Museum Secrets (2011–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Inside the Vatican Museums - full transcript
- [Narrator] Rome.
A city of faith and power.
And at its heart, a museum
with secrets dark and strange.
Tales of barbarous acts of violence,
clashing egos,
and scandalous censorship.
Here, you can uncover
messages from the past,
and reopen dark chapters from history.
(intense music)
Secrets hidden in plain sight,
inside the Vatican museums.
(intense music)
In the middle of Rome, stands the Vatican.
The epicenter of Catholicism.
(dramatic violin music)
It is both a fortified city,
and a place the Pope calls home.
(speaking in foreign language)
It also houses one of the
famous museums in the world,
full of timeless treasures.
Each one with a story to tell.
Of all of these, none are more famous
than the Sistine Chapel.
(wondrous music)
All who enter here gaze up
at the luminous frescoes of Michelangelo.
(wondrous music)
What few people know
is that his masterpiece
was an afterthought.
(wondrous music)
When the chapel was constructed,
the walls were filled
with monumental murals,
but the ceiling was just decorated
with a simple field of stars.
30 years later, Pope Julius II
decided it needed a new paint job.
When he gave the task to Michelangelo,
he took a leap of faith,
because the artist was
not then a famous painter,
but an up and coming
sculptor of the human form.
His transformation of the ceiling,
an area the size of two basketball courts,
would be completed in just four years.
How did a brilliant but
inexperienced painter
complete the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
in such a short time?
500 years later, when Vatican staff
embarked on a restoration project,
they got the chance to
uncover this museum's secrets.
- My name is Maurizio de Luca,
and I'm the director of the restoration
in the Vatican Museum.
I worked there from 43 years.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The restoration
team spent nine years
up onto the ceiling in the 1980s.
It took them twice as
long to clean the ceiling
as it did Michelangelo to paint it.
- The possibility that we put our hand
on the plaster, on the
Michelangelo painting,
allowed us to investigate
more and more his technique.
Fresco painting includes
a series of procedures,
that cannot be seen from a distance.
But since we have gotten close,
so close to the frescoes,
we can clearly see the
evidence of those procedures.
- [Narrator] The largest
figures on the ceiling
are nearly 20 feet across.
Michelangelo did not attempt
to paint them freehand.
Each figure started as
a sketch, or cartoon,
followed by a procedure that art experts
like William Wallace
refer to as "pouncing".
- Pouncing is the means of transferring
the cartoon to the plaster.
So the cartoon has actually been pricked
with little tiny holes,
and the charcoal dust in a bag
is actually pounced or
pounded onto the cartoon.
(wondrous music)
Okay, we see the head,
beautifully pounced,
and the hand, beautifully pounced.
- [Narrator] But pouncing
was a slow process,
and Michelangelo was under
pressure from an aging pope
who wanted to see the ceiling completed
before he died.
So, Michelangelo exchanged
the charcoal for a blade,
allowing him to quickly
incise the lines of the sketch
directly onto the plaster.
- [William] And these are the
kinds of things you can see
all across the ceiling,
when you're looking at it and raking like
Michelangelo's incised marks.
- [Narrator] The artist had good reason
to heed the Pope's demand for speed.
- Unlike our idea of the papacy today,
Pope Julius II, who was
known as the Warrior Pope,
was an extremely active personality,
literally leading the
papal armies into war.
- [Narrator] Michelangelo
may have respected the Pope,
but he was not the type
of man to be intimidated.
- [William] The thing you can say
about Pope Julius and Michelangelo,
they're both megalomaniacs.
- [Narrator] There were
bound to be some clashes
between these titans.
- The Pope wanted constantly to know
when Michelangelo was gonna finish,
and Michelangelo's famous response was,
"When it's done."
At which point, the Pope
actually picked up a stick
and started beating Michelangelo.
"When it's done, when it's done?" He says.
- [Narrator] To get it done,
Michelangelo would endure
far more physical torment
than the occasional
beating from an aging pope.
On a scaffold, 18 hours
a day, seven days a week,
constantly craning his neck up,
paint dripping into his eyes,
no one can say Michelangelo
didn't suffer for art.
In the fourth year of his labor,
he even described it in a poem.
"With my neck puffed out like a pigeon,
"belly hanging like an empty sack,
"beard pointed at the ceiling,
"and my brain fallen
backwards in my head."
Michelangelo kept going because
he was tough and determined.
But that doesn't explain how he could work
on a scaffold just a few
feet from the ceiling
and yet paint figures
in perfect perspective
when seen from far below.
The answer may be, because
he started his career
as a sculptor.
- When Michelangelo
imagines a figure moving,
it's moving inwards, outwards in space,
and therefore it creates
this wonderful perspective.
People ask all the time.
"Is that real, is the architecture real,
"are they sticking out of
the ceiling, are they 3D?"
- [Narrator] If one removes
the frescoes from the ceiling,
Michelangelo's mastery of perspective
becomes even more impressive.
He works magic with his paints,
creating lifelike 3D figures
even when the background
tilts the wrong way.
- Jonah was painted on a piece of plaster
that tilts towards us,
and yet looking at the figure,
Jonah appears to tilt backwards.
It was something that he knew
would fly in the face of all the people
that had criticized him
at the beginning of the assignment saying,
"Oh, but Michelangelo doesn't know
"anything about painting."
Michelangelo denies the laws of physics
through his painting.
It's the same kind of special effect
that people marvel at in
something like "Avatar".
- [Narrator] So, how did Michelangelo
complete his masterpiece
in just four years?
Determination, physical endurance,
and 3D virtuosity are
only part of the answer.
The rest is surely quite simply, genius.
- Michelangelo's more responsible
than any other artist in
the history of the world
for raising the stature of artist.
This is the beginning of an artist
actually establishing his own criteria.
- [Narrator] Every morning,
when the gates open,
thousands of visitors head
straight to the Sistine Chapel,
to stand for a moment
in a place that combines the power of God
and the genius of man.
(inspiring music)
These galleries have always hosted
crowds of curious visitors,
but there was a time when
they came in violence,
clamoring for the Pope's blood.
(intense music)
At first sight, it's easy to forget
that the Vatican Swiss Guards
are highly trained elite mercenaries,
dedicated for the last 500 years
to defend the life of the Pope.
Never was their duty
more tested than in 1527,
during a bloody standoff in Rome.
(mysterious music)
500 years later, the Vatican museums
still bare the scars.
Here in the former papal apartments,
decorated by one of the masters
of the Renaissance, Raphael,
art restorer Paolo
Violini spends every day
cleaning the 500 year old frescoes.
(mysterious music)
- I've been working here in
Rafael room for 15 years,
more or less.
Before the cleaning, we didn't know
the color of the eyes.
Now we can see they are blue.
It's really beautiful.
(wondrous music)
- [Narrator] The discoveries
come in all forms.
- We restored this fresco
more than 10 years ago,
and we found some damages
on the faces of the popes,
and also many graffiti.
One of them, you can see the name, Luther.
- [Narrator] Luther was a German monk,
ex-communicated for challenging
the authority of the Pope.
How did his name end
up incised on a fresco
in the papal apartments?
