrodite of Knidos.

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She was created by the great sculptor Praxiteles

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for the Greek island of Knidos in the fourth century BC.

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Aphrodite appears startled,

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as though she has been surprised before or after bathing.

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With her left hand, she is dropping her robe onto a water jar

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or perhaps grabbing it to cover herself up.

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The ambiguity is deliberate.

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With her other hand, she would have been attempting at least to

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shield and protect her modesty.

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That gesture is a real coup, it is

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a watershed moment in art history

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because this goddess isn't static and timeless,

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idealised or otherworldly but instead,

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caught unawares in a particular moment

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as though we have just chanced upon a bashful girlfriend.

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So, this sculpture isn't just irreverent, it is also sexy,

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and it has its own particular narrative that involves us,

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the viewer, by casting us provocatively as the voyeur.

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With this nude, Praxiteles created a highly sexualised

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template of female beauty.

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Most cities in Ancient Greece, women were fairly covered up,

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they did wear veils out in public and they certainly didn't

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run around topless or without any clothes at all.

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However, I think

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there's something about Praxiteles' statue that went

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way beyond just being a nude, it wasn't a matter of a woman who just

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had no clothes on or a goddess who just had no clothes on.

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It was a woman that you could really fantasise about

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because she is actually in the act of taking something off

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or putting something on and you don't know quite what she's doing.

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The position of this modern,

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horribly weather-beaten copy at Tivoli preserves

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one of the original statue's most innovative aspects, its setting.

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The Aphrodite was displayed right in the middle of a special

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circular temple.

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It seems that Hadrian wanted to recreate the whole enclosure

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for the notorious cult statue back on Knidos.

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And that setting was a real innovation at the time,

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because it invited you to consider the sculpture in the round

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and admire the goddess's sensuous curves from every angle.

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Aphrodite's allure made her the must-see statue

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of the ancient world.

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The Roman author Lucian recorded a particularly scandalous

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event in her history.

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One night,

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an amorous young man snuck in to Aphrodite's holy temple and hid.

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The crowds dispersed, finally he was alone with her.

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Lucian goes on to describe the aftermath of what

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he calls this "unspeakable night of bravado".

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"Traces of the clinches of lust were spotted when daylight returned.

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"The goddess had the stain to prove the traumas

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"that she had been through."

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It is a remarkably salacious and gossipy little story

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but, at the very least, it suggests that Praxiteles' sexy statue

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was so intoxicating she could incite actual palpable desire

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within her infatuated young beholders.

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The famous statue stimulated dozens

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of variations on the theme.

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The Knidian Aphrodite proved enormously influential.

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Where Praxiteles had dared to tread, other sculptors quickly followed,

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each trying to outdo the master in terms of sexiness and provocation.

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This sculpture of another bathing goddess,

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Aphrodite, crouching by a water jar, is a very good example.

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It takes the principal elements of the Knidian Aphrodite,

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the sense of surprise, the storytelling setting,

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the implication of the viewer as a Peeping Tom and of course,

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lots of voluptuous naked flesh.

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And then, amps them up with several titillating flourishes.

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So this figure appears much more alarmed

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and defensive than her predecessor.

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That heightens the general sense of trespass

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and so ups the erotic charge.

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Aphrodite spawned a multitude

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of paintings and sculptures of the naked female body.

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This was the beginning of a staple of great Western art.

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The ideal form of the female that we were given from antiquity

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is a sexualised one.

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It makes it difficult for us to conceive of female beauty,

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or female excellence, divorced from erotic appeal.

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However, the Ancient Greeks believed in excellence

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in whatever was your department.

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So men's department of excellence

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had to do with athletics and fighting.

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The idealised man in art gets to do athletics or wave spears.

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Women's department of excellence had to do with beauty.

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So, you see women being naked and very, very beautiful.

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That is just about being an excellent female.

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We may find this sexist, we may find this disturbing,

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but we're misunderstanding the Ancient Greek cult of excellence

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in the aesthetic sphere.

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CHORAL SINGING

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By commissioning copies of the Aphrodite of Knidos,

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as well as other Greek masterpieces,

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Hadrian bought himself his very own slice of Greek sophistication.

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And in doing so, he cemented the idea of Ancient Greek art

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as a touchstone of excellence.

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It's a tradition that would live on for a further 2,000 years.

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It's the Romans we have to thank for our knowledge of Greek art.

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Ancient Greece may have succumbed to the armies of Rome,

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but her art left the rough-and-ready Romans awestruck.

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As the Roman poet Horace put it,

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"The conquered Greeks in turn conquered their savage victor."

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Ancient Roman collectors energetically plundered and copied

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Greek masterpieces.

