Civilisation (1969–1970): Season 1, Episode 4 - Man: The Measure of All Things - full transcript
Age of Humanism and the Renaissance.
(STATELY MUSIC)
The men who made Florence
the richest city in Europe,
the bankers and wool merchants,
the pious realists,
lived in grim, defensive houses,
strong enough to withstand
party feuds and popular riots.
They don't in any way foreshadow
the extraordinary episode
in the history of civilisation
known as the Renaissance.
There seems to be no reason why,
suddenly, out of the dark streets
and forbidding stone facades,
there arose a building as light
and delicate as the Pazzi Chapel.
By its rhythms and proportions,
and its open, welcoming character
it totally contradicts the dark
Gothic style that preceded it
and, to some extent, still surrounds it.
What has happened?
The answer is contained in one sentence
by the old Greek philosopher, Protagoras.
"Man is the measure of all things."
The building in front of which
I am standing, the Pazzi Chapel,
built in about 1430
by the great architect Brunellesco,
has rightly been described
as "the architecture of humanism".
His friend and fellow architect,
Leon Battista Alberti,
addressed man in these words -
"To you is given a body
more graceful than other animals.
"To you power of apt
and various movements.
"To you most sharp and delicate senses.
"To you wit, reason, memory,
like an immortal god."”
Well, it's certainly incorrect to say that
we are more graceful than other animals
and we don't feel much like
immortal gods at the moment.
But in 1400, the Florentines did.
There's no better instance
of how a burst of civilisation
depends on confidence
than the Florentine state of mind
in the early 15th century.
MAN: # Gloria
# In excelsis Deo... #
(CHOIR SINGS)
Where did it come from,
this light, economical style,
which is unlike anything before or since?
I think that it really was the invention
of an individual, of Brunellesco.
But of course,
an architectural style can't take root
unless it satisfies some need of the time,
and Brunellesco's style satisfied the need
of the clear-headed, bright-minded men
who appeared on the Florentine scene
at the moment when the discipline
of trade and banking,
in its most austere form,
was beginning to be relaxed,
and life -
full use of the human faculties -
became more important than making money.
People sometimes feel disappointed
the first time they see the famous
beginnings of Renaissance architecture -
the Pazzi Chapel,
the old Sacristy of San Lorenzo -
because they seem so small.
Well, so they are,
after the great monuments
of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
They don't try to impress us
or crush us by size and weight,
as all God-directed architecture does.
Everything is adjusted to the scale
of reasonable human necessity.
They are intended to make each individual
more conscious of his powers
as a complete moral
and intellectual being.
(CHORAL SINGING CONTINUES)
"The dignity of man.”
Today those words die on our lips.
But in 15th-century Florence, their
meaning was still fresh and invigorating.
One of the second generation
of humanists, named Manetti,
wrote a book entitled
On The Dignity And Excellence Of Man.
And this is the concept that
Brunellesco's friends were making visible.
The grandest of all these testimonies
to the dignity of man is by Masaccio,
in the series of frescoes he painted
in the church of the Carmine.
Two of them represent the Apostles
Peter and Paul performing acts of mercy.
As St Peter moves gravely through
the streets, his shadow cures the sick,
including this noble old man,
more like a bishop than a beggar.
And in the balancing fresco, Peter and
his disciples gives alms to a poor woman
who is one of the greatest
sculptural creations in painting.
What characters they are -
morally and intellectually men of weight.
The least frivolous of men.
Infinitely remote from the gay courtiers
of Jean de Berry
who were only 30 years older.
They have that air of contained vitality
and confidence
that one often finds
in the founding fathers of a civilisation.
Those that come first to my mind are
the Egyptians of the first four dynasties.
The most famous group in the series
represents the story of the tribute money,
and the heads of the apostles
seem to reflect the high seriousness
of the Florentine republic.
It was directed by a group
of the most intelligent individuals
who have ever been elected to power
by a democratic government.
The Florentine chancellors were scholars,
believers in the studia humanitatis,
in which learning could be used
to achieve a happy life,
believers in the application
of free intelligence to public affairs,
believers, above all, in Florence.
The second, and greatest, of these
humanist chancellors, Leonardo Bruni,
compared the civic virtues of republican
Florence with those of republican Rome.
Later, he went even further
and compared her to Athens
in the age of Pericles,
which wasn't far wrong.
As I said before,
all the great ages of civilisation
have seen themselves as part of history,
both as heirs and as transmitters.
And on Bruni's tomb in the church
of Santa Croce, are inscribed the words,
"History is in mourning."
Bruni and his friends had derived these
ideas from the authors of Greece and Rome.
Now, much as one would like to say
something new about the Renaissance,
the old belief that it was largely based
on the study of antique literature
remains true.
Of course, the Middle Ages derived
much more from classical antiquity
than used to be supposed.
But their sources were limited,
their texts corrupt
and their interpretations often fanciful.
Almost the first man to read
classical authors with real insight
was the poet Petrarch,
that complex figure of the 14th century,
that false dawn of humanism,
whose love of opposites, of fame
and solitude, of nature and politics,
of rhetoric and self-revelation,
makes us think of him
as the first modern man,
until we begin to read his works.
Petrarch never learnt Greek.
But his younger contemporary,
Boccaccio, did.
And so there entered into Florentine
thought a new regenerative force
and a new example.
The first 30 years of the 15th century
was the heroic age of scholarship
when unknown works
by the greatest writers of antiquity -
Tacitus, Plato, Cicero
and a dozen others -
were discovered in monastic libraries
where they had lain
since they were copied in the Dark Ages.
And it was to house these precious texts,
any one of which
might contain some new revelation,
that Cosimo de' Medici
built the library of San Marco.
It looks to us peaceful and remote,
but the first studies that took place
there were not remote from life at all.
It was the humanist equivalent
of the Cavendish Laboratory.
The manuscripts unpacked and studied
under these harmonious vaults
could alter the course of history
with an explosion, not of matter
but of mind.
Next to the Pazzi Chapel
are the cloisters of Santa Croce,
also built by Brunellesco
some years later.
I said that the Gothic cathedrals
were hymns to divine light.
These cloisters, with their round arches,
"running races in their mirth",
happily celebrate the light
of human intelligence.
And sitting in them,
I find it quite easy to believe in man.
(CHORAL SINGING)
When I first came here, nearly 50 years
ago, I felt, this is my true centre.
Well, twice it seemed that they were lost.
Once at the end of the German occupation,
and once when the floods came
and there were fish swimming
where my feet are in the ambulatory.
But so far, the forces of destruction
have been defeated.
Clarity, economy, elegance.
These are the qualities that give
distinction to a mathematical theorem.
And, no doubt,
early Renaissance architecture
is based on a passion for mathematics,
particularly for geometry.
Of course, Gothic architects
had designed on a geometrical basis,
but it had been of immense complexity,
as elaborate and as logical
as scholastic philosophy.
Nothing could be more geometrical
than the Florentine Baptistery,
which is one of the earliest buildings
in the city.
