Full transcript
0:00[Music]
0:06when most people think of the Renaissance they think of Italy a sun-kissed realm of
0:12popes patas and Patos a place filled with hugely talented artists like Leonardo and
0:21Michelangelo a generation who in the 15th century left the Middle Ages behind and
0:27created a glorious new kind of art more inventive and more exuberant than anything seen [Music]
0:38before when most people think of the Renaissance they don't think of Britain
0:48while the Italians were busy building a modern world the British were still stuck
0:53in the medieval mud the Renaissance is supposed to have passed us by
1:03but that isn't true the British did have a Renaissance and it was bold it was beautiful
1:09and it was utterly brilliant yet for some reason we've all but forgotten it in this series I want
1:17to ReDiscover our forgotten Renaissance a dazzling movement that flourished from
1:23around 1500 to the Civil War 150 years later [Music] that gave us our first great paintings
1:36our first stately homes our earliest scientific breakthroughs and perhaps the finest writer of
1:44them all a movement that catapulted us out of the Middle Ages and laid the foundations of a
1:51modern British culture that still shapes us today this series isn't about kings and queens or chudah
1:59and Stuarts it's about the painters sculptors poets playwrights composers inventors explorers
2:07and craftsmen who together revolutionized the way we saw the world and this episode
2:14is about how it all got started how a handful of brilliant European artists brought the new
2:21ideas of the Renaissance to Britain how we learned from their techniques experimented
2:27with their ideas and through them began to develop a voice of our [Music] own okay so the story of
2:59the the British Renaissance doesn't actually start in Britain it begins in Florence when
3:05an Italian sculptor accidentally kickstarts our own artistic Revolution Petro torano was
3:14proud arrogant and extremely competitive he was childhood friends with Michelangelo but rather
3:22than admiring the great man like everyone else he was pathologically jealous of him
3:31things came to a head one day when both men were in a chapel studying some
3:37frescos so they were next to each other sketching when Michelangelo apparently made
3:48some sned remark and that's when it happened that's when years of jealousy bubbled over
3:57that's when torana snapped clenching my fist I gave him such a punch that I felt the bone and
4:07cartilage in his nose crumble like a biscuit he will remain marked by me as long as he
4:16lives torano permanently disfigured Florence's favorite son he was left
4:26with only one option to flee the city and take his talent
4:31[Music] elsewhere sometime in about 1507 torano fetched up in what was
4:42reported to be Europe's Most Philistine Backwater
4:46a grubby dirty uninspiring little place at the end of the Known World
4:53England when torano first arrived in England the must have felt like it
5:00stepped back into the past the Renaissance had been raging in
5:04Italy for almost 200 years but here there was absolutely no sign of it
5:10whatsoever after 150 years of bloody wars and infighting the British hadn't had time for
5:19a Renaissance they hadn't even had time for art in Britain artists weren't celebrities like they
5:26were in Italy they were anonymous workmen paid the same as plasterers and iron mongers and as
5:34for art well the British didn't really know what art was they didn't even have a word for painting
5:42if a painting was on canvas it was called a cloth and if it was on panel it was called a
5:48table but torano wasn't without work for
5:55long in 1512 the young King Henry VII who fancied himself as a patron of new ideas
6:05gave this exotic Italian artist a very special commission torano was offered a
6:13staggering 1500 that's more than a million pound in today's money to make and work well cleanly
6:23surely Workman curiously and substantially those are the words in the contract a very
6:30special artwork it would be his Masterpiece and it would be unlike anything the British had ever
6:35seen Tano's piece was commissioned for Westminster
6:45Abbey a place that pretty much summed up where England was artistically still stuck in the Middle
6:55Ages with its stylized Saints and pointed Gothic arches it was thoroughly
7:05medieval but what torano came up with was emphatically
7:13different in a quiet Chapel at the back of the Abbey inside an ornate
7:23chamber is the tomb of King Henry iith and his wife Elizabeth of yorg [Music]
7:43their life-size Effigies rest on an imposing tomb
7:47chest that's decorated with Biblical figures and [Music]
7:54Saints it's a revolutionary piece of work and I think it's revolutionary
8:01for two reasons first torano did it all he conceived it he designed it
8:09he modeled the figures he cast the bronze he carved the stone he gilded the surfaces
8:15he did absolutely everything and if that doesn't seem particularly unusual today
8:23in his time it was unheard of in Britain most tombs indeed most artworks were made
8:29by Anonymous Artisans but torano was no medieval Craftsman he was a Renaissance
8:36artist the second revolutionary thing about this tomb is its style it is Renaissance through and
8:48through it's made from White marble and guilt bronze the materials that Donatello