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But their empire, too, would crumble

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and Rome would become a graveyard of Greek genius...

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..until the city was rebuilt for a new age of wealthy patrons

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and ambitious popes.

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In January, 1506, one messenger from the Greek world

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made a dramatic reappearance.

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It was a chilly winter's day more than five centuries ago

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when workmen scrabbling around here on the Esquiline Hill in Rome

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chanced upon a piece of white marble poking out of the soil.

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As they dug deeper, excavating layer by layer,

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they uncovered something magnificent.

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And although the marble was still partially covered with dirt,

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one of them realised that this was a spectacular work of art.

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A breathtaking masterpiece from antiquity

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known as the Laocoon.

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This was a sculpture of high drama,

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action, tragedy and pathos.

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The Trojan priest and his two sons

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are under attack from a pair of vicious gigantic sea serpents,

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whose thick, writhing coils grip and constrict

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the agonised forms of their bodies.

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And in the process, accelerate our eyes all around the composition,

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as we follow those snaking, lightning-quick lines.

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And there's tremendous chutzpah, even in attempting

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to represent slippery, constantly mobile serpents

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in a material as stiff and unyielding as stone.

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The whole sculpture then was a bravura, elaborate showpiece.

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It allowed its maker to demonstrate his skill

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at mastering such a complex tangle of thrusting limbs.

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And the representation of the muscles under this immense

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stress and strain, is breathtaking.

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As are the woeful expressions of anguish,

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frozen for ever.

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As an image of intense suffering,

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the Laocoon has never been surpassed.

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BELLS CHIME

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The Laocoon fuelled a passion for the ancient world

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that spread throughout 16th century Rome.

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The Papal city was being remodelled in the classical style.

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Learning of the Laocoon's discovery, Pope Julius II

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sent his favourite artist, Michelangelo,

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to witness its excavation.

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The sculpture was brought here to the Papal Palace.

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The Laocoon was to be the centrepiece of Julius'

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growing collection of classical art.

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And the art of Christendom would be transformed.

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The Church, and the artists it employed,

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were at the forefront of the most powerful cultural

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revolution in history - the Renaissance.

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The Renaissance saw Greek art rediscovered, celebrated,

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and reborn for a new generation.

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The Laocoon was at the heart of that rediscovery.

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It had an immense impact on artists.

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Why?

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Because the idea of depicting,

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erm, an extreme expression,

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which completely distorts all the features and, in fact,

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somehow or other feeds itself into the wild hair

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could be immediately read as a certain type of emotion -

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fear, anxiety, terror, horror -

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all these little distinctions between all these things.

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All that goes back to the Laocoon.

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I can't think of this type of expression existing

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really very much in European painting before that date.

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It represented an ideal in itself,

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people were interested in imitating it,

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interested in copying it and so on,

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but the really important influence of Laocoon is in the fact it set

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a kind of standard,

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it was something you wanted to try and do if you were a great artist.

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It was Michelangelo who had been present at the rebirth

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of the statue who was most inspired by Laocoon's tragic beauty.

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Just imagine how thrilled Michelangelo must have felt

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when he saw the Laocoon emerging from the ground.

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Admiring its grandeur, its pathos,

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its vigorous expression,

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he began sketching the sculpture immediately,

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he just couldn't help himself.

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And in that moment of discovery,

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the torch of antiquity was being passed to the modern world.

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Renaissance artists throughout Europe

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strove to achieve a new sense of humanity in their work.

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For Michelangelo, the image of the naked body,

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long excluded from Christian art, fired his imagination.

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It wasn't just the grandeur of ancient statues that appealed

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to Michelangelo,

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he also became obsessed with the animation,

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the plasticity of their anatomy,

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and by studying the agitated plains

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and surfaces of Laocoon's straining chest,

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he could unleash in his own work a forceful new sense of energy

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and expression.

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The work Michelangelo went on to create

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was imbued with profound emotion...

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Celebrating the human form in all its glory.

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His paintings and sculptures paid homage to the Greeks and to God

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in equal measure.

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And sculptures like his Rebellious Slave

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owe much to Laocoon's writhing form.

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The curious thing about art history is that sometimes the afterlife

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of a work of art can be as important as the moment of its creation.

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When an artist with Michelangelo's reputation

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expressed admiration for the sculptures unearthed in Rome,

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then the fame of those statues was actually enhanced.

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His enthusiasm helped to shape European culture.

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It was an overwhelming factor

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in the consecration of Greek sculpture as the pinnacle of art.

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Two centuries after the Renaissance,

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it was the turn of British aristocrats and gentlemen

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to fall under the spell of Ancient Greece.