But the Renaissance
added to this tradition of design
all sorts of philosophical notions,
including the idea that these forms
must be applicable to the human body,
that each, so to say,
guaranteed the perfection of the other.
There are dozens
of drawings and engravings
to demonstrate this proposition,
of which the most famous
is by Leonardo da Vinci.
Mathematically,
I'm afraid it's really a cheat,
but aesthetically it has some meaning,
because the symmetry of the human body,
and the relation
of one part of it to another,
do influence our sense
of normal proportion.
And, philosophically,
it contains the germ of an idea
which might save us,
if we could really believe it,
that through proportion, we can reconcile
the two parts of our being,
the physical and the intellectual.
The same approach was applied to painting
in the system known as perspective,
by which it was thought that,
by mathematical calculation,
one could render on a flat surface
the precise position of a figure in space.
This too seems to have been invented
by Brunellesco.
But we can see it best in the works of
his two friends, Ghiberti and Donatello,
whose low-relief sculpture
is really a kind of painting.
Ghiberti's Jacob And Esau
on the famous Baptistery doors
shows perspective used to achieve
a spatial harmony
that has almost a musical effect.
Donatello's relief of St Anthony of Padua
curing a boy's leg
shows the other use of perspective -
to heighten emotion
by a more intense awareness of space.
I don't know why, I always feel
there's something alarming
about an empty amphitheatre,
which suits the drama
of this particular subject.
The Florentines were extremely proud
of this invention,
which they thought - wrongly, as it
turned out - was unknown to antiquity.
But has it anything
to do with civilisation?
When it was first invented,
I think it had.
The belief that one could represent man
in a real setting
and calculate his position
and arrange figures
in a demonstrably harmonious order.
This belief expressed, symbolically,
a new idea about man's place
in the scheme of things
and man's control over his own destiny.
As an aid to realism,
perspective is of no importance -
the realistic painters of Flanders
got on very well without it -
but as a symbol, it means something,
and it's as a symbol
that it passes into the decorative arts
of the early Renaissance,
and one finds it as the principal theme
of those wooden inlays in panelled rooms
or choir stalls, which are a repertoire
of Renaissance symbolism.
Perspective was concerned
with the representation of towns,
if only because it was by the paved floor
and the ceiling arcade
that the system
could be shown to advantage.
In the 15th century, painters
did a number of pictures of ideal towns,
which are both architectural harmonies
and the perfect setting for social man.
Alberti describes in his great book
on building
the necessity of a public square
where young men may be diverted
from the mischievousness and folly
natural to their age.
And under handsome porticoes,
old men may spend the heat of the day
and be mutually serviceable
to one another.
I think that Piero delta Francesca,
who derived so much from Alberti,
may well have had this
and similar passages in mind
when he painted this,
the most harmonious of all ideal cities.
The early Florentine Renaissance
was an urban culture
bourgeois, properly so-called.
Men spent their time in the streets
and squares and in the shops.
"A good Florentine,"
says one of their moralists,
"sta sempre a bottega,"”
is always in the shop,
and these shops were completely public.
You can see in this engraving
how a craftsman's workshop
was open to the street
so that passers-by
could see what was being done
and rival artists make scathing comments.
The Renaissance historian of art, Vasari,
when he asked himself
why it was in Florence more than elsewhere
that men became perfect in the arts,
gave as his first answer,
"The spirit of criticism,
"the air of Florence
making minds naturally free
"and not content with mediocrity."
And this harsh, outspoken criticism
meant that there was no gap
of incomprehension
between the intelligent patron
and the artist.
Our contemporary attitude of
pretending to understand works of art
in order not to appear Philistines
would have seemed absurd
to the Florentines.
They were a tough lot.
Many since Bruni in 1428
have compared them with the Athenians,
but the Florentines were more realistic.
Whereas the Athenians
loved philosophical argument,
the Florentines were chiefly interested
in making money
and playing appalling
practical jokes on stupid men.
However, they had a good deal in common
with the Greeks.
They were curious,
they were extremely intelligent
and they had, to a supreme degree, the
power of making their thoughts visible.
I hesitate to pronounce
the much abused word "beauty”,
but I can't think of a substitute.
Like the Athenians,
the Florentines loved beauty.
This is a constant source of surprise
to anyone who knows them.
But as Walter Pater says of Michelangelo,
"Out of the strong came forth sweetness."
(MAN AND WOMAN SING GENTLY)
Donatello paid an even more direct tribute
to the antique concept of beauty,
in his bronze David.
The body is almost disturbingly physical,
and the head is derived from that of the
great male beauty of the ancient world,
the Emperor Hadrian's beloved Antinous,
although with a sharper Florentine accent
that makes it far more attractive.
Donatello's David
stands in the hall of Bargello,
once a court of justice and a prison,
now a museum
but still quite a good place to get
the flavour of 15th-century Florence,
because it not only contains great works
of the Florentine imagination,
like the David, but also
the portraits of famous Florentines.
There were a few likenesses of individuals
in the 14th century -
Dante, Petrarch, Charles V of France,
Jean de Berry -
but they were exceptional.
As a rule, medieval people
were presented to the eye
as figures that symbolised their status.
The painter of the Spanish Chapel,
Santa Maria Novella,
although he included
so much lively detail,
made his popes, kings and bishops
into stereotypes.
Their status would have been recognised
all over the Gothic world.
But these proudly individual characters
wished to record for posterity
exactly what they were like.
In fact, many of these busts
are done from actual death masks,
which even great artists like Donatello
didn't hesitate
to incorporate in their work.
Of course, this bronze relief
isn't at all a death mask.
It's the self-portrait of that character
who so often flits in and out
of the programme,
the architect and universal man,
Leon Battista Alberti.
What a face!
Proud and alert, like a wilful,
intelligent racehorse.
Among other things,
Alberti wrote an autobiography,
and as we should expect,
he is not inhibited by false modesty.
He tells us how the strongest horses
trembled under him,
how he could throw further and jump higher
and work harder than any man.
He describes
how he conquered every weakness,
because,
"A man can do all things if he will."
It could be the motto
of the early Renaissance.
And it's reflected in the heads
of the Renaissance heroes
as they have come down to us
in their memorials,
in Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua.
Of course, these heads
are so much idealised as to be,
in our sense, scarcely portraits at all.
Realistic portraiture,
the use of the accidents
of each individual face
to reveal inner life,
wasn't a Florentine
or even an Italian invention.
It was invented in Flanders
and came to immediate perfection
in the work of Jan van Eyck.
No-one has looked at the human face
with a more dispassionate eye
and recorded his findings
with a more delicate hand.
But in fact,
many of his sitters were Italians.
Albergati, the Cardinal,
who employed Alberti as secretary.
And Arnolfini, a member of
the international world of the wool trade,
banking, papal diplomacy.
And perhaps it was only in such a society
that these evolved and subtle characters
could have accepted
the revelation of their personalities.
Van Eyck's exploration of personality
extended beyond the face.
He shows people in their setting
and lovingly records the details
of Arnolfini's daily life.
His wooden pattens for walking
the muddy streets of Bruges,
his little dog of nameless breed...