8:53and Michelangelo would have used it's adorned with columns and a canthus leaves that hark
8:58back to the classical ruins of Italy the figures of The King and his wife are lifelike their hands
9:04bulging with veins and dimples but for me the most Renaissance thing of all about this tomb
9:12are these cheeky little chappies they're called putty and they're Italian cherubs
9:18and they were to a penny in Italian Renaissance paintings but they were completely new in this
9:23[Music] country [Music]
9:36all in all it's like a little piece of the Renaissance has
9:40been beamed down into the Middle Ages isn't
9:45it Tano's tomb marked a turning point in British art it brought a modern style to a
9:55medieval country it proved that artists were much more more than mere Craftsmen and it showed that
10:02art itself could finally take center stage in British life our Renaissance had [Music] begun
10:15in the few years since torano had come and gone England had begun to change dramatically
10:21under Henry VII it was peaceful for the first time in decades and its economy was booming it
10:30was now a land of opportunity and it wasn't long before the finest minds of the Renaissance came
10:37knocking artists poured into Britain from all over Europe but none of
10:49them would have a greater impact than the brilliant Swiss German painter H
10:54Hine Hans haline arrived in England in the Autumn of 1526 he was just 29 years old he
11:07came with no friends and family he didn't speak a word of the language and he had virtually no
11:13money but Hine had big Ambitions Hine had made his reputation as a Portrait Painter in the Swiss city
11:22of barel a place that was now being torn apart by the struggles of the Protestant Reformation
11:31he would be the first artist to bring the new techniques and ideas
11:35of the Renaissance portrait to Britain a place where portrait painting was almost
11:42nonexistent Hine would look closer and harder at British faces than anyone had done before
11:53him he would capture their idiosyncrasies and their
11:59imperfections and in doing so he would make us think differently about each other and
12:05ourselves hine's genius is best seen not in his finished works but in Intimate pictures
12:18that he hoped few would ever [Music] see today they're housed at Windsor in
12:26the Royal collection these are some of hine's Preparatory drawings for
12:33his portraits and these really are some of the most breathtaking artworks I've ever seen they
12:40were made 500 years ago and yet these people look like the people you see on the streets
12:47today in fact these are portraits of a new class of people merchants and Scholars and cours the
12:58people who had taken over from the church as the new patrons of art this is Henry Howard
13:07Earl of s when he was about 15 years old and it is alarming how present he feels he stares
13:16right out at us right through us and it almost feels that if you look at him long enough you'll
13:21see him blink and if you lean in close enough you'll smell his breath Howard was executed
13:30beheaded a few years after this portrait was made yet on this piece of paper he'll always be
13:36alive this is the courtier Sir Richard southwell he was a famously unpleasant
13:46man and I don't think Hine liked him either he looks pompous and humorous
13:53his nose is flared with self-regard and Hine has made sure to include some scar under his
13:59throat that he got from an infection of the lymph nodes but the best bit is this
14:05little line in German a note from Hine to himself that translates as the eyes rather
14:12yellow and hine's women are just as fascinating beautiful ethereal and so elegantly anxious you
14:25know one of the most impressive things about these drawings is the technique it
14:30is so economical a simple outline of pen and ink a tiny Touch of blue chalk for the eyes
14:37a tiny stroke of pink chalk for the lips and Hine lets the paper do the rest and it's that
14:44delicacy that enables him to capture the Fragile the fleeting the transient quality of life itself
14:53hine's drawings are the first really lifelike faces in the whole all of British history and
15:01they Mark the beginning of a major British tradition a w and all preference for reality
15:07over beauty that has persisted ever since but I think they're even more important than that
15:17hine's portraits contain the seeds of a new idea they Mark I think a moment when people
15:23stopped thinking about themselves simply as types as kings as Knights as Court and
15:29started thinking about themselves as individuals with their own unique characteristics their own
15:35unique hopes and fears and that that birth of the individual is a defining feature of
15:41the [Music] Renaissance but the Renaissance wasn't only about looking differently at each
15:54other it was also about looking differently at the world itself and Hine captured this radical
16:02worldview in his most famous painting one of the great paintings of the [Music] Renaissance the
16:12ambassadors and here are the ambassadors themselves Jean de dville and George delf looking
16:22proud of their achievements and even prouder of their clothes but the first thing you notice
16:29about this painting the most mysterious thing the most famous thing are not the ambassadors but this