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On the Grand Tour,

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they travelled to see these legendary works for themselves.

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When they returned to Britain,

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their country retreats were overhauled in the classical style.

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The antique became the height of 18th-century fashion.

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But one discovery would take Greek art in a surprising new direction.

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It was made by the diplomat, antiquarian and doyen of taste,

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Sir William Hamilton.

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From ancient classical burial sites, he had unearthed an enormous

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horde of Greek vases and he sold them to the British Museum.

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The finest vase in Hamilton's collection was this.

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It's an imposing water jar by the fifth-century-BC potter, Meidias.

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It's decorated with this highly complex composition,

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divided into two different scenes.

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The top half of the vase depicts a violent scene from Greek mythology.

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The twins, Castor and Pollux, assault the daughters of Leukippos.

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At the bottom, Heracles undergoes his final trial,

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stealing the famous golden apples,

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fiercely guarded by the Hesperides nymphs.

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But thanks to the really delicate draughtsmanship,

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the general mood isn't tumultuous, or frenzied,

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but rather refined and sophisticated.

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Everything here feels peaceful, almost courtly.

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The daughters look more like models participating in a fashion parade

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while Heracles, sitting on his lion skin

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and holding his hefty club,

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he's more of a pretty boy in this scene

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that his usual bearded, burly self.

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While those guardian nymphs, well,

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they seem more than willing to let their golden apples go.

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Hamilton loved the vase so much that he had it by his side

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when he sat for the great portrait painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

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But it was a very different 18th-century figure who would make

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the Hamilton vases truly famous.

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A Stoke potter called Josiah Wedgwood.

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Wedgwood was a hugely successful businessman.

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He'd made his fortune creating imitation porcelain tea sets

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for Britain's new self-made men.

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Not super-rich, though far from poor,

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the middling sort of merchants and administrators

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who wanted all the trappings of the upper classes,

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at a fraction of the price.

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From that point on,

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Wedgwood dedicated his every waking moment to creating

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a range of wares inspired by Ancient Greece,

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calling himself Vase-Maker General to the Universe.

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One object above all would give Wedgwood the inspiration he needed...

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..the catalogue of Hamilton's discoveries, compiled in 1766.

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What was the point for someone like Hamilton to produce these

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clearly quite lavish books?

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It was noblesse oblige. As a travelling aristocrat,

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as a diplomat, he was expected to bring back antiquities

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and other artworks that would improve the arts and manufacturers

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at home and raise the level of taste in his native England.

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It doesn't ostensibly look like, you know...

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It's not a cheap Penguin paperback?

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It's certainly not that

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and this book cost the equivalent of millions for Hamilton to produce.

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I mean, it nearly broke him because of its ambition.

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It was for connoisseurs who liked to look at such things

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but also for manufacturers who liked to make such things.

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Here is the best vase as it was thought to be then in

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Sir William's collection, the Volute-krater.

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Here we see the vase as a diagram.

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-And these are actually explicit measurements?

-Oh, yes, exactly.

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So, very explicitly this book is aimed at people who might

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-want to reproduce this vase?

-Exactly so.

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This seems such a lavish thing.

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It's not the kind of thing I can imagine being used in a studio.

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You wouldn't want to get it dirty. It looks like a collectors' item

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in its own sense but yet people like Wedgwood they would have used this?

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Yes, you mentioned Wedgwood. Wedgwood is an interesting protege

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for Hamilton because he fulfils Hamilton's dream

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of transforming the arts at home.

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And the rising middle classes had new money with which to buy

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new things and Wedgwood served that community of bourgeois collecting

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and decorating of the home.

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So, he almost... He raided this.

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-It became a pattern book for him?

-Yes, exactly.

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That's a very good way of describing it.

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He quoted the figures from different vessels and made new versions

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and it was, for him, a creative exercise.

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Just as Hamilton enjoyed seeing these ancient vases laid down on paper,

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he enjoyed seeing those paper versions that laid down on ceramic.

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Distilled within these pages is the essence of Greek art

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and culture, but for manufacturers like Wedgwood,

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this was a sort of philosopher's stone that would enable him

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to transform the clay of Stoke into something really beautiful.

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Back in Stoke, Wedgwood set about turning Hamilton's designs

0:27:370:27:41

into something that could be reproduced and sold at a profit.

0:27:410:27:46

Wedgwood was a brilliant chemist and craftsmen

0:28:010:28:04

and at his factory in Stoke he set to work tirelessly

0:28:040:28:09

experimenting with English clay, in search of a more affordable

0:28:090:28:13

but still beautiful alternative to the ancient originals

0:28:130:28:16

that could also be mass produced.