These frescoes were painted
during the artistic
golden age in the Vatican.
Popes were pouring money
into glorifying the papacy.
Such extravagance is exactly what Luther
and his German Protestant supporters
detested about the church.
Professor Paul Gwynne investigates
this period of history.
- Luther had been to Rome,
and been disgusted of what he'd seen.
He'd spread the word in
his homeland, in Germany,
that Rome needed reform.
- [Narrator] The religious tensions
would come to a head unexpectedly,
when an army of the most
powerful ruler in Europe,
the Holy Roman Emperor, descended on Rome.
- [Paul] In terms of
numbers, we're talking
in the region of 20,000 troops,
swelled by German mercenaries.
- [Narrator] The Commander was
there for political reasons,
but his unruly troops
had other goals in mind,
and quickly took matters
into their own hands.
- [Paul] The attack starts at
four o'clock in the morning.
The assault is done virtually in a mist.
People on the walls can't see them coming.
- [Narrator] This was the first time Rome
had been invaded on
this scale in 500 years.
- Okay, we're in modern Piazza San Pietro,
and of course Saint Peter's and the Pope
were the object of the Imperial troops.
And they were streaming through,
screaming and shouting
for the Pope's blood.
The papal defenders were
shouting back equal obscenities.
Lutherans, sons of whores, et cetera.
Absolute chaos.
Panic sets in, the
Swiss Guard is summoned,
and the Pope prepares to leave.
- [Narrator] The Pope's Swiss Guard
had been trained for moments like this.
But on this day, they are
seriously outnumbered.
- A great battle takes place in which 80%,
three quarters of the Swiss Guard
are cruelly massacred.
They defend the Pope to a man.
This was close, hand to hand combat,
fought with daggers, knives, and swords.
It would've been absolutely
gory, blood everywhere.
- [Narrator] As the Swiss Guard falls,
the Pope manages to
escape down this passage,
to Passetto, which links the Vatican
to a well fortified castle.
- The Pope picked up his skirts,
and ran the length of the Passetto.
The Imperial troops
were lined up down here
waiting for him,
hoping to get a pot shot
as they could spy him through
the narrow arrow chutes.
Now you see him, now you don't.
It must've been something
like a papal duck shoot.
(arrows firing)
- [Narrator] The Pope ended up here,
at Castel Sant'Angelo,
while citizens outside were
being massacred and tortured.
- We hear stories of cardinals
being whipped naked through the streets,
men being forced to eat their
own testicles, for example.
Also, the tombs of the
popes were desecrated,
and their bodies pulled
from their coffins.
What kind of men were responsible
for this brutality?
On the other side of the city,
Paul may have found the answer.
- We are in the luxury suburb and villa
of the papal banker.
We've come here today particularly
to look at the graffiti
that was left on the walls
as the Imperial troops marched through.
1528 is the year.
(speaking in foreign language)
"Why am I who's writing
not allowed to laugh?
"The Landsknecht are the ones who have put
"the Pope, papst, to flight."
The Landsknecht, German mercenaries,
were feared throughout the
15th and 16th centuries
as the crack infantry.
- [Narrator] These much feared troops
had reasons to vandalize the
Raphael rooms in the Vatican.
- The Landsknecht were the
pro-Lutheran sympathizers.
Luther himself had thought
of Rome as a cesspool,
as a place that needed
dramatic reformation,
and the Landsknecht were
out to do it for themselves.
So I think we could make
the case very strongly
that the people who inscribed on the walls
of the Raphael rooms,
and the people who wrote here,
were one in the same.
(eerie music)
- [Narrator] After eight
months under siege,
the Pope paid a ransom for his own life,
and was allowed to escape to safety.
But the sack of Rome had
brutally taken the lives
of 80% of the inhabitants of the city.
Rome wouldn't recover for
the better part of a century.
(mysterious music)
(whimsical music)
Next, a cover up campaign
at the Vatican museums.
And the shocking true
of what lies beneath.
(dramatic music)
(whimsical music)
The Vatican collections
are housed in nine museums.
Treasures the popes have amassed
over the last 500 years.
(whimsical music)
Classical Greek and Roman statues
fill dozens of galleries.
Many of them are totally nude.
(whimsical music)
- Well, this statue is the famous
Apollo de Belvedere,
one of the founding piece
of the Vatican museum,
in the collections set by Pope Julius II.
- [Narrator] Evidently, Pope Julius
had no issue with
displaying this ancient God
in all his glory.
(dramatic music)
- He wanted to bring back in fashion
all the classic values.
Nudity, male bodies, perfection,
ideal representation,
that's the Renaissance goals.
- [Narrator] The beauty of the human body
wasn't only showcased in the ancient art
that the Pope was collecting,
but also in the new art
that he was commissioning
in the early years of the 16th century.
(dramatic music)
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling
is a cornucopia of nudity.
- And if you look at Michelangelo's
portrayal of Adam and Eve,
we have quite an interesting
juxtaposition there
of Eve's face, and Adam's genitalia.
In fact, if you flip her head 180 degrees,
the fruit of forbidden knowledge
becomes quite a different mouthful.
(whimsical music)
- [Narrator] Nudity and
art went hand in hand.
Even in such a sacred space.
But it wouldn't be long
before overexposure
became an issue.
20 years after he completed the ceiling,
Michelangelo painted "The Last Judgment"
on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
It was raising eyebrows
before it was even finished.
The Pope's chamberlain, Biagio da Cesena,
complained about the amount of nudity.
Saying it was better suited to a brothel,
or a bathhouse.
On hearing this, the
headstrong Michelangelo
sent his critic to hell.
- Michelangelo actually
puts Biagio da Cesena
as one of the judges of the underworld.
He's given asses ears,
and he's immortalized
in the Sistine.
- [Narrator] Today, much
of the original nudity
has been carefully covered over.
But not by Michelangelo.
The censor was a new pope.
His Holiness, Pope Pius V.
- Pope Pius was so much offended
by that genital nudity
in the Pope's palace,
that he decided that he couldn't even bare
to look at it.
- [Narrator] His concern?
Nothing less than the survival
of Catholicism itself.
(church bells ringing)
Times were changing.
With the Protestant Reformation,
there were demands for
a more modest church,
and some things were just unacceptable.
There was an official ruling.
No more genital nudity in the visual arts.
- There is, of course, a famous myth
that somewhere in the Vatican
there is a drawer of penises
that have been knocked
off by an angry pope
with a chisel one night.
That's probably not the case.
Remember, that any statue falling,
any piece that sticks out is vulnerable.
- [Narrator] The popes
may not have gone so far
as to castrate their statues,
but they certainly had them covered up.
The Bible was consulted,
and a solution was found in
the story of Adam and Eve,
covering themselves with fig leaves
after eating the forbidden fruit.
(intense violin music)
And so, the censorship
of nudity in the Vatican
became known as "The Fig Leaf Campaign".
Hundreds of ancient statues
received strategically placed foliage.
- It became an absolute must.
Fig leaves, underwear,
draperies, whatever.
I mean, it became normal to
not accept nudity anymore.
- [Narrator] One of
the Fig Leaf Campaign's
first targets was
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment".