...his wife's elaborate sleeve...
...his own fur-lined cloak...
...and convex mirror...
and above all,
his splendid brass chandelier.
And by a miracle
that defies the laws of art history,
he was able to show them to us
enveloped in daylight,
as real as if it had been observed
by Vermeer of Delft.
This sensibility to atmosphere
the Florentines never attempted.
They were a sculpture-minded people.
But in their portrait busts, they came
to achieve an almost Flemish realism.
How like these Florentine worthies are
to the confident faces
that we see in Victorian photographs.
This is the professional man, a doctor,
his faced lined
with the wisdom of experience.
In fact, he was Donatello's doctor
and saved his life.
This is a businessman
called Pietro Mellini.
A character in one
of Alberti's dialogues says,
"A man cannot set his hand
to more liberal work than making money
"for what we sell is our labour,
the goods are merely transferred.”
Yes, that was really written in 1434,
not in 1850.
And, contrariwise, if you dressed Mellini
in 19th-century clothes,
he would look perfectly convincing.
But this atmosphere of liberal materialism
is less than half the story.
After the middle of the 15th century,
the intellectual life of Florence
took a new direction
very different from the robust
civic humanism of the 1430s.
Florence had ceased to be a republic
in anything but name
and for almost 30 years, it was virtually
ruled by that extraordinary character,
Lorenzo de' Medici.
His father and grandfather
had prepared the way for him
by their activities as bankers.
He himself was no financier - he lost
a great part of the family fortune.
But he was a politician of genius
who could distinguish between the reality
of power and its outward trappings.
The frontispiece of his book of poems
shows him in the streets of Florence
dressed as a simple citizen, surrounded
by girls who are singing his ballads.
What a contrast is this modest
printed page
to the rich manuscripts
of the Duke of Berry.
In fact, Lorenzo was a good poet and
a most admirable patron of other poets,
also of scholars and philosophers, but he
wasn't much interested in the visual arts,
and the paintings by which his period
is remembered
were commissioned
by his cousin, Lorenzino.
And it was for Lorenzino
that Botticelli painted the works
in which the Florentine
sense of beauty appears
in its most evolved and peculiar form -
The Spring and The Birth Of Venus.
In the earlier of them, The Spring,
the subject is derived from Ovid,
but this classical inspiration
is given a new complexity
by memories of the Middle Ages.
The pagan divinities sway
before a background of leaves,
like a Gothic tapestry.
What a marvellous feat of the imagination.
As for the heads,
they are a discovery of beauty
that means much more to us
than the full, smooth oval of antiquity.
(# FRANCESCO LANDINI: Ecca La Primavera)
The subject of Botticelli's other great
allegory, The Birth Of Venus,
is taken from a contemporary poet,
Poliziano.
Poliziano was part of a group
of subtle Florentines
who were inspired
by the late Greek philosophers,
known as Neo-Platonists.
It was their hope
they might reconcile these pagan
philosophers with Christianity.
And so, Botticelli's Venus, not at all
the amorous strumpet of paganism,
is pale and withdrawn,
and dissolves into his image
of the Virgin Mary.
The discovery of the individual
was made in early 15th-century Florence.
Nothing can alter that fact.
But in the last quarter of the century,
the Renaissance owed quite as much
to the small courts of Northern Italy -
Ferrara, Mantua and, above all, Urbino,
this small and remote town
on the eastern perimeter of the Apennines.
It could be argued
that life in the court of Urbino
was one of the high-water marks
of Western civilisation.
The reason is that this court
and its dominions
were protected from
the surrounding ruffians
by Federico Montefeltro,
the first Duke of Urbino,
the greatest general of his day,
who was also a humane and intelligent man.
And the town itself,
with its soft, pink bricks,
so different
from the harsh stones of Florence,
seems to reflect
the same feeling of humanity.
It's small enough for a good ruler
to know all the inhabitants
and listen to their troubles.
Which, in fact, is exactly
what the Duke Federico did.
His palace began as a fortress
built on impregnable rock,
and only when he'd fought his way
to security
could he afford to give it
the sweet and delicate details
which make it one of the most beautiful
pieces of architecture in the world.
The Palace of Urbino
has a style of its own.
The arcaded courtyard,
where I'm standing now,
isn't speedy and springy,
like Brunellesco's cloister,
but calm and timeless,
and the rooms are light and airy
and so perfectly proportioned that
it exhilarates one to walk through them.
In fact, I think the interior
is the most beautiful in the world
and the only palace that I can go round
without feeling oppressed and exhausted.
(# LUPUS: Se Me Grato)
Curiously enough,
we don't know the name of the architect
who's responsible for this masterpiece.
A famous fortress-builder named Laurana
did the substructure,
but he left Urbino long before
the lived-in part of the palace was begun.
But the painter Piero delta Francesca
was there
at exactly the date
when it was being decorated,
and personally, I believe that
he was responsible for its style.
The architecture in this picture
by Piero, which is in Urbino,
shows exactly the same kind
of delicate detail
that one finds round the doors
and windows of the Palace
and it was painted,
what, ten years earlier.
However, I think that the noble
proportions and the whole sense of space
must reflect the character
of the Duke himself.
His biographer,
named Vespasiano da Bisticci,
refers again and again
to the Duke's humanity.
He asked the Duke
what is necessary in ruling a kingdom.
The Duke replied,
"Essere umano" - to be human.
Whoever invented the style,
this is the spirit that permeates
the Palace of Urbino.
As a part of civilisation,
the Palace of Urbino
extended beyond the 15th century.
The great architect
of the High Renaissance, Bramante,
was a native of Urbino.
He may even have worked on the Palace
when it was being completed.
The court painter was a silly old creature
named Giovanni Santi,
the sort of obliging mediocrity
who was always welcome in courts,
even in the court of Urbino.
No doubt the ladies, when they were
in need of a design for embroidery,
used to say,
"Let's send for dear old Mr Santi."
And when he came, he brought with him
his beautiful little son,
Raffaello.
And so, Raphael, one of the civilising
forces of the Western imagination,
found his earliest impressions
of harmony and proportion
and good manners in the court of Urbino.
Good manners -
that was another product of Urbino.
In common with other Italian courts -
Ferrara and Mantua -
young men went there
to finish their education.
They learned to read the classics,
to walk gracefully,
speak quietly, play games without cheating
or kicking each other on the shins -
in short, to behave like gentlemen.
Under Federico's son
and successor, Guidobaldo,
the notion of a gentleman
was given classic expression
in a book called Il Cortegiano,
The Courtier, by Baldassare Castiglione.
It had an immense influence.
The Emperor Charles V
had only three books beside his bed -
the Bible , Machiavelli's Prince
and Castiglione's Courtier.
For over a hundred years, it formed
everybody's notion of good manners.
Actually, it's very much more
than a handbook of polite behaviour,
because Castiglione's ideal of a gentleman
is based on real human values.
He mustn't hurt people's feelings
or make them feel inferior by showing off.
He must be easy and natural,
just as Castiglione himself appears to be
in his portrait by Raphael.