0:28:160:28:18

This vase was handmade by Wedgwood himself,

0:28:240:28:27

as a star example of a new range of pottery.

0:28:270:28:30

He used traditional shapes and colours

0:28:340:28:37

and even copied the figure of Heracles from the Meidias vase.

0:28:370:28:40

Unfortunately, it didn't sell.

0:28:420:28:44

Wedgwood soon realised why.

0:28:440:28:46

Increasingly women were taking care of interior decor

0:28:510:28:55

and they wanted something a little more fun.

0:28:550:28:57

Wedgwood looked to one of the days leading architects, Robert Adam.

0:29:000:29:04

He too had come under the spell of the Ancient Greek style.

0:29:050:29:10

His houses were classical, elegant, refined.

0:29:100:29:13

And he'd pioneered a feminine

0:29:150:29:17

and delicate colour scheme for his interiors.

0:29:170:29:20

Wedgwood went back to the drawing board.

0:29:200:29:22

For years he experimented with clays, pigments and moulds

0:29:260:29:31

until finally he struck upon the perfect concoction.

0:29:310:29:35

What he came up with was revolutionary.

0:29:410:29:44

This is it, it's known as Jasper

0:29:440:29:47

and the idea was that Wedgwood would marry the pale

0:29:470:29:50

backgrounds of Adam with some of the designs

0:29:500:29:53

that he'd encountered in the folio of Hamilton.

0:29:530:29:55

But Wedgwood decided to take his vases one step further

0:29:550:30:00

because rather than simply replicating Greek figures

0:30:000:30:03

in 2D on the surface of the vase,

0:30:030:30:06

he actually wanted to attach them,

0:30:060:30:08

modelled in three dimensions like cameos onto the sides.

0:30:080:30:12

And he hired some of the great neoclassical sculptors

0:30:200:30:23

of the day, people like John Flaxman, to do the modelling.

0:30:230:30:26

So, Wedgwood's new range was everything that the discerning

0:30:260:30:30

18th-century Greek-obsessed shopper could hope for.

0:30:300:30:34

A Stoke potter and an English gent had brought Ancient Greek art

0:30:400:30:46

into the shops, homes and minds of 18th-century Britain...

0:30:460:30:50

..and transformed Greek art from a cultivated hobby

0:30:510:30:56

into a modern commodity.

0:30:560:30:58

Do we know much about the relationship between Hamilton

0:31:000:31:03

-and Wedgwood?

-It was largely conducted through letters.

0:31:030:31:06

But the letters are revealing of a kindness between them, an intimacy.

0:31:060:31:10

Because they were people of fellow feeling.

0:31:100:31:13

In the 18th century, manufacturers were not just manufacturers,

0:31:130:31:16

they were also moral thinkers.

0:31:160:31:17

This was the world of ideas, the world of the Enlightenment,

0:31:170:31:20

the world of intellectual humanism.

0:31:200:31:22

And these people would be sensitive to the idea

0:31:220:31:26

of improvements through education.

0:31:260:31:28

How much do you think that Hamilton and Wedgwood should be credited

0:31:280:31:32

with democratising the art of Ancient Greece?

0:31:320:31:35

They had, as far as I understand it,

0:31:350:31:37

very much at the fore of their minds a desire to reach a wide audience.

0:31:370:31:41

Indeed, so, from... The key to the richest of the Birmingham

0:31:410:31:47

New Industrialists, everybody would have a Wedgwood vase

0:31:470:31:51

in his household.

0:31:510:31:53

And it would serve the same purpose for one and all,

0:31:530:31:55

it would be, in a sense, a democratising object.

0:31:550:31:59

Wedgwood's innovations gave Greek life an unexpected afterlife.

0:32:030:32:08

Thanks to him, it was no longer the preserve of connoisseurs

0:32:080:32:12

and the elite. And by the end of the 18th century,

0:32:120:32:16

his Greek-inspired pottery could be found in ordinary homes

0:32:160:32:20

up and down the country and across the British Empire,

0:32:200:32:24

as far afield as America and the West Indies.

0:32:240:32:27

The Greek style was now recognisable the world over

0:32:370:32:41

as a symbol of elegance and taste.

0:32:410:32:44

Over the centuries, people had found cultural cachet,

0:32:560:33:00

creative inspiration and commercial profit in the art of Ancient Greece.

0:33:000:33:05

But at the start of the 19th century,

0:33:050:33:08

a new obsession gripped Europe - the quest for Empire.

0:33:080:33:13

And the art of Ancient Greece found itself playing

0:33:130:33:16

a very different role.