Soon after the artist's death,
the Pope ordered the
offending flesh covered up.
It would take a new
ruling by a daring pope
to restore this masterpiece
to its former glory,
or to remove the fig leaves
throughout the museums.
Only then, would these ancients
be allowed to let it all hang out again.
(catchy music)
Next, an exclusive journey
into the Vatican's secret archives,
where lost transcripts
recount tales of sodomy,
heresy, and burning at the stake.
(dramatic music)
(lighthearted music)
Down the hall from the Vatican museums
is the secrets archives.
An exclusive and under explored
collection of historical documents,
rarely seen on television.
It was dramatically depicted
in the blockbuster film,
"Angels and Demons",
as a high tech fortress,
with low oxygen chambers
and bulletproof glass.
In reality, the most high tech contraption
is an antiquated elevator,
and most documents are held
in a no frills, cement bunker.
But on its 25 miles of bookshelves
are documents that shaped the world.
Galileo's signed confession.
Henry VIII's request to
divorce his first wife.
And a Napoleonic treaty.
(mysterious music)
In 2001, a mis-cataloged
00 year old parchment
was discovered here.
It revealed surprising details
behind one of the most infamous stories
of the Middle Ages.
The demise of the Knight's Templar.
The Knight's Templar were
founded in the 12th century
as an elite religious fighting force
to protect the Holy Land
during the Crusades.
- From the very beginning,
the Templars were made dependent
only from the authority of the Pope.
Meaning, they didn't have to answer
to any local authority.
The Templars were fabulously wealthy.
Owning land, controlling trade,
even running treasuries.
But back in Europe, their
wealth brought them enemies.
Very powerful enemies.
The King of France, Philip IV,
who was seriously in debt,
wanted to bring them down.
- He wanted their estates,
he wanted their cash.
All the stops were pulled out
in order to see this to completion.
- [Narrator] Even if that meant bypassing
the authority of Pope Clement V.
King Philip spread rumors
about their secret initiation rites.
Rumors of elicit sexual acts,
spitting on the image
of Christ and idolatry.
- It was a huge, effective
propaganda machine.
- [Narrator] Rumors
soon became accusations.
King Philip arrested almost 200 Templars
including the Grand Master
of the Order himself,
Jacques de Molay.
- Then he was accused of denial of Christ,
idolatry, and sodomy.
It seems that he was tortured
in order to obtain a confession.
- [Narrator] The Medievals has various,
horrific means of extracting confessions.
- The most common one
was the torture of rope.
(dark music)
Another one was the torture of fire.
Finally, there was the wheel.
(dark music)
Under torture, many confessed to heresy,
a crime punishable by life
in prison or execution.
In an effort to determine how accurate
these confessions were,
the Pope held an independent trial
of the Templar leaders in Chinon, France.
The original transcript of
that trial was lost, until now.
- Before the discovery,
there were different theories suggesting
that the Pope didn't do his best
to save the temple.
- [Narrator] But the parchment
in the secret archives
in its original Latin,
tells us a different story.
- [Luca] "Knight Jacques de Molay,
"Great Master of the Templar Order,
"came before us.
"He described his initiation ceremony.
"He said he did not spit on the cross,
"but only close to it.
"As for the vice of sodomy,
"the head shaped idol,
and the illicit kissings,
"he denied any knowledge."
- [Narrator] This parchment also records
the verdict of the church.
It found Jacques de Molay guilty
of sexual immortality and corruption,
but not of heresy, and so,
not liable for execution.
- I don't believe that
before the discovery
of the Chinon parchment,
anybody suspected or had even anticipated
that the Pope had gone this openly
to attempt absolution.
He didn't want to see the
Templar wealth going to Philip.
He did not want to lose his military arm.
- [Narrator] This document
should've saved the Templars,
but in the end, the King of
France proved too powerful,
and Pope Clement V, too weak.
- As a pope who had been
appointed by the King of France,
was really virtually the King's man.
- [Narrator] So, four years after Chinon,
the Pope dissolved the Knight's Templar,
stripping them of papal protection.
King Philip of France seized the moment.
On this island in Paris,
he ordered Jacques de
Molay burned at the stake.
- The Spanish have their bullfights,
and in Europe, nothing was better
than burning people at the stake,
it was a great means
of attracting a crowd.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] It was the end
of the Knight's Templar,
but Jacques de Molay had the last word.
- It is said that in his dying moments,
he cursed both the King and the Pope,
saying that they would
die within the year.
The Pope died within a month,
and the King of France
died within two months
of the burning of Jacques de Molay.
- [Narrator] The significance
of this parchment
leaves you wondering just how many other
documents there are buried
in the secret archives,
waiting to be dusted off
to set the historical record straight.
Next, one of the museum's treasures
is sent to hospital,
to investigate a 2,000 year old mystery.
(mysterious music)
(dramatic music)
In the heart of the Vatican museum complex
is the Gregorian Egyptian Museum.
A large collection from Ancient Egypt,
which includes gifts
from an Egyptian ruler
to the Pope.
Unusual gifts, consisting
of human mummies.
(mysterious music)
Behind the scenes at the museum,
these have become the focus
of the Vatican Mummy Project,
led by curator and Egyptologist,
Dr. Alessia Amenta.
- The mummies, like treasure chest,
containing all these
data about ancient life,
who can help us to understand
how these people were living,
what they were eating,
which was their social rank,
and the diseases they were
suffering at that time.
- [Narrator] Now, curators have decided
it's time to open this
human treasure chest
and learn its secrets.
(suspenseful music)
This means one last journey
for this delicate time traveler.
(suspenseful music)
- [Alessia] We are very worried about
every kind of movement.
- [Narrator] Too much movement,
and this 2,000 year old corpse
could crumble to dust.
- We hope that she will not move at all.
It's a risky operation for us.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] Mummification
was an ancient art.
- The Ancient Egyptian were believing
that without the body,
they couldn't leave in the afterlife.
So, this was the most
important thing for them.
- [Narrator] But mummification
doesn't last forever.
- She was removed from the
Gregorian Egyptian Museum
in 1991, because it was very damaged,
and as you can see, all
the ropes and vertebrae
coming out from this
big tear from the back.
- [Narrator] The curators decided
to try and restore her.
- Usually, mummies are not restored
because it's very complicated.
We were lucky because we can
collect all the vertebrae,
and we can create again
the vertebrae column.
- [Narrator] They then re-wrapped her
using the very same linen wrappings
that had begun to decay.
The result?
She looks like she was
mummified just yesterday.
But before putting her back on display
in the museum,
Alessia wants to gain a better
understanding of her life.
What little they do know
comes from her burial coverings.
- We know something about her,
because on these coverings,
there is written her name, Ny-Maat-Re.
She was living in the
Second Century, B.C.,
in Fayoum Oasis, probably
from the town of Hawara.
We don't know any more about her.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] In order to find
out more about Ny-Maat-Re,
Alessia has decided to check
her in to a local hospital.
(mysterious music)
After 2,000 years, this Egyptian woman
is about to share her
deepest secrets with us.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Alessia] The CT scan
is the most important step
for a study of a mummy,
because it gives a lot of information
about wrappings, about
the diet of this person.