And he mustn't be a mere worldling.
The Cortegiano ends with a moving
discourse on the subject of love.
Just as Botticelli's Spring
unites the tapestry world
of the Middle Ages with pagan mythology,
so Castiglione's Courtier unites
the medieval concept of chivalry
with the ideal love of Plato.
(LIVELY RENAISSANCE MUSIC)
There is no doubt
that the Court of Urbino,
under both Federico and Guidobaldo,
was a high point
in the history of civilisation.
And the same is true, in a lesser degree,
of the Court of Mantua.
The Palace of Mantua lacks
the exhilarating lightness and lucidity
of the Palace of Urbino.
But it contains one room in which -
more than anywhere else, perhaps -
one can get an idea of civilised life
in an Italian court.
It's the room decorated
by the court painter Andrea Mantegna.
(GENTLE COURTLY MUSIC)
Birds and cherubs and people
look down from an imaginary hole
in the roof -
a new use of perspective.
Then come painted busts of Roman emperors.
But the scene below
isn't at all archaeological.
It shows the Gonzaga family
as large as life.
Also their dogs...
...their courtiers,
their old retainers...
and one of their celebrated dwarfs.
In spite of the formidable frontality
of the Marchioness,
the spirit of the whole group
is extremely natural.
The little girl asks
if she may eat an apple,
but her mother is interested to know
what news
the Marquess has just received
from his secretary.
In fact, it is good news.
Their son has been made a Cardinal.
And in another scene,
the Marquess goes to greet him
accompanied by his dogs
and his younger sons.
What an agreeably informal reception!
One of the younger children
holds his hand,
and the little boy
takes the hand of his older brother.
It's a still without the odious pomposity
that was to grow up in Europe
during the next century
and reach its zenith at Versailles.
I'm bound to say that even Mantegna
has not been able
to make the newly created cardinal
look like a very spiritual type.
Which reminds one of the obvious fact
that this kind of social organisation
depended entirely
on the individual characters
of the rulers.
In one state is Sigismondo Malatesta,
the Wolf of Rimini,
who did things that even
the most advanced theatrical producer
would hesitate to put on the stage.
In a neighbouring state,
Federico Montefeltro,
the God-fearing father of his people.
And yet both of them employed Alberti
and both were painted
by Piero delta Francesca.
Federico was a lover of books
who made the Palace of Urbino
into one of the finest libraries in Italy.
But when he read them,
he left his armour on, and he needed to.
This was one of the weaknesses
of Renaissance civilisation.
And the other, no less obviously,
was that it depended
on a very small minority.
Even in republican Florence, the
Renaissance touched relatively few people.
And in places like Urbino and Mantua,
it was practically confined to the Court.
This is contrary
to our modern sense of equality.
But one can't help wondering
how far civilisation would have evolved
if it had been entirely dependent
on the popular will.
WB Yeats actually used
the example of Urbino
when he addressed a poem
to "A wealthy man who promised
a subscription
"to the Dublin Gallery if it were proved
that the people wanted pictures.”
He said,
"And Guidobaldo, when he made
That mirror-school of courtesy
"Where wit and beauty learnt their trade
"Upon Urbino's windy hill,
"Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherd's will."
One may not like courts -
I don't much like them myself -
but at a certain stage,
it's only in a court
that a man may do something
extravagant for its own sake,
because he wants to,
because it seems worth doing.
Something like the extraordinary
wooden inlays in this study.
And it's sometimes through
such wilful, superfluous actions
that men discover their powers.
All the same, as one walks through
these splendidly extravagant rooms,
one can't help thinking -
what about the people in the fields
or those shepherds who Mr Yeats rightly
supposed that Guidobaldo did not consult
on matters of taste and good manners.
Could they not have had
a kind of civilisation of their own?
Well, there is such a thing
as a civilised countryside.
Looking at the Umbrian landscape
with its terraces of vines and olives
and the dark vertical accents
of the cypresses,
one has the impression of timeless order.
There must have been a time
when it was all forest and swamp,
shapeless, formless.
And to bring order out of chaos
is a process of civilisation.
But of this timeless, rustic civilisation,
we have no record
beyond the farmhouses themselves,
whose noble proportions seem
to be the basis of Italian architecture.
And when Renaissance artists
looked at the countryside,
it was not as a place of ploughing
and digging
but as a kind of earthly paradise.
This is how it appears in the first
evolved landscape in European painting -
the background of van Eyck's
Adoration Of The Lamb.
The foreground is painted
with medieval sharpness of detail,
but our eye, passing over the towers
and dense greenery of laurels and palms,
floats into a gleaming distance.
(# JOSQUIN DES PREZ:
La Déploration De Johan Okeghem)
Already, awareness of nature
is associated with the desire to escape
and the hope of a better life.
And such it remained in the work
of Giovanni Bellini,
the founder of Venetian painting,
who first used his backgrounds
to create a mood
in which the action or story
of the picture can be more vividly felt.
Bellini was a religious painter.
His landscapes intensified
the traditional subjects of Christianity.
His pupil, Giorgione,
was to extend the humanisation
of landscape to contemporary life.
And in this picture he has discovered,
or I suppose one should say rediscovered,
one of the comforting illusions
of civilised man -
the myth of Arcadia.
Of course, it is only a myth.
Country life isn't at all like this.
Even on a picnic,
ants attack the sandwiches,
and wasps buzz round the wine glass.
But Giorgione has shown us
how fundamentally pagan it is.
This Arcadia is as much a tribute
to antiquity
as were the republican virtues
of the Florentine humanists
and as much part of the rediscovery
of man,
but in his sensual
rather than his intellectual nature.
With Giorgione's picnic, the balance
and enjoyment of our human faculties
seems to achieve perfection.
But in history, all points of supposed
perfection have a hint of menace.
And Giorgione himself discovers it
in that mysterious picture,
known as the Tempesta.
What on earth is going on?
What is the meaning of this
half-naked woman suckling a baby,
this flash of lightning,
this broken column?
Nobody knows.
Nobody has ever known.
It was described in Giorgione's own time
as "a soldier and a gypsy".
Well, whatever it means,
it certainly doesn't show any confidence
in the light of human reason.
"A man can do all things if he will."
How naive Alberti's statement seems
when one thinks of
that great bundle of fears and memories
that every individual carries around
with him,
to say nothing of the external forces
which are totally beyond his control.
Giorgione, the passionate lover
of physical beauty,
painted this picture of an old woman
and inscribed it Col Tempo - With Time.
One can see that she must once
have been a beauty.
It's one of the first masterpieces
of a new pessimism.
New, because
without the comfort of religion,
that was to be given
final expression by Hamlet.
The truth is, I suppose,
that the civilisation of the early
Renaissance was not broadly enough based.
The few had gone too far away
from the many,
not only in knowledge and intelligence -
this they always do -
but in basic assumptions.
When the first two generations
of humanists were dead,
their movement
had no real weight behind it.
And there was a reaction,
away from the human scale of values.