0:33:160:33:18

One summer's day, in late July 1798,

0:33:230:33:27

an extraordinary event took place here on the Champs de Mars in Paris.

0:33:270:33:31

Thousands of citizens thronged this military parade ground

0:33:310:33:36

in anticipation of something spectacular.

0:33:360:33:39

A triumphal procession worthy of the emperors of Ancient Rome.

0:33:390:33:44

As light glinted on the swords of the cavalry

0:33:440:33:47

and a marching band struck up,

0:33:470:33:49

this great procession wound its way into view, with caged lions,

0:33:490:33:55

four camels, a bear,

0:33:550:33:58

and lots of wagons bearing mysterious large packing cases.

0:33:580:34:03

But where the Romans had shown off unfortunate foreign captives,

0:34:030:34:07

these returning soldiers were bringing very different

0:34:070:34:10

victory spoils.

0:34:100:34:12

Art looted from the great collections of Europe

0:34:120:34:15

by Napoleon Bonaparte.

0:34:150:34:17

Napoleon had waged a savage campaign.

0:34:200:34:23

He conquered territory throughout Europe.

0:34:230:34:26

And he had sent his so-called representatives of the people

0:34:270:34:31

to bring back as much cultural booty as they could.

0:34:310:34:34

Napoleon wanted the people of Paris

0:34:360:34:38

to admire their new cultural treasures.

0:34:380:34:41

Labels and slogans on the sides of the cases

0:34:410:34:44

proclaimed their prestigious contents, boxed-up masterpieces

0:34:440:34:48

plundered from Rome, including the world-famous Laocoon.

0:34:480:34:53

But the booty that Napoleon prized above all was left

0:34:530:34:57

deliberately unpacked to dazzle the crowd.

0:34:570:35:01

Four monumental gilded horses.

0:35:010:35:04

They had travelled by road, and by water, all the way from Venice.

0:35:160:35:22

Napoleon's prized stallions are more commonly known

0:35:390:35:44

as the Horses of St Mark's Basilica.

0:35:440:35:47

From the moment that his armies arrived here,

0:35:510:35:54

Napoleon was determined to possess them.

0:35:540:35:57

Ignoring the heartfelt protests of all of the Venetians

0:35:570:36:01

massed in St Mark's Square, the French soldiers ripped down

0:36:010:36:05

those gilded horses from their parapet.

0:36:050:36:07

Full-sized copies now adorn the facade of the basilica.

0:36:130:36:17

They are no more Venetian than they are French.

0:36:310:36:34

Most likely they are Ancient Greek.

0:36:340:36:36

And Napoleon wasn't the first to covet them.

0:36:360:36:40

Ever since they were created, they have proved particularly

0:36:400:36:44

bewitching for powerful and ambitious men.

0:36:440:36:47

The magnificent originals were returned to St Mark's

0:36:590:37:03

and they are now kept indoors to protect them from the elements.

0:37:030:37:06

These four proud stallions are the only full team of horses

0:37:150:37:19

to have survived from antiquity.

0:37:190:37:22

A fact that lends them distinction enough.

0:37:220:37:25

And they are all powerful horses in their prime.

0:37:250:37:30

The glamorous A-Listers of the equine world, if you like.

0:37:300:37:34

These well-muscled, manicured specimens with close-cropped manes

0:37:340:37:40

and beautifully perky, feathery textured ears.

0:37:400:37:45

And they boast all of these lovely details.

0:37:450:37:49

From the veins on their muzzles and also on the legs to these

0:37:490:37:54

intricate folds around their eyes and the creases at their necks.

0:37:540:37:59

And then these crest-like tufts of hair in the centre of their heads.

0:37:590:38:05

And they all have this wonderful sense of flickering,

0:38:060:38:10

irrepressible animal instinct.

0:38:100:38:13

Twitching, champing at the bit,

0:38:130:38:17

but at the same time, we can see that they are wearing bridles

0:38:170:38:21

as well as these big collars around their necks.

0:38:210:38:24

So we know that their rampant spirits are being kept in check.

0:38:240:38:29

And that's the point about this sculpture.

0:38:300:38:33

As a group, it's a piece of flattery,

0:38:330:38:36

flattering whoever was in command, literally holding the reins.

0:38:360:38:41

Able to wield the sort of power usually reserved for kings or gods.

0:38:420:38:48

Napoleon wasn't the first conqueror who longed to possess these horses.

0:38:520:38:57

They were adored by the Emperor Constantine in Constantinople,

0:38:570:39:01

copied by succeeding generations,

0:39:010:39:04

and finally brought here to Venice during the Fourth Crusade.