And at what age she was dying, and why.
- [Narrator] 100 times more powerful
than a regular X-ray, a
CT scan uses radiation
to produce detailed,
three-dimensional images
of the insides of a body.
(mysterious music)
This is the first time they've had a mummy
on the hospital premises.
She's drawn quite a crowd.
- [Man] We have a big
audience in the gallery!
(laughing)
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] Dr. Francesco
Danza is the radiographer
who interprets the CT scans.
Usually, of course,
his patients are alive.
- We can see very clearly
the reconstruction of the spine.
That the men in museum have done.
We also have the confirmation
of this technique
to make the skull empty.
- Sometimes they are taking
out the brain from the eye,
sometimes extracting here
from the nose directly.
- [Narrator] Egyptians
believed that knowledge
came from the heart,
so they had no use for the
brain in the afterlife.
Generally, it was pulled out in pieces
through the nostrils and discarded.
- [Francesco] Are we
sure it's a female mummy?
(laughing)
- [Alessia] Did you do that?
Did you do that on purpose?
(laughing)
Shall I call the anthropologist?
(speaking in foreign language)
Probably some pieces of wrappings together
with the raisings used for the embalming.
- [Narrator] The CAT scan shows teeth
and newly matured bones that suggests
that this lady was only about
20 years old when she died.
As to how she died so young,
they find a clue in
some abnormal patterning
on her skull.
The doctors find thin lines
radiating out from her skull marrow,
which look like hair standing on end.
They're caused by changes in the bone,
and suggest Ny-Maat-Re suffered to anemia,
due to poor nutrition or
a parasitic infection.
This could be what killed her.
For Alessia, this little insight
into Ny-Maat-Re's life is bittersweet.
- Don't forget that these were a person
who were loving and had a normal life,
because in a museum
they become an artifact,
but they are not.
They are really people,
and so you get involved
during this guy kind of work,
so it's not always so easy.
- [Narrator] Ny-Maat-Re is the first
of nine mummies under investigation
at the Vatican museums.
Restoring them and piecing together
their identities one by one,
the Vatican Mummy Project
is rescuing these Ancient Egyptians
from crumbling into obscurity.
Next, another ancient death
at the Vatican museums.
But this time, death by snakes.
(dramatic music)
Here at the Vatican museums,
the magnificent marble sculptures
have enthralled artists, popes,
and tourists for centuries.
One of its founding pieces
is that of a pagan priest and his sons
in the fight of their lives.
(dramatic music)
Most everyone has heard the legend
of the Fall of Troy,
but not everyone knows about the one man
who wasn't fooled by the Trojan horse,
and trieds to prevent the disaster.
Laocoon.
(dramatic music)
After besieging the
city of Troy for years,
the Greeks had left a giant, wooden horse
filled with troops outside the city walls.
- Laocoon, as one of the
high priests of the city,
rushes outside the city walls,
and tries to persuade
the Trojans to ignore it
and not bring it into the city.
(speaking in foreign language)
He says.
"Whatever it is, I don't like it,
"and I don't like Greeks bearing gifts."
He throws a spear at
the belly of the horse,
it resounds, and at that moment,
he is punished by the Gods.
- [Narrator] The punishment appears
in the form of two huge serpents
that emerge from the sea,
and set upon Laocoon and his two sons.
- All three are horribly strangled.
They are killed, the
Trojans are terrified,
they think that Laocoon is being punished
for wounding the horse,
and they drag the horse inside.
Troy is destroyed.
(fire crackling)
- [Narrator] The great marble statue
depicting Laocoon and his sons
was discovered underground,
near Rome, in 1506.
It was an instant sensation.
- Because of the dramatic
nature of the discovery,
and because of the mania
for collecting ancient sculpture,
Pope Julius II had it
removed to the Vatican,
and became part of the
Vatican collections.
- [Narrator] Many artists of the time,
including Michelangelo, were
awestruck by the Laocoon.
But where did it come from?
And who had carved it?
- It was immediately identified
as the great sculpture group of Laocoon,
described by the Roman
writer, Pliny the Elder.
- [Narrator] Pliny the
Elder was a first century
Roman historian,
who wrote of an
extraordinary Laocoon statue
carved by three artists.
Most experts believe this
was the same sculpture
that had been lost for 1,500 years.
But one art historian
caused a stir recently
when she suggested this wasn't the statue
Pliny described at all, but a fake
created by none other than Michelangelo.
(mysterious music)
Antique forgery has been
a lucrative business
for hundreds of years,
and was practiced by some
of the best known artists
in the Renaissance,
including Michelangelo.
- I think it's a very
interesting suggestion
that Michelangelo was a
carver of the Laocoon.
We know that Michelangelo was responsible
partly for helping
putting it back together,
and the idea that he may have actually
polished or improved some parts of it
in order to make it look better
would've been a normal
practice in the Renaissance.
I doubt very much that he was responsible
for carving this stature
from the beginning.
It's composed of multiple,
large blocks of marble,
so he would've had to move these blocks,
and the task of carving this figure
without anybody knowing it
would've seemed almost impossible.
- [Narrator] William believes that proof
of the artist's identity can be found
in the archeology of a Roman villa,
120 kilometers south of Rome.
- And here we are in Sperlonga,
an area much favored by the Roman elite.
And this is by far the most impressive
of all the imperial villas built here.
In 1957, sculpture groups
were found in the cave here,
and it was the largest
group of Greek sculptures
found in almost 1,000 years.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] The figures depict episodes
in the life of Greek
mythic hero, Odysseus,
who was among the troops
in the fall of Troy.
- All the sculpture has
been removed from the grotto
and put into the modern museum
for conservation purposes.
The most dramatic group was seen
of Odysseus attacking the monster,
Polyphemus, or Cyclops,
driving his spear into the eye
of this one-eyed monster,
set in this absolutely natural
theatrical-like grotto,
essentially a Roman Disneyland.
- [Narrator] There is a
connection to Laocoon here.
On one piece of sculpture,
which stood in the middle of this pond,
William finds a key piece of evidence.
- Right here, on the front of the tiller,
the Sperlonga group is signed
by the three artists who actually carved
this entire group of sculptures.
- [Narrator] These are the same names
that Roman writer Pliny says
carved the famous antique Laocoon.
But it isn't just the artist's signatures
that finally convinces William.
- For me, as an art historian,
the fragment of the Sperlonga group
that most emphatically reminds me
of the head of Laocoon in the Vatican,
is this detail of Odysseus.
And it's particularly in
the deep set features,
the open mouth, the exaggerated hair,
and the expression of pain
on the face of Odysseus
that reminds me very much
of the face of Laocoon in the Vatican.
- [Narrator] As the legend tells us,
the Greek Odysseus devised the ruse
of the wooden horse
that brought down Troy,
and its brave priest, Laocoon.
Two opposing heroes
in one of the greatest stories in history.
Laocoon immortalized in one of the
world's greatest sculptures.
(dramatic music)
There are stories behind every object
at the Vatican museums.
On the walls, the ceilings,
and hidden away in dim corridors.
You may not see them at first,
but if you take a closer look,
the secrets are revealed,
and they never cease to astonish.