Fortunately, they left in sculpture,
painting and architecture
their message to every generation
that values reason, clarity
and harmonious proportion
and believes in the individual.
The men who made Florence
the richest city in Europe,
the bankers and wool merchants,
the pious realists,
lived in grim, defensive houses,
strong enough to withstand
party feuds and popular riots.
They don't in any way foreshadow
the extraordinary episode
in the history of civilisation
known as the Renaissance.
There seems to be no reason why,
suddenly, out of the dark streets
and forbidding stone facades,
there arose a building as light
and delicate as the Pazzi Chapel.
By its rhythms and proportions,
and its open, welcoming character
it totally contradicts the dark
Gothic style that preceded it
and, to some extent, still surrounds it.
What has happened?
The answer is contained in one sentence
by the old Greek philosopher, Protagoras.
"Man is the measure of all things."
The building in front of which
I am standing, the Pazzi Chapel,
built in about 1430
by the great architect Brunellesco,
has rightly been described
as "the architecture of humanism".
His friend and fellow architect,
Leon Battista Alberti,
addressed man in these words -
"To you is given a body
more graceful than other animals.
"To you power of apt
and various movements.
"To you most sharp and delicate senses.
"To you wit, reason, memory,
like an immortal god."”
Well, it's certainly incorrect to say that
we are more graceful than other animals
and we don't feel much like
immortal gods at the moment.
But in 1400, the Florentines did.
There's no better instance
of how a burst of civilisation
depends on confidence
than the Florentine state of mind
in the early 15th century.
MAN: # Gloria
# In excelsis Deo... #
(CHOIR SINGS)
Where did it come from,
this light, economical style,
which is unlike anything before or since?
I think that it really was the invention
of an individual, of Brunellesco.
But of course,
an architectural style can't take root
unless it satisfies some need of the time,
and Brunellesco's style satisfied the need
of the clear-headed, bright-minded men
who appeared on the Florentine scene
at the moment when the discipline
of trade and banking,
in its most austere form,
was beginning to be relaxed,
and life -
full use of the human faculties -
became more important than making money.
People sometimes feel disappointed
the first time they see the famous
beginnings of Renaissance architecture -
the Pazzi Chapel,
the old Sacristy of San Lorenzo -
because they seem so small.
Well, so they are,
after the great monuments
of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
They don't try to impress us
or crush us by size and weight,
as all God-directed architecture does.
Everything is adjusted to the scale
of reasonable human necessity.
They are intended to make each individual
more conscious of his powers
as a complete moral
and intellectual being.
(CHORAL SINGING CONTINUES)
"The dignity of man.”
Today those words die on our lips.
But in 15th-century Florence, their
meaning was still fresh and invigorating.
One of the second generation
of humanists, named Manetti,
wrote a book entitled
On The Dignity And Excellence Of Man.
And this is the concept that
Brunellesco's friends were making visible.
The grandest of all these testimonies
to the dignity of man is by Masaccio,
in the series of frescoes he painted
in the church of the Carmine.
Two of them represent the Apostles
Peter and Paul performing acts of mercy.
As St Peter moves gravely through
the streets, his shadow cures the sick,
including this noble old man,
more like a bishop than a beggar.
And in the balancing fresco, Peter and
his disciples gives alms to a poor woman
who is one of the greatest
sculptural creations in painting.
What characters they are -
morally and intellectually men of weight.
The least frivolous of men.
Infinitely remote from the gay courtiers
of Jean de Berry
who were only 30 years older.
They have that air of contained vitality
and confidence
that one often finds
in the founding fathers of a civilisation.
Those that come first to my mind are
the Egyptians of the first four dynasties.
The most famous group in the series
represents the story of the tribute money,
and the heads of the apostles
seem to reflect the high seriousness
of the Florentine republic.
It was directed by a group
of the most intelligent individuals
who have ever been elected to power
by a democratic government.
The Florentine chancellors were scholars,
believers in the studia humanitatis,
in which learning could be used
to achieve a happy life,
believers in the application
of free intelligence to public affairs,
believers, above all, in Florence.
The second, and greatest, of these
humanist chancellors, Leonardo Bruni,
compared the civic virtues of republican
Florence with those of republican Rome.
Later, he went even further
and compared her to Athens
in the age of Pericles,
which wasn't far wrong.
As I said before,
all the great ages of civilisation
have seen themselves as part of history,
both as heirs and as transmitters.
And on Bruni's tomb in the church
of Santa Croce, are inscribed the words,
"History is in mourning."
Bruni and his friends had derived these
ideas from the authors of Greece and Rome.
Now, much as one would like to say
something new about the Renaissance,
the old belief that it was largely based
on the study of antique literature
remains true.
Of course, the Middle Ages derived
much more from classical antiquity
than used to be supposed.
But their sources were limited,
their texts corrupt
and their interpretations often fanciful.
Almost the first man to read
classical authors with real insight
was the poet Petrarch,
that complex figure of the 14th century,
that false dawn of humanism,
whose love of opposites, of fame
and solitude, of nature and politics,
of rhetoric and self-revelation,
makes us think of him
as the first modern man,
until we begin to read his works.
Petrarch never learnt Greek.
But his younger contemporary,
Boccaccio, did.
And so there entered into Florentine
thought a new regenerative force
and a new example.
The first 30 years of the 15th century
was the heroic age of scholarship
when unknown works
by the greatest writers of antiquity -
Tacitus, Plato, Cicero
and a dozen others -
were discovered in monastic libraries
where they had lain
since they were copied in the Dark Ages.
And it was to house these precious texts,
any one of which
might contain some new revelation,
that Cosimo de' Medici
built the library of San Marco.
It looks to us peaceful and remote,
but the first studies that took place
there were not remote from life at all.
It was the humanist equivalent
of the Cavendish Laboratory.
The manuscripts unpacked and studied
under these harmonious vaults
could alter the course of history
with an explosion, not of matter
but of mind.
Next to the Pazzi Chapel
are the cloisters of Santa Croce,
also built by Brunellesco
some years later.
I said that the Gothic cathedrals
were hymns to divine light.
These cloisters, with their round arches,
"running races in their mirth",
happily celebrate the light
of human intelligence.
And sitting in them,
I find it quite easy to believe in man.
(CHORAL SINGING)
When I first came here, nearly 50 years
ago, I felt, this is my true centre.
Well, twice it seemed that they were lost.
Once at the end of the German occupation,
and once when the floods came
and there were fish swimming
where my feet are in the ambulatory.
But so far, the forces of destruction
have been defeated.
Clarity, economy, elegance.
These are the qualities that give
distinction to a mathematical theorem.
And, no doubt,
early Renaissance architecture
is based on a passion for mathematics,
particularly for geometry.
Of course, Gothic architects
had designed on a geometrical basis,
but it had been of immense complexity,
as elaborate and as logical
as scholastic philosophy.
Nothing could be more geometrical
than the Florentine Baptistery,
which is one of the earliest buildings
in the city.
But the Renaissance
added to this tradition of design
all sorts of philosophical notions,
including the idea that these forms
must be applicable to the human body,
that each, so to say,
guaranteed the perfection of the other.