0:39:040:39:08

Over the centuries, the horses have genuinely become icons of power.

0:39:090:39:15

Plundered time and time again.

0:39:150:39:17

So, by looting them, Napoleon wanted to make something very plain -

0:39:170:39:22

that he belonged in the front rank of history's greatest men.

0:39:220:39:26

Napoleon, like many people before him, wanted to see himself

0:39:310:39:35

as either Alexander the Great or above all, Julius Caesar.

0:39:350:39:38

Those were the great classical models of the military heroes.

0:39:380:39:41

To do that, you have to have a strong engagement

0:39:410:39:44

with classical culture.

0:39:440:39:45

Possessing classical culture was the sign of class. Classics - class.

0:39:450:39:51

it was the sign of being authoritative and in power.

0:39:510:39:54

We want our cities to look like Roman and Greek cities,

0:39:540:39:57

we want to decorate our houses with Greek and Roman art,

0:39:570:40:00

it becomes the sign of being the big man.

0:40:000:40:03

And for Napoleon, that was important.

0:40:030:40:07

Napoleon knew just where he wanted his treasures.

0:40:130:40:17

All of them were brought here, to the old royal palace

0:40:180:40:21

at the heart of the French capital, the Louvre.

0:40:210:40:24

Plunder from around the world filled with the palace with treasures

0:40:340:40:38

of every conceivable material and form.

0:40:380:40:41

And the palace got a new name.

0:40:410:40:44

The Musee du Napoleon.

0:40:440:40:46

Although much of Napoleon's collection has now been returned,

0:40:550:40:58

the Louvre is still one of the greatest repositories

0:40:580:41:02

of Greek art anywhere in the world.

0:41:020:41:04

As for the horses,

0:41:120:41:14

they were displayed in the most exalted position of all.

0:41:140:41:17

At the heart of the palace complex.

0:41:190:41:21

They have since been replaced with replicas,

0:41:230:41:26

but the effect is unchanged.

0:41:260:41:28

What better way to proclaim his almighty power

0:41:290:41:33

than by erecting a classical arch in the manner of the ancient emperors,

0:41:330:41:37

surmounted by one of the most powerful works of art in history?

0:41:370:41:41

But deep in the vaults of the Louvre,

0:41:480:41:50

there's an object that tells a rather different story.

0:41:500:41:53

This statue of Napoleon as an emperor was created

0:41:560:42:00

to ride behind the horses.

0:42:000:42:02

But Napoleon found it too much.

0:42:050:42:08

He demanded the statue be banished from sight.

0:42:080:42:12

It seems that even Napoleon's egoism had its limits.

0:42:150:42:19

By the 19th century, masterpieces like these had come to be seen

0:42:310:42:35

as the wellspring of European civilisation.

0:42:350:42:39

A fountain from which artists, aesthetes and statesmen might drink.

0:42:420:42:48

But in the 20th century,

0:42:540:42:56

the story of Greek art would take its darkest turn.

0:42:560:43:00

The setting was the German city of Munich.

0:43:030:43:07

The 20th of April, 1938, was a very special day here in Munich.

0:43:190:43:25

It was Adolf Hitler's birthday.

0:43:250:43:28

Five years after taking power,

0:43:280:43:30

things were going well for the Fuhrer

0:43:300:43:32

and he decided to celebrate turning 49

0:43:320:43:35

with a screening of his favourite film.

0:43:350:43:38

TRIUMPHAL MUSIC PLAYS

0:43:410:43:44

The film was Olympia,

0:44:060:44:08

directed by Hitler's star film-maker Leni Riefenstahl.

0:44:080:44:13

And it was a celebration of the recent Olympic Games

0:44:130:44:16

held in Germany, which Hitler had used as an occasion to promote

0:44:160:44:21

his vision of a strong, healthy, not to say aggressive new nation.

0:44:210:44:26

The film opened with a remarkable sequence.

0:44:280:44:32

A montage of Ancient Greek sculpture.

0:44:320:44:36

The star of the show was a sculpture known as the Discobolus,

0:44:360:44:41

the discus thrower,

0:44:410:44:42

created in the fifth century BC by the sculptor Myron.

0:44:420:44:47

Riefenstahl showed this statue morphing into a real-life

0:44:480:44:53

German athlete.

0:44:530:44:54

This image, of the perfect classical body reborn,

0:44:550:45:00

utterly entranced the Fuhrer.

0:45:000:45:02

Scarcely a month after Hitler's birthday screening of Olympia,

0:45:130:45:17

the statue itself arrived in Munich,

0:45:170:45:20

bought by the Nazis for a record price of 5 million lire.