(dramatic music)
A city of faith and power.
And at its heart, a museum
with secrets dark and strange.
Tales of barbarous acts of violence,
clashing egos,
and scandalous censorship.
Here, you can uncover
messages from the past,
and reopen dark chapters from history.
(intense music)
Secrets hidden in plain sight,
inside the Vatican museums.
(intense music)
In the middle of Rome, stands the Vatican.
The epicenter of Catholicism.
(dramatic violin music)
It is both a fortified city,
and a place the Pope calls home.
(speaking in foreign language)
It also houses one of the
famous museums in the world,
full of timeless treasures.
Each one with a story to tell.
Of all of these, none are more famous
than the Sistine Chapel.
(wondrous music)
All who enter here gaze up
at the luminous frescoes of Michelangelo.
(wondrous music)
What few people know
is that his masterpiece
was an afterthought.
(wondrous music)
When the chapel was constructed,
the walls were filled
with monumental murals,
but the ceiling was just decorated
with a simple field of stars.
30 years later, Pope Julius II
decided it needed a new paint job.
When he gave the task to Michelangelo,
he took a leap of faith,
because the artist was
not then a famous painter,
but an up and coming
sculptor of the human form.
His transformation of the ceiling,
an area the size of two basketball courts,
would be completed in just four years.
How did a brilliant but
inexperienced painter
complete the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
in such a short time?
500 years later, when Vatican staff
embarked on a restoration project,
they got the chance to
uncover this museum's secrets.
- My name is Maurizio de Luca,
and I'm the director of the restoration
in the Vatican Museum.
I worked there from 43 years.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The restoration
team spent nine years
up onto the ceiling in the 1980s.
It took them twice as
long to clean the ceiling
as it did Michelangelo to paint it.
- The possibility that we put our hand
on the plaster, on the
Michelangelo painting,
allowed us to investigate
more and more his technique.
Fresco painting includes
a series of procedures,
that cannot be seen from a distance.
But since we have gotten close,
so close to the frescoes,
we can clearly see the
evidence of those procedures.
- [Narrator] The largest
figures on the ceiling
are nearly 20 feet across.
Michelangelo did not attempt
to paint them freehand.
Each figure started as
a sketch, or cartoon,
followed by a procedure that art experts
like William Wallace
refer to as "pouncing".
- Pouncing is the means of transferring
the cartoon to the plaster.
So the cartoon has actually been pricked
with little tiny holes,
and the charcoal dust in a bag
is actually pounced or
pounded onto the cartoon.
(wondrous music)
Okay, we see the head,
beautifully pounced,
and the hand, beautifully pounced.
- [Narrator] But pouncing
was a slow process,
and Michelangelo was under
pressure from an aging pope
who wanted to see the ceiling completed
before he died.
So, Michelangelo exchanged
the charcoal for a blade,
allowing him to quickly
incise the lines of the sketch
directly onto the plaster.
- [William] And these are the
kinds of things you can see
all across the ceiling,
when you're looking at it and raking like
Michelangelo's incised marks.
- [Narrator] The artist had good reason
to heed the Pope's demand for speed.
- Unlike our idea of the papacy today,
Pope Julius II, who was
known as the Warrior Pope,
was an extremely active personality,
literally leading the
papal armies into war.
- [Narrator] Michelangelo
may have respected the Pope,
but he was not the type
of man to be intimidated.
- [William] The thing you can say
about Pope Julius and Michelangelo,
they're both megalomaniacs.
- [Narrator] There were
bound to be some clashes
between these titans.
- The Pope wanted constantly to know
when Michelangelo was gonna finish,
and Michelangelo's famous response was,
"When it's done."
At which point, the Pope
actually picked up a stick
and started beating Michelangelo.
"When it's done, when it's done?" He says.
- [Narrator] To get it done,
Michelangelo would endure
far more physical torment
than the occasional
beating from an aging pope.
On a scaffold, 18 hours
a day, seven days a week,
constantly craning his neck up,
paint dripping into his eyes,
no one can say Michelangelo
didn't suffer for art.
In the fourth year of his labor,
he even described it in a poem.
"With my neck puffed out like a pigeon,
"belly hanging like an empty sack,
"beard pointed at the ceiling,
"and my brain fallen
backwards in my head."
Michelangelo kept going because
he was tough and determined.
But that doesn't explain how he could work
on a scaffold just a few
feet from the ceiling
and yet paint figures
in perfect perspective
when seen from far below.
The answer may be, because
he started his career
as a sculptor.
- When Michelangelo
imagines a figure moving,
it's moving inwards, outwards in space,
and therefore it creates
this wonderful perspective.
People ask all the time.
"Is that real, is the architecture real,
"are they sticking out of
the ceiling, are they 3D?"
- [Narrator] If one removes
the frescoes from the ceiling,
Michelangelo's mastery of perspective
becomes even more impressive.
He works magic with his paints,
creating lifelike 3D figures
even when the background
tilts the wrong way.
- Jonah was painted on a piece of plaster
that tilts towards us,
and yet looking at the figure,
Jonah appears to tilt backwards.
It was something that he knew
would fly in the face of all the people
that had criticized him
at the beginning of the assignment saying,
"Oh, but Michelangelo doesn't know
"anything about painting."
Michelangelo denies the laws of physics
through his painting.
It's the same kind of special effect
that people marvel at in
something like "Avatar".
- [Narrator] So, how did Michelangelo
complete his masterpiece
in just four years?
Determination, physical endurance,
and 3D virtuosity are
only part of the answer.
The rest is surely quite simply, genius.
- Michelangelo's more responsible
than any other artist in
the history of the world
for raising the stature of artist.
This is the beginning of an artist
actually establishing his own criteria.
- [Narrator] Every morning,
when the gates open,
thousands of visitors head
straight to the Sistine Chapel,
to stand for a moment
in a place that combines the power of God
and the genius of man.
(inspiring music)
These galleries have always hosted
crowds of curious visitors,
but there was a time when
they came in violence,
clamoring for the Pope's blood.
(intense music)
At first sight, it's easy to forget
that the Vatican Swiss Guards
are highly trained elite mercenaries,
dedicated for the last 500 years
to defend the life of the Pope.
Never was their duty
more tested than in 1527,
during a bloody standoff in Rome.
(mysterious music)
500 years later, the Vatican museums
still bare the scars.
Here in the former papal apartments,
decorated by one of the masters
of the Renaissance, Raphael,
art restorer Paolo
Violini spends every day
cleaning the 500 year old frescoes.
(mysterious music)
- I've been working here in
Rafael room for 15 years,
more or less.
Before the cleaning, we didn't know
the color of the eyes.
Now we can see they are blue.
It's really beautiful.
(wondrous music)
- [Narrator] The discoveries
come in all forms.
- We restored this fresco
more than 10 years ago,
and we found some damages
on the faces of the popes,
and also many graffiti.
One of them, you can see the name, Luther.
- [Narrator] Luther was a German monk,
ex-communicated for challenging
the authority of the Pope.
How did his name end
up incised on a fresco
in the papal apartments?
These frescoes were painted
during the artistic
golden age in the Vatican.