There are dozens
of drawings and engravings
to demonstrate this proposition,
of which the most famous
is by Leonardo da Vinci.
Mathematically,
I'm afraid it's really a cheat,
but aesthetically it has some meaning,
because the symmetry of the human body,
and the relation
of one part of it to another,
do influence our sense
of normal proportion.
And, philosophically,
it contains the germ of an idea
which might save us,
if we could really believe it,
that through proportion, we can reconcile
the two parts of our being,
the physical and the intellectual.
The same approach was applied to painting
in the system known as perspective,
by which it was thought that,
by mathematical calculation,
one could render on a flat surface
the precise position of a figure in space.
This too seems to have been invented
by Brunellesco.
But we can see it best in the works of
his two friends, Ghiberti and Donatello,
whose low-relief sculpture
is really a kind of painting.
Ghiberti's Jacob And Esau
on the famous Baptistery doors
shows perspective used to achieve
a spatial harmony
that has almost a musical effect.
Donatello's relief of St Anthony of Padua
curing a boy's leg
shows the other use of perspective -
to heighten emotion
by a more intense awareness of space.
I don't know why, I always feel
there's something alarming
about an empty amphitheatre,
which suits the drama
of this particular subject.
The Florentines were extremely proud
of this invention,
which they thought - wrongly, as it
turned out - was unknown to antiquity.
But has it anything
to do with civilisation?
When it was first invented,
I think it had.
The belief that one could represent man
in a real setting
and calculate his position
and arrange figures
in a demonstrably harmonious order.
This belief expressed, symbolically,
a new idea about man's place
in the scheme of things
and man's control over his own destiny.
As an aid to realism,
perspective is of no importance -
the realistic painters of Flanders
got on very well without it -
but as a symbol, it means something,
and it's as a symbol
that it passes into the decorative arts
of the early Renaissance,
and one finds it as the principal theme
of those wooden inlays in panelled rooms
or choir stalls, which are a repertoire
of Renaissance symbolism.
Perspective was concerned
with the representation of towns,
if only because it was by the paved floor
and the ceiling arcade
that the system
could be shown to advantage.
In the 15th century, painters
did a number of pictures of ideal towns,
which are both architectural harmonies
and the perfect setting for social man.
Alberti describes in his great book
on building
the necessity of a public square
where young men may be diverted
from the mischievousness and folly
natural to their age.
And under handsome porticoes,
old men may spend the heat of the day
and be mutually serviceable
to one another.
I think that Piero delta Francesca,
who derived so much from Alberti,
may well have had this
and similar passages in mind
when he painted this,
the most harmonious of all ideal cities.
The early Florentine Renaissance
was an urban culture
bourgeois, properly so-called.
Men spent their time in the streets
and squares and in the shops.
"A good Florentine,"
says one of their moralists,
"sta sempre a bottega,"”
is always in the shop,
and these shops were completely public.
You can see in this engraving
how a craftsman's workshop
was open to the street
so that passers-by
could see what was being done
and rival artists make scathing comments.
The Renaissance historian of art, Vasari,
when he asked himself
why it was in Florence more than elsewhere
that men became perfect in the arts,
gave as his first answer,
"The spirit of criticism,
"the air of Florence
making minds naturally free
"and not content with mediocrity."
And this harsh, outspoken criticism
meant that there was no gap
of incomprehension
between the intelligent patron
and the artist.
Our contemporary attitude of
pretending to understand works of art
in order not to appear Philistines
would have seemed absurd
to the Florentines.
They were a tough lot.
Many since Bruni in 1428
have compared them with the Athenians,
but the Florentines were more realistic.
Whereas the Athenians
loved philosophical argument,
the Florentines were chiefly interested
in making money
and playing appalling
practical jokes on stupid men.
However, they had a good deal in common
with the Greeks.
They were curious,
they were extremely intelligent
and they had, to a supreme degree, the
power of making their thoughts visible.
I hesitate to pronounce
the much abused word "beauty”,
but I can't think of a substitute.
Like the Athenians,
the Florentines loved beauty.
This is a constant source of surprise
to anyone who knows them.
But as Walter Pater says of Michelangelo,
"Out of the strong came forth sweetness."
(MAN AND WOMAN SING GENTLY)
Donatello paid an even more direct tribute
to the antique concept of beauty,
in his bronze David.
The body is almost disturbingly physical,
and the head is derived from that of the
great male beauty of the ancient world,
the Emperor Hadrian's beloved Antinous,
although with a sharper Florentine accent
that makes it far more attractive.
Donatello's David
stands in the hall of Bargello,
once a court of justice and a prison,
now a museum
but still quite a good place to get
the flavour of 15th-century Florence,
because it not only contains great works
of the Florentine imagination,
like the David, but also
the portraits of famous Florentines.
There were a few likenesses of individuals
in the 14th century -
Dante, Petrarch, Charles V of France,
Jean de Berry -
but they were exceptional.
As a rule, medieval people
were presented to the eye
as figures that symbolised their status.
The painter of the Spanish Chapel,
Santa Maria Novella,
although he included
so much lively detail,
made his popes, kings and bishops
into stereotypes.
Their status would have been recognised
all over the Gothic world.
But these proudly individual characters
wished to record for posterity
exactly what they were like.
In fact, many of these busts
are done from actual death masks,
which even great artists like Donatello
didn't hesitate
to incorporate in their work.
Of course, this bronze relief
isn't at all a death mask.
It's the self-portrait of that character
who so often flits in and out
of the programme,
the architect and universal man,
Leon Battista Alberti.
What a face!
Proud and alert, like a wilful,
intelligent racehorse.
Among other things,
Alberti wrote an autobiography,
and as we should expect,
he is not inhibited by false modesty.
He tells us how the strongest horses
trembled under him,
how he could throw further and jump higher
and work harder than any man.
He describes
how he conquered every weakness,
because,
"A man can do all things if he will."
It could be the motto
of the early Renaissance.
And it's reflected in the heads
of the Renaissance heroes
as they have come down to us
in their memorials,
in Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua.
Of course, these heads
are so much idealised as to be,
in our sense, scarcely portraits at all.
Realistic portraiture,
the use of the accidents
of each individual face
to reveal inner life,
wasn't a Florentine
or even an Italian invention.
It was invented in Flanders
and came to immediate perfection
in the work of Jan van Eyck.
No-one has looked at the human face
with a more dispassionate eye
and recorded his findings
with a more delicate hand.
But in fact,
many of his sitters were Italians.
Albergati, the Cardinal,
who employed Alberti as secretary.
And Arnolfini, a member of
the international world of the wool trade,
banking, papal diplomacy.
And perhaps it was only in such a society
that these evolved and subtle characters
could have accepted
the revelation of their personalities.
Van Eyck's exploration of personality
extended beyond the face.
He shows people in their setting
and lovingly records the details
of Arnolfini's daily life.
His wooden pattens for walking
the muddy streets of Bruges,
his little dog of nameless breed...
...his wife's elaborate sleeve...
...his own fur-lined cloak...