0:45:200:45:25

A cast of the statue can still be found

0:45:370:45:40

at the former Nazi headquarters in Munich.

0:45:400:45:44

To really understand Myron's discus thrower,

0:45:590:46:02

you have to put it in context and compare it with the sort

0:46:020:46:06

of statues that were common just a generation or two earlier.

0:46:060:46:09

For a century or more,

0:46:140:46:15

Greek artists had created thousands of standing nude men.

0:46:150:46:19

They had a certain presence.

0:46:190:46:21

But they were also fairly stiff and formal and distinctly un-lifelike.

0:46:210:46:27

And then, in the fifth century BC,

0:46:270:46:30

with his bronze Discobolus, Myron blew all of that apart.

0:46:300:46:35

Suddenly, we find this naturalistic athlete mid-flow,

0:46:380:46:43

and that spiralling composition is so dynamic,

0:46:430:46:47

so fluid, a vortex of compressed, pent-up, soon-to-be-released energy.

0:46:470:46:53

Myron wanted here to advertise an ephemeral moment,

0:46:560:47:00

an instant that he'd ripped from reality and yet the result

0:47:000:47:05

was so satisfying and harmonious

0:47:050:47:07

that it felt timeless, all the same.

0:47:070:47:10

Munich was the perfect new home for this timeless masterpiece.

0:47:220:47:27

Much of the city, its town squares and grand public architecture,

0:47:290:47:33

had been remodelled more than a century earlier by Hitler's hero,

0:47:330:47:38

Ludwig of Bavaria, as a new Athens.

0:47:380:47:42

At its heart was a temple to Greek art called the Glyptothek.

0:47:450:47:50

But as the politics of Germany took a dark turn,

0:48:080:48:12

so, too, did the symbolism of these masterpieces.

0:48:120:48:15

Hitler insisted that the Germans were descended

0:48:170:48:20

from the Ancient Greeks.

0:48:200:48:22

A pure, Aryan race to whom the Germans could look for inspiration

0:48:220:48:27

and he hoped that Greek art could inspire his countrymen to glory.

0:48:270:48:31

But to Hitler, Greek art wasn't just about evoking a noble past.

0:48:510:48:56

He wanted it to inform Germany's future.

0:48:560:49:00

With great pomp and ceremony, on the 9th of July 1938,

0:49:050:49:11

he presented the Discobolus as a gift to the German people.

0:49:110:49:15

Hitler gave a speech that day,

0:49:230:49:26

extolling the "miraculous power and vision", as he put it,

0:49:260:49:30

of Myron's discus thrower.

0:49:300:49:32

"May none of you fail to visit the Glyptothek,"

0:49:320:49:35

he told the crowds, "for there you will see how splendid man used to be

0:49:350:49:41

"in the beauty of his body.

0:49:410:49:43

"And you will realise that we can speak of progress only when

0:49:430:49:47

"we have not only attained such beauty but surpassed it."

0:49:470:49:51

Hundreds of miles, and thousands of years from home,

0:49:540:49:59

Myron's great discus thrower became the ultimate symbol

0:49:590:50:02

of Hitler's evil race politics.

0:50:020:50:05

How much can we see any sort of links

0:50:060:50:08

between the classical tradition

0:50:080:50:11

and the ideology of the Nazis?

0:50:110:50:14

I think without the classical tradition,

0:50:140:50:17

the Nazi visual ideology would have been rather different.

0:50:170:50:21

Well, let's talk about the Discobolus specifically.

0:50:210:50:25

What do you think Hitler really admired about this sculpture?

0:50:250:50:30

As all hunters...

0:50:300:50:32

They...hunted for a priceless object.

0:50:320:50:37

And as the object could not argue against it,

0:50:370:50:43

the statue cannot say no.

0:50:430:50:45

Yeah?

0:50:450:50:46

They could use it for their perverse ideologies.

0:50:460:50:51

This is the crux of the story about the Discobolus and the Nazis.

0:50:510:50:55

How did they use this statue for these perverse ideologies?

0:50:550:51:01

The perfect Arian body.

0:51:010:51:04

The athletic habitus.

0:51:040:51:06

The beautiful, you see...

0:51:080:51:12

ideal, white male.

0:51:120:51:17

And if you like, a kind of...

0:51:170:51:22

not very suitable image to me of the Herrenrasse

0:51:220:51:25

the "race of masters",

0:51:250:51:28

that is what the Nazis called themselves and the Germans.

0:51:280:51:34

"Herren" means simply "master".

0:51:340:51:36

Herrenrasse, to put it very bluntly.

0:51:360:51:39

So, they weren't interested in understanding the history

0:51:390:51:43

-of Ancient Greece, particularly, setting the art in context?