Popes were pouring money
into glorifying the papacy.
Such extravagance is exactly what Luther
and his German Protestant supporters
detested about the church.
Professor Paul Gwynne investigates
this period of history.
- Luther had been to Rome,
and been disgusted of what he'd seen.
He'd spread the word in
his homeland, in Germany,
that Rome needed reform.
- [Narrator] The religious tensions
would come to a head unexpectedly,
when an army of the most
powerful ruler in Europe,
the Holy Roman Emperor, descended on Rome.
- [Paul] In terms of
numbers, we're talking
in the region of 20,000 troops,
swelled by German mercenaries.
- [Narrator] The Commander was
there for political reasons,
but his unruly troops
had other goals in mind,
and quickly took matters
into their own hands.
- [Paul] The attack starts at
four o'clock in the morning.
The assault is done virtually in a mist.
People on the walls can't see them coming.
- [Narrator] This was the first time Rome
had been invaded on
this scale in 500 years.
- Okay, we're in modern Piazza San Pietro,
and of course Saint Peter's and the Pope
were the object of the Imperial troops.
And they were streaming through,
screaming and shouting
for the Pope's blood.
The papal defenders were
shouting back equal obscenities.
Lutherans, sons of whores, et cetera.
Absolute chaos.
Panic sets in, the
Swiss Guard is summoned,
and the Pope prepares to leave.
- [Narrator] The Pope's Swiss Guard
had been trained for moments like this.
But on this day, they are
seriously outnumbered.
- A great battle takes place in which 80%,
three quarters of the Swiss Guard
are cruelly massacred.
They defend the Pope to a man.
This was close, hand to hand combat,
fought with daggers, knives, and swords.
It would've been absolutely
gory, blood everywhere.
- [Narrator] As the Swiss Guard falls,
the Pope manages to
escape down this passage,
to Passetto, which links the Vatican
to a well fortified castle.
- The Pope picked up his skirts,
and ran the length of the Passetto.
The Imperial troops
were lined up down here
waiting for him,
hoping to get a pot shot
as they could spy him through
the narrow arrow chutes.
Now you see him, now you don't.
It must've been something
like a papal duck shoot.
(arrows firing)
- [Narrator] The Pope ended up here,
at Castel Sant'Angelo,
while citizens outside were
being massacred and tortured.
- We hear stories of cardinals
being whipped naked through the streets,
men being forced to eat their
own testicles, for example.
Also, the tombs of the
popes were desecrated,
and their bodies pulled
from their coffins.
What kind of men were responsible
for this brutality?
On the other side of the city,
Paul may have found the answer.
- We are in the luxury suburb and villa
of the papal banker.
We've come here today particularly
to look at the graffiti
that was left on the walls
as the Imperial troops marched through.
1528 is the year.
(speaking in foreign language)
"Why am I who's writing
not allowed to laugh?
"The Landsknecht are the ones who have put
"the Pope, papst, to flight."
The Landsknecht, German mercenaries,
were feared throughout the
15th and 16th centuries
as the crack infantry.
- [Narrator] These much feared troops
had reasons to vandalize the
Raphael rooms in the Vatican.
- The Landsknecht were the
pro-Lutheran sympathizers.
Luther himself had thought
of Rome as a cesspool,
as a place that needed
dramatic reformation,
and the Landsknecht were
out to do it for themselves.
So I think we could make
the case very strongly
that the people who inscribed on the walls
of the Raphael rooms,
and the people who wrote here,
were one in the same.
(eerie music)
- [Narrator] After eight
months under siege,
the Pope paid a ransom for his own life,
and was allowed to escape to safety.
But the sack of Rome had
brutally taken the lives
of 80% of the inhabitants of the city.
Rome wouldn't recover for
the better part of a century.
(mysterious music)
(whimsical music)
Next, a cover up campaign
at the Vatican museums.
And the shocking true
of what lies beneath.
(dramatic music)
(whimsical music)
The Vatican collections
are housed in nine museums.
Treasures the popes have amassed
over the last 500 years.
(whimsical music)
Classical Greek and Roman statues
fill dozens of galleries.
Many of them are totally nude.
(whimsical music)
- Well, this statue is the famous
Apollo de Belvedere,
one of the founding piece
of the Vatican museum,
in the collections set by Pope Julius II.
- [Narrator] Evidently, Pope Julius
had no issue with
displaying this ancient God
in all his glory.
(dramatic music)
- He wanted to bring back in fashion
all the classic values.
Nudity, male bodies, perfection,
ideal representation,
that's the Renaissance goals.
- [Narrator] The beauty of the human body
wasn't only showcased in the ancient art
that the Pope was collecting,
but also in the new art
that he was commissioning
in the early years of the 16th century.
(dramatic music)
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling
is a cornucopia of nudity.
- And if you look at Michelangelo's
portrayal of Adam and Eve,
we have quite an interesting
juxtaposition there
of Eve's face, and Adam's genitalia.
In fact, if you flip her head 180 degrees,
the fruit of forbidden knowledge
becomes quite a different mouthful.
(whimsical music)
- [Narrator] Nudity and
art went hand in hand.
Even in such a sacred space.
But it wouldn't be long
before overexposure
became an issue.
20 years after he completed the ceiling,
Michelangelo painted "The Last Judgment"
on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
It was raising eyebrows
before it was even finished.
The Pope's chamberlain, Biagio da Cesena,
complained about the amount of nudity.
Saying it was better suited to a brothel,
or a bathhouse.
On hearing this, the
headstrong Michelangelo
sent his critic to hell.
- Michelangelo actually
puts Biagio da Cesena
as one of the judges of the underworld.
He's given asses ears,
and he's immortalized
in the Sistine.
- [Narrator] Today, much
of the original nudity
has been carefully covered over.
But not by Michelangelo.
The censor was a new pope.
His Holiness, Pope Pius V.
- Pope Pius was so much offended
by that genital nudity
in the Pope's palace,
that he decided that he couldn't even bare
to look at it.
- [Narrator] His concern?
Nothing less than the survival
of Catholicism itself.
(church bells ringing)
Times were changing.
With the Protestant Reformation,
there were demands for
a more modest church,
and some things were just unacceptable.
There was an official ruling.
No more genital nudity in the visual arts.
- There is, of course, a famous myth
that somewhere in the Vatican
there is a drawer of penises
that have been knocked
off by an angry pope
with a chisel one night.
That's probably not the case.
Remember, that any statue falling,
any piece that sticks out is vulnerable.
- [Narrator] The popes
may not have gone so far
as to castrate their statues,
but they certainly had them covered up.
The Bible was consulted,
and a solution was found in
the story of Adam and Eve,
covering themselves with fig leaves
after eating the forbidden fruit.
(intense violin music)
And so, the censorship
of nudity in the Vatican
became known as "The Fig Leaf Campaign".
Hundreds of ancient statues
received strategically placed foliage.
- It became an absolute must.
Fig leaves, underwear,
draperies, whatever.
I mean, it became normal to
not accept nudity anymore.
- [Narrator] One of
the Fig Leaf Campaign's
first targets was
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment".
Soon after the artist's death,
the Pope ordered the
offending flesh covered up.