...and convex mirror...
and above all,
his splendid brass chandelier.
And by a miracle
that defies the laws of art history,
he was able to show them to us
enveloped in daylight,
as real as if it had been observed
by Vermeer of Delft.
This sensibility to atmosphere
the Florentines never attempted.
They were a sculpture-minded people.
But in their portrait busts, they came
to achieve an almost Flemish realism.
How like these Florentine worthies are
to the confident faces
that we see in Victorian photographs.
This is the professional man, a doctor,
his faced lined
with the wisdom of experience.
In fact, he was Donatello's doctor
and saved his life.
This is a businessman
called Pietro Mellini.
A character in one
of Alberti's dialogues says,
"A man cannot set his hand
to more liberal work than making money
"for what we sell is our labour,
the goods are merely transferred.”
Yes, that was really written in 1434,
not in 1850.
And, contrariwise, if you dressed Mellini
in 19th-century clothes,
he would look perfectly convincing.
But this atmosphere of liberal materialism
is less than half the story.
After the middle of the 15th century,
the intellectual life of Florence
took a new direction
very different from the robust
civic humanism of the 1430s.
Florence had ceased to be a republic
in anything but name
and for almost 30 years, it was virtually
ruled by that extraordinary character,
Lorenzo de' Medici.
His father and grandfather
had prepared the way for him
by their activities as bankers.
He himself was no financier - he lost
a great part of the family fortune.
But he was a politician of genius
who could distinguish between the reality
of power and its outward trappings.
The frontispiece of his book of poems
shows him in the streets of Florence
dressed as a simple citizen, surrounded
by girls who are singing his ballads.
What a contrast is this modest
printed page
to the rich manuscripts
of the Duke of Berry.
In fact, Lorenzo was a good poet and
a most admirable patron of other poets,
also of scholars and philosophers, but he
wasn't much interested in the visual arts,
and the paintings by which his period
is remembered
were commissioned
by his cousin, Lorenzino.
And it was for Lorenzino
that Botticelli painted the works
in which the Florentine
sense of beauty appears
in its most evolved and peculiar form -
The Spring and The Birth Of Venus.
In the earlier of them, The Spring,
the subject is derived from Ovid,
but this classical inspiration
is given a new complexity
by memories of the Middle Ages.
The pagan divinities sway
before a background of leaves,
like a Gothic tapestry.
What a marvellous feat of the imagination.
As for the heads,
they are a discovery of beauty
that means much more to us
than the full, smooth oval of antiquity.
(# FRANCESCO LANDINI: Ecca La Primavera)
The subject of Botticelli's other great
allegory, The Birth Of Venus,
is taken from a contemporary poet,
Poliziano.
Poliziano was part of a group
of subtle Florentines
who were inspired
by the late Greek philosophers,
known as Neo-Platonists.
It was their hope
they might reconcile these pagan
philosophers with Christianity.
And so, Botticelli's Venus, not at all
the amorous strumpet of paganism,
is pale and withdrawn,
and dissolves into his image
of the Virgin Mary.
The discovery of the individual
was made in early 15th-century Florence.
Nothing can alter that fact.
But in the last quarter of the century,
the Renaissance owed quite as much
to the small courts of Northern Italy -
Ferrara, Mantua and, above all, Urbino,
this small and remote town
on the eastern perimeter of the Apennines.
It could be argued
that life in the court of Urbino
was one of the high-water marks
of Western civilisation.
The reason is that this court
and its dominions
were protected from
the surrounding ruffians
by Federico Montefeltro,
the first Duke of Urbino,
the greatest general of his day,
who was also a humane and intelligent man.
And the town itself,
with its soft, pink bricks,
so different
from the harsh stones of Florence,
seems to reflect
the same feeling of humanity.
It's small enough for a good ruler
to know all the inhabitants
and listen to their troubles.
Which, in fact, is exactly
what the Duke Federico did.
His palace began as a fortress
built on impregnable rock,
and only when he'd fought his way
to security
could he afford to give it
the sweet and delicate details
which make it one of the most beautiful
pieces of architecture in the world.
The Palace of Urbino
has a style of its own.
The arcaded courtyard,
where I'm standing now,
isn't speedy and springy,
like Brunellesco's cloister,
but calm and timeless,
and the rooms are light and airy
and so perfectly proportioned that
it exhilarates one to walk through them.
In fact, I think the interior
is the most beautiful in the world
and the only palace that I can go round
without feeling oppressed and exhausted.
(# LUPUS: Se Me Grato)
Curiously enough,
we don't know the name of the architect
who's responsible for this masterpiece.
A famous fortress-builder named Laurana
did the substructure,
but he left Urbino long before
the lived-in part of the palace was begun.
But the painter Piero delta Francesca
was there
at exactly the date
when it was being decorated,
and personally, I believe that
he was responsible for its style.
The architecture in this picture
by Piero, which is in Urbino,
shows exactly the same kind
of delicate detail
that one finds round the doors
and windows of the Palace
and it was painted,
what, ten years earlier.
However, I think that the noble
proportions and the whole sense of space
must reflect the character
of the Duke himself.
His biographer,
named Vespasiano da Bisticci,
refers again and again
to the Duke's humanity.
He asked the Duke
what is necessary in ruling a kingdom.
The Duke replied,
"Essere umano" - to be human.
Whoever invented the style,
this is the spirit that permeates
the Palace of Urbino.
As a part of civilisation,
the Palace of Urbino
extended beyond the 15th century.
The great architect
of the High Renaissance, Bramante,
was a native of Urbino.
He may even have worked on the Palace
when it was being completed.
The court painter was a silly old creature
named Giovanni Santi,
the sort of obliging mediocrity
who was always welcome in courts,
even in the court of Urbino.
No doubt the ladies, when they were
in need of a design for embroidery,
used to say,
"Let's send for dear old Mr Santi."
And when he came, he brought with him
his beautiful little son,
Raffaello.
And so, Raphael, one of the civilising
forces of the Western imagination,
found his earliest impressions
of harmony and proportion
and good manners in the court of Urbino.
Good manners -
that was another product of Urbino.
In common with other Italian courts -
Ferrara and Mantua -
young men went there
to finish their education.
They learned to read the classics,
to walk gracefully,
speak quietly, play games without cheating
or kicking each other on the shins -
in short, to behave like gentlemen.
Under Federico's son
and successor, Guidobaldo,
the notion of a gentleman
was given classic expression
in a book called Il Cortegiano,
The Courtier, by Baldassare Castiglione.
It had an immense influence.
The Emperor Charles V
had only three books beside his bed -
the Bible , Machiavelli's Prince
and Castiglione's Courtier.
For over a hundred years, it formed
everybody's notion of good manners.
Actually, it's very much more
than a handbook of polite behaviour,
because Castiglione's ideal of a gentleman
is based on real human values.
He mustn't hurt people's feelings
or make them feel inferior by showing off.
He must be easy and natural,
just as Castiglione himself appears to be
in his portrait by Raphael.
And he mustn't be a mere worldling.