-No. No.

0:51:430:51:47

They were very much interested to set them in their own context.

0:51:470:51:51

And for example, when they talked about the Greek Olympic Games,

0:51:510:51:57

they definitely understood something completely different

0:51:570:52:00

as we understood today when we talk about Greek Olympic Games.

0:52:000:52:06

-Just to give you one example.

-What did they understand?

0:52:060:52:10

I think they compared it very much to their own understanding

0:52:100:52:14

of Olympic Games, showing the world that Germany is on top.

0:52:140:52:18

The Discobolus became the unwitting pin-up boy of Nazi supremacist.

0:52:200:52:25

And Hitler encouraged artists of the day to use the statue's optimism

0:52:270:52:33

and life force to help him in his battle against

0:52:330:52:37

what he called "degenerate art".

0:52:370:52:40

This so-called degenerate art is today accepted as

0:52:440:52:49

the most pioneering artistic movement of the 20th century.

0:52:490:52:53

Modernism.

0:52:550:52:57

The great modernists of the early 20th century,

0:52:590:53:02

they wanted to turn away from the sort of beauty which had been

0:53:020:53:05

perfected by the Ancient Greeks.

0:53:050:53:08

Instead of naturalism, they wanted to explore abstract

0:53:080:53:12

or expressionistic images evoking thoughts and feelings.

0:53:120:53:16

But for Hitler, their revolutionary art was inferior,

0:53:180:53:23

it was Jewish and, he said, corrupted

0:53:230:53:26

with rootless intellectualism.

0:53:260:53:28

He ridiculed it, before setting out systematically to destroy it.

0:53:280:53:34

In its place, he commissioned state-sponsored Greek style art.

0:53:470:53:51

Most has now been destroyed, but a few statues remain,

0:53:530:53:57

abandoned in the forest on the outskirts of Munich.

0:53:570:54:00

When Hitler unveiled the Discobolus,

0:54:160:54:18

he compared Myron to the state-sponsored sculptor,

0:54:180:54:21

Josef Thorak, who created these two monumental reliefs.

0:54:210:54:25

And in a sense, the comparison wasn't entirely ridiculous

0:54:250:54:29

because like his Greek predecessors,

0:54:290:54:32

Thorak was interested in idealising the human body.

0:54:320:54:36

But unlike the sculptors of classical Greece,

0:54:360:54:38

he unleashed a race of super men who are neither dazzlingly beautiful

0:54:380:54:42

nor graceful, but instead surprisingly awkward, blocky,

0:54:420:54:48

overmuscled and squat.

0:54:480:54:51

Semi obscured by moss,

0:54:510:54:53

and abandoned out here in the elements,

0:54:530:54:55

these reliefs offer a potent, melancholic reminder

0:54:550:55:00

of the way that Greek art and its tradition

0:55:000:55:03

became corrupted under the Nazis.

0:55:030:55:06

2,000 years after the fall of Ancient Greece,

0:55:100:55:14

its great art had suffered the ultimate indignity.

0:55:140:55:17

Wedded to a fascist ideology,

0:55:170:55:20

pitted against artistic progress

0:55:200:55:23

and reduced to a malignant caricature.

0:55:230:55:26

After the war, the Discobolus was returned to Italy.

0:55:460:55:50

The state-sponsored art of the Third Reich was torn down and disowned.

0:55:500:55:56

For some, Greek art seemed irredeemably tainted.

0:55:560:56:00

Ancient Greek art seemed emblematic of an outdated, imperial world view.

0:56:030:56:09

It was the go-to official style of the Establishment

0:56:090:56:13

and, consequently, irrelevant for younger artists.

0:56:130:56:17

And as the century wore on,

0:56:170:56:18

witnessing one calamity after another,

0:56:180:56:21

the idealising art of the Ancient Greeks

0:56:210:56:24

felt completely inappropriate for a barbarous and chaotic New Age.

0:56:240:56:29

Those in the vanguard of the modernist revolution

0:56:380:56:42

wanted a new kind of art.

0:56:420:56:44

All over Europe, the great collections of casts

0:56:450:56:49

that had inspired so many were hidden away or pulverised.

0:56:490:56:54

Yet the taste of the public has proved less volatile.

0:57:010:57:05

The beauty and power of Ancient Greek art has never stopped

0:57:070:57:11

amazing the millions who throng the great museums of Europe.

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Struck time and again by its enduring perfection.

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For centuries,

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the art of Ancient Greece has been held up as a kind of gold standard.

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An ideal against which the Western world has understood itself...

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..revealing who we are...

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..and where we come from.

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