It would take a new
ruling by a daring pope
to restore this masterpiece
to its former glory,
or to remove the fig leaves
throughout the museums.
Only then, would these ancients
be allowed to let it all hang out again.
(catchy music)
Next, an exclusive journey
into the Vatican's secret archives,
where lost transcripts
recount tales of sodomy,
heresy, and burning at the stake.
(dramatic music)
(lighthearted music)
Down the hall from the Vatican museums
is the secrets archives.
An exclusive and under explored
collection of historical documents,
rarely seen on television.
It was dramatically depicted
in the blockbuster film,
"Angels and Demons",
as a high tech fortress,
with low oxygen chambers
and bulletproof glass.
In reality, the most high tech contraption
is an antiquated elevator,
and most documents are held
in a no frills, cement bunker.
But on its 25 miles of bookshelves
are documents that shaped the world.
Galileo's signed confession.
Henry VIII's request to
divorce his first wife.
And a Napoleonic treaty.
(mysterious music)
In 2001, a mis-cataloged
00 year old parchment
was discovered here.
It revealed surprising details
behind one of the most infamous stories
of the Middle Ages.
The demise of the Knight's Templar.
The Knight's Templar were
founded in the 12th century
as an elite religious fighting force
to protect the Holy Land
during the Crusades.
- From the very beginning,
the Templars were made dependent
only from the authority of the Pope.
Meaning, they didn't have to answer
to any local authority.
The Templars were fabulously wealthy.
Owning land, controlling trade,
even running treasuries.
But back in Europe, their
wealth brought them enemies.
Very powerful enemies.
The King of France, Philip IV,
who was seriously in debt,
wanted to bring them down.
- He wanted their estates,
he wanted their cash.
All the stops were pulled out
in order to see this to completion.
- [Narrator] Even if that meant bypassing
the authority of Pope Clement V.
King Philip spread rumors
about their secret initiation rites.
Rumors of elicit sexual acts,
spitting on the image
of Christ and idolatry.
- It was a huge, effective
propaganda machine.
- [Narrator] Rumors
soon became accusations.
King Philip arrested almost 200 Templars
including the Grand Master
of the Order himself,
Jacques de Molay.
- Then he was accused of denial of Christ,
idolatry, and sodomy.
It seems that he was tortured
in order to obtain a confession.
- [Narrator] The Medievals has various,
horrific means of extracting confessions.
- The most common one
was the torture of rope.
(dark music)
Another one was the torture of fire.
Finally, there was the wheel.
(dark music)
Under torture, many confessed to heresy,
a crime punishable by life
in prison or execution.
In an effort to determine how accurate
these confessions were,
the Pope held an independent trial
of the Templar leaders in Chinon, France.
The original transcript of
that trial was lost, until now.
- Before the discovery,
there were different theories suggesting
that the Pope didn't do his best
to save the temple.
- [Narrator] But the parchment
in the secret archives
in its original Latin,
tells us a different story.
- [Luca] "Knight Jacques de Molay,
"Great Master of the Templar Order,
"came before us.
"He described his initiation ceremony.
"He said he did not spit on the cross,
"but only close to it.
"As for the vice of sodomy,
"the head shaped idol,
and the illicit kissings,
"he denied any knowledge."
- [Narrator] This parchment also records
the verdict of the church.
It found Jacques de Molay guilty
of sexual immortality and corruption,
but not of heresy, and so,
not liable for execution.
- I don't believe that
before the discovery
of the Chinon parchment,
anybody suspected or had even anticipated
that the Pope had gone this openly
to attempt absolution.
He didn't want to see the
Templar wealth going to Philip.
He did not want to lose his military arm.
- [Narrator] This document
should've saved the Templars,
but in the end, the King of
France proved too powerful,
and Pope Clement V, too weak.
- As a pope who had been
appointed by the King of France,
was really virtually the King's man.
- [Narrator] So, four years after Chinon,
the Pope dissolved the Knight's Templar,
stripping them of papal protection.
King Philip of France seized the moment.
On this island in Paris,
he ordered Jacques de
Molay burned at the stake.
- The Spanish have their bullfights,
and in Europe, nothing was better
than burning people at the stake,
it was a great means
of attracting a crowd.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] It was the end
of the Knight's Templar,
but Jacques de Molay had the last word.
- It is said that in his dying moments,
he cursed both the King and the Pope,
saying that they would
die within the year.
The Pope died within a month,
and the King of France
died within two months
of the burning of Jacques de Molay.
- [Narrator] The significance
of this parchment
leaves you wondering just how many other
documents there are buried
in the secret archives,
waiting to be dusted off
to set the historical record straight.
Next, one of the museum's treasures
is sent to hospital,
to investigate a 2,000 year old mystery.
(mysterious music)
(dramatic music)
In the heart of the Vatican museum complex
is the Gregorian Egyptian Museum.
A large collection from Ancient Egypt,
which includes gifts
from an Egyptian ruler
to the Pope.
Unusual gifts, consisting
of human mummies.
(mysterious music)
Behind the scenes at the museum,
these have become the focus
of the Vatican Mummy Project,
led by curator and Egyptologist,
Dr. Alessia Amenta.
- The mummies, like treasure chest,
containing all these
data about ancient life,
who can help us to understand
how these people were living,
what they were eating,
which was their social rank,
and the diseases they were
suffering at that time.
- [Narrator] Now, curators have decided
it's time to open this
human treasure chest
and learn its secrets.
(suspenseful music)
This means one last journey
for this delicate time traveler.
(suspenseful music)
- [Alessia] We are very worried about
every kind of movement.
- [Narrator] Too much movement,
and this 2,000 year old corpse
could crumble to dust.
- We hope that she will not move at all.
It's a risky operation for us.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] Mummification
was an ancient art.
- The Ancient Egyptian were believing
that without the body,
they couldn't leave in the afterlife.
So, this was the most
important thing for them.
- [Narrator] But mummification
doesn't last forever.
- She was removed from the
Gregorian Egyptian Museum
in 1991, because it was very damaged,
and as you can see, all
the ropes and vertebrae
coming out from this
big tear from the back.
- [Narrator] The curators decided
to try and restore her.
- Usually, mummies are not restored
because it's very complicated.
We were lucky because we can
collect all the vertebrae,
and we can create again
the vertebrae column.
- [Narrator] They then re-wrapped her
using the very same linen wrappings
that had begun to decay.
The result?
She looks like she was
mummified just yesterday.
But before putting her back on display
in the museum,
Alessia wants to gain a better
understanding of her life.
What little they do know
comes from her burial coverings.
- We know something about her,
because on these coverings,
there is written her name, Ny-Maat-Re.
She was living in the
Second Century, B.C.,
in Fayoum Oasis, probably
from the town of Hawara.
We don't know any more about her.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] In order to find
out more about Ny-Maat-Re,
Alessia has decided to check
her in to a local hospital.
(mysterious music)
After 2,000 years, this Egyptian woman
is about to share her
deepest secrets with us.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Alessia] The CT scan
is the most important step
for a study of a mummy,
because it gives a lot of information
about wrappings, about
the diet of this person.
And at what age she was dying, and why.