The Cortegiano ends with a moving
discourse on the subject of love.
Just as Botticelli's Spring
unites the tapestry world
of the Middle Ages with pagan mythology,
so Castiglione's Courtier unites
the medieval concept of chivalry
with the ideal love of Plato.
(LIVELY RENAISSANCE MUSIC)
There is no doubt
that the Court of Urbino,
under both Federico and Guidobaldo,
was a high point
in the history of civilisation.
And the same is true, in a lesser degree,
of the Court of Mantua.
The Palace of Mantua lacks
the exhilarating lightness and lucidity
of the Palace of Urbino.
But it contains one room in which -
more than anywhere else, perhaps -
one can get an idea of civilised life
in an Italian court.
It's the room decorated
by the court painter Andrea Mantegna.
(GENTLE COURTLY MUSIC)
Birds and cherubs and people
look down from an imaginary hole
in the roof -
a new use of perspective.
Then come painted busts of Roman emperors.
But the scene below
isn't at all archaeological.
It shows the Gonzaga family
as large as life.
Also their dogs...
...their courtiers,
their old retainers...
and one of their celebrated dwarfs.
In spite of the formidable frontality
of the Marchioness,
the spirit of the whole group
is extremely natural.
The little girl asks
if she may eat an apple,
but her mother is interested to know
what news
the Marquess has just received
from his secretary.
In fact, it is good news.
Their son has been made a Cardinal.
And in another scene,
the Marquess goes to greet him
accompanied by his dogs
and his younger sons.
What an agreeably informal reception!
One of the younger children
holds his hand,
and the little boy
takes the hand of his older brother.
It's a still without the odious pomposity
that was to grow up in Europe
during the next century
and reach its zenith at Versailles.
I'm bound to say that even Mantegna
has not been able
to make the newly created cardinal
look like a very spiritual type.
Which reminds one of the obvious fact
that this kind of social organisation
depended entirely
on the individual characters
of the rulers.
In one state is Sigismondo Malatesta,
the Wolf of Rimini,
who did things that even
the most advanced theatrical producer
would hesitate to put on the stage.
In a neighbouring state,
Federico Montefeltro,
the God-fearing father of his people.
And yet both of them employed Alberti
and both were painted
by Piero delta Francesca.
Federico was a lover of books
who made the Palace of Urbino
into one of the finest libraries in Italy.
But when he read them,
he left his armour on, and he needed to.
This was one of the weaknesses
of Renaissance civilisation.
And the other, no less obviously,
was that it depended
on a very small minority.
Even in republican Florence, the
Renaissance touched relatively few people.
And in places like Urbino and Mantua,
it was practically confined to the Court.
This is contrary
to our modern sense of equality.
But one can't help wondering
how far civilisation would have evolved
if it had been entirely dependent
on the popular will.
WB Yeats actually used
the example of Urbino
when he addressed a poem
to "A wealthy man who promised
a subscription
"to the Dublin Gallery if it were proved
that the people wanted pictures.”
He said,
"And Guidobaldo, when he made
That mirror-school of courtesy
"Where wit and beauty learnt their trade
"Upon Urbino's windy hill,
"Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherd's will."
One may not like courts -
I don't much like them myself -
but at a certain stage,
it's only in a court
that a man may do something
extravagant for its own sake,
because he wants to,
because it seems worth doing.
Something like the extraordinary
wooden inlays in this study.
And it's sometimes through
such wilful, superfluous actions
that men discover their powers.
All the same, as one walks through
these splendidly extravagant rooms,
one can't help thinking -
what about the people in the fields
or those shepherds who Mr Yeats rightly
supposed that Guidobaldo did not consult
on matters of taste and good manners.
Could they not have had
a kind of civilisation of their own?
Well, there is such a thing
as a civilised countryside.
Looking at the Umbrian landscape
with its terraces of vines and olives
and the dark vertical accents
of the cypresses,
one has the impression of timeless order.
There must have been a time
when it was all forest and swamp,
shapeless, formless.
And to bring order out of chaos
is a process of civilisation.
But of this timeless, rustic civilisation,
we have no record
beyond the farmhouses themselves,
whose noble proportions seem
to be the basis of Italian architecture.
And when Renaissance artists
looked at the countryside,
it was not as a place of ploughing
and digging
but as a kind of earthly paradise.
This is how it appears in the first
evolved landscape in European painting -
the background of van Eyck's
Adoration Of The Lamb.
The foreground is painted
with medieval sharpness of detail,
but our eye, passing over the towers
and dense greenery of laurels and palms,
floats into a gleaming distance.
(# JOSQUIN DES PREZ:
La Déploration De Johan Okeghem)
Already, awareness of nature
is associated with the desire to escape
and the hope of a better life.
And such it remained in the work
of Giovanni Bellini,
the founder of Venetian painting,
who first used his backgrounds
to create a mood
in which the action or story
of the picture can be more vividly felt.
Bellini was a religious painter.
His landscapes intensified
the traditional subjects of Christianity.
His pupil, Giorgione,
was to extend the humanisation
of landscape to contemporary life.
And in this picture he has discovered,
or I suppose one should say rediscovered,
one of the comforting illusions
of civilised man -
the myth of Arcadia.
Of course, it is only a myth.
Country life isn't at all like this.
Even on a picnic,
ants attack the sandwiches,
and wasps buzz round the wine glass.
But Giorgione has shown us
how fundamentally pagan it is.
This Arcadia is as much a tribute
to antiquity
as were the republican virtues
of the Florentine humanists
and as much part of the rediscovery
of man,
but in his sensual
rather than his intellectual nature.
With Giorgione's picnic, the balance
and enjoyment of our human faculties
seems to achieve perfection.
But in history, all points of supposed
perfection have a hint of menace.
And Giorgione himself discovers it
in that mysterious picture,
known as the Tempesta.
What on earth is going on?
What is the meaning of this
half-naked woman suckling a baby,
this flash of lightning,
this broken column?
Nobody knows.
Nobody has ever known.
It was described in Giorgione's own time
as "a soldier and a gypsy".
Well, whatever it means,
it certainly doesn't show any confidence
in the light of human reason.
"A man can do all things if he will."
How naive Alberti's statement seems
when one thinks of
that great bundle of fears and memories
that every individual carries around
with him,
to say nothing of the external forces
which are totally beyond his control.
Giorgione, the passionate lover
of physical beauty,
painted this picture of an old woman
and inscribed it Col Tempo - With Time.
One can see that she must once
have been a beauty.
It's one of the first masterpieces
of a new pessimism.
New, because
without the comfort of religion,
that was to be given
final expression by Hamlet.
The truth is, I suppose,
that the civilisation of the early
Renaissance was not broadly enough based.
The few had gone too far away
from the many,
not only in knowledge and intelligence -
this they always do -
but in basic assumptions.
When the first two generations
of humanists were dead,
their movement
had no real weight behind it.
And there was a reaction,
away from the human scale of values.
Fortunately, they left in sculpture,
painting and architecture
their message to every generation
that values reason, clarity
and harmonious proportion
and believes in the individual.