- [Narrator] 100 times more powerful
than a regular X-ray, a
CT scan uses radiation
to produce detailed,
three-dimensional images
of the insides of a body.
(mysterious music)
This is the first time they've had a mummy
on the hospital premises.
She's drawn quite a crowd.
- [Man] We have a big
audience in the gallery!
(laughing)
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] Dr. Francesco
Danza is the radiographer
who interprets the CT scans.
Usually, of course,
his patients are alive.
- We can see very clearly
the reconstruction of the spine.
That the men in museum have done.
We also have the confirmation
of this technique
to make the skull empty.
- Sometimes they are taking
out the brain from the eye,
sometimes extracting here
from the nose directly.
- [Narrator] Egyptians
believed that knowledge
came from the heart,
so they had no use for the
brain in the afterlife.
Generally, it was pulled out in pieces
through the nostrils and discarded.
- [Francesco] Are we
sure it's a female mummy?
(laughing)
- [Alessia] Did you do that?
Did you do that on purpose?
(laughing)
Shall I call the anthropologist?
(speaking in foreign language)
Probably some pieces of wrappings together
with the raisings used for the embalming.
- [Narrator] The CAT scan shows teeth
and newly matured bones that suggests
that this lady was only about
20 years old when she died.
As to how she died so young,
they find a clue in
some abnormal patterning
on her skull.
The doctors find thin lines
radiating out from her skull marrow,
which look like hair standing on end.
They're caused by changes in the bone,
and suggest Ny-Maat-Re suffered to anemia,
due to poor nutrition or
a parasitic infection.
This could be what killed her.
For Alessia, this little insight
into Ny-Maat-Re's life is bittersweet.
- Don't forget that these were a person
who were loving and had a normal life,
because in a museum
they become an artifact,
but they are not.
They are really people,
and so you get involved
during this guy kind of work,
so it's not always so easy.
- [Narrator] Ny-Maat-Re is the first
of nine mummies under investigation
at the Vatican museums.
Restoring them and piecing together
their identities one by one,
the Vatican Mummy Project
is rescuing these Ancient Egyptians
from crumbling into obscurity.
Next, another ancient death
at the Vatican museums.
But this time, death by snakes.
(dramatic music)
Here at the Vatican museums,
the magnificent marble sculptures
have enthralled artists, popes,
and tourists for centuries.
One of its founding pieces
is that of a pagan priest and his sons
in the fight of their lives.
(dramatic music)
Most everyone has heard the legend
of the Fall of Troy,
but not everyone knows about the one man
who wasn't fooled by the Trojan horse,
and trieds to prevent the disaster.
Laocoon.
(dramatic music)
After besieging the
city of Troy for years,
the Greeks had left a giant, wooden horse
filled with troops outside the city walls.
- Laocoon, as one of the
high priests of the city,
rushes outside the city walls,
and tries to persuade
the Trojans to ignore it
and not bring it into the city.
(speaking in foreign language)
He says.
"Whatever it is, I don't like it,
"and I don't like Greeks bearing gifts."
He throws a spear at
the belly of the horse,
it resounds, and at that moment,
he is punished by the Gods.
- [Narrator] The punishment appears
in the form of two huge serpents
that emerge from the sea,
and set upon Laocoon and his two sons.
- All three are horribly strangled.
They are killed, the
Trojans are terrified,
they think that Laocoon is being punished
for wounding the horse,
and they drag the horse inside.
Troy is destroyed.
(fire crackling)
- [Narrator] The great marble statue
depicting Laocoon and his sons
was discovered underground,
near Rome, in 1506.
It was an instant sensation.
- Because of the dramatic
nature of the discovery,
and because of the mania
for collecting ancient sculpture,
Pope Julius II had it
removed to the Vatican,
and became part of the
Vatican collections.
- [Narrator] Many artists of the time,
including Michelangelo, were
awestruck by the Laocoon.
But where did it come from?
And who had carved it?
- It was immediately identified
as the great sculpture group of Laocoon,
described by the Roman
writer, Pliny the Elder.
- [Narrator] Pliny the
Elder was a first century
Roman historian,
who wrote of an
extraordinary Laocoon statue
carved by three artists.
Most experts believe this
was the same sculpture
that had been lost for 1,500 years.
But one art historian
caused a stir recently
when she suggested this wasn't the statue
Pliny described at all, but a fake
created by none other than Michelangelo.
(mysterious music)
Antique forgery has been
a lucrative business
for hundreds of years,
and was practiced by some
of the best known artists
in the Renaissance,
including Michelangelo.
- I think it's a very
interesting suggestion
that Michelangelo was a
carver of the Laocoon.
We know that Michelangelo was responsible
partly for helping
putting it back together,
and the idea that he may have actually
polished or improved some parts of it
in order to make it look better
would've been a normal
practice in the Renaissance.
I doubt very much that he was responsible
for carving this stature
from the beginning.
It's composed of multiple,
large blocks of marble,
so he would've had to move these blocks,
and the task of carving this figure
without anybody knowing it
would've seemed almost impossible.
- [Narrator] William believes that proof
of the artist's identity can be found
in the archeology of a Roman villa,
120 kilometers south of Rome.
- And here we are in Sperlonga,
an area much favored by the Roman elite.
And this is by far the most impressive
of all the imperial villas built here.
In 1957, sculpture groups
were found in the cave here,
and it was the largest
group of Greek sculptures
found in almost 1,000 years.
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] The figures depict episodes
in the life of Greek
mythic hero, Odysseus,
who was among the troops
in the fall of Troy.
- All the sculpture has
been removed from the grotto
and put into the modern museum
for conservation purposes.
The most dramatic group was seen
of Odysseus attacking the monster,
Polyphemus, or Cyclops,
driving his spear into the eye
of this one-eyed monster,
set in this absolutely natural
theatrical-like grotto,
essentially a Roman Disneyland.
- [Narrator] There is a
connection to Laocoon here.
On one piece of sculpture,
which stood in the middle of this pond,
William finds a key piece of evidence.
- Right here, on the front of the tiller,
the Sperlonga group is signed
by the three artists who actually carved
this entire group of sculptures.
- [Narrator] These are the same names
that Roman writer Pliny says
carved the famous antique Laocoon.
But it isn't just the artist's signatures
that finally convinces William.
- For me, as an art historian,
the fragment of the Sperlonga group
that most emphatically reminds me
of the head of Laocoon in the Vatican,
is this detail of Odysseus.
And it's particularly in
the deep set features,
the open mouth, the exaggerated hair,
and the expression of pain
on the face of Odysseus
that reminds me very much
of the face of Laocoon in the Vatican.
- [Narrator] As the legend tells us,
the Greek Odysseus devised the ruse
of the wooden horse
that brought down Troy,
and its brave priest, Laocoon.
Two opposing heroes
in one of the greatest stories in history.
Laocoon immortalized in one of the
world's greatest sculptures.
(dramatic music)
There are stories behind every object
at the Vatican museums.
On the walls, the ceilings,
and hidden away in dim corridors.
You may not see them at first,
but if you take a closer look,
the secrets are revealed,
and they never cease to astonish.
(dramatic music)