16:34splodge if you look at it from this angle you'll see it's actually a distorted but anatomically
16:43accurate skull and it's a reminder that even rich and powerful men like these two will die
16:50like everyone else but I don't think this picture is really about the ambassadors I think it's about
17:02what's right at the very center this cryptic array of objects on the top shelf these objects relate
17:14to the heavens a Celestial Globe two quadrants a su dial on the Shelf below these objects relate
17:24to the Earthly realm a terrestrial Globe a book of arithmetic some musical instruments and a book
17:33of hymns that's painted in so much detail I can actually sing them these two shelves
17:40depict no less than the entire Cosmos Heaven and Earth together Hine has created an image of a
17:50world in which everything can be charted measured Quantified understood a world that mankind finally
17:58has has Mastery over this is hine's most ambitious portrait it is a portrait of the Renaissance
18:07itself as Hine assembled his Renaissance stage set he would have looked to his best
18:16friend for the props a German mathematician and astronomer called Nicholas katzer katzer
18:26represented the other crucial aspect ECT of the Renaissance the spirit of scientific [Music]
18:35inquiry katzer arrived in England in about 1518 but his reasons for coming remain a
18:47mystery when one friend heard of his visit he advised katzer to keep his thing secret and
18:55tell no one who summoned him he's to inv vent an excuse as far from the truth as
19:01possible we may never know Katz's true motives he may have been on a secret mission he may have
19:11been a spy but we do know that he was immediately employed by the king himself as the Royal clock
19:19maker spy or not when katzer came to London he certainly brought secrets with him this is
19:31his private notebook and it contains diagrams equations and instructions for the instruments
19:38he made it's so exciting to be looking through this book because looking through it is like
19:45peering into Nicholas kratzer's mind and it was clearly a formidable mind it was
19:53also a genuinely Renaissance mind a mind that believed in observation and and calculation
19:59a mind that believed the secrets of the universe could be unlocked with Precision
20:04Engineering and for katzer and his peers nothing was quite as precise as a sunal an instrument
20:16that harnessed the sun itself transforming its Rays into the hands of a mathematically
20:23designed [Music] clock Joanna MD is one of the few people to continue the great art of
20:32dialing as an instrument Mak yourself how do you rate katzer well what was extraordinary
20:39about katzer was he brought the knowledge from Europe to this country the 50 years that were
20:44after katzer the dials became amazing and so whatever he did he just sort of changed
20:49the consciousness of um of understanding of of sundal so he really kickstarted things in
20:55this country yes I think he really did I mean I don't think Henry the8 was have bought him over
20:59um unless he had something special about him so do we know much Joanna about katzer as a
21:04person one of the sandals there's a quotation on it I think in Oxford where he proudly says
21:11that he and his stonemason could drink in the German style which basically meant that
21:15they could drink anyone under the table um so he was obviously a funloving um Man
21:21Too katzer evidently could handle his drink because he specialized in miniature sunds
21:29and these required a clear head and a steady hand to make miraculously one of them still
21:38survives this is a delightful little Sund dial handmade out of guilt brass but it doesn't just
21:49have one dial it has nine of them seven along the edge and one on each side each one of them
22:00is perfectly calibrated all are set to a latitude of 51.5 De north of the equator and that means it
22:10was designed to work in London so to use it the first thing you need to do is to orient these
22:19noons towards the North and right at the top of it there's a little hole and inside that hole
22:25there would have been a compass and that Compass would have helped you position it exactly right
22:31and when the positioning is right the Sun and I'm going to use a torch because we're indoors
22:37the sun would pass over the surface of the sunds and would help you tell the time and
22:47the Really clever thing is that actually not just one of these sunds will tell the time
22:51but all of them and this was completely new in Britain there had been sunds before there
22:57had been pockets sundal before but nothing as showy as complex as sophisticated as this and
23:05most remarkable of all we know for whom this object was made right here on the stand is a
23:15little picture of a dinky Cardinal's hat and that tells us that this sundal was made for
23:22Cardinal Woolsey King Henry's chief minister and you know I can just imagine the chubby
23:30figure of woie pulling this out after dinner passing it around the table and showing off his
23:36fishlyn technology was becoming fashionable reflecting an
23:45appetite for scientific knowledge an excitement that was not confined to
23:51England thanks to Scotland long-running alliance with
23:59France the Scottish Stewart kings had embraced the Renaissance with
24:04enthusiasm their base was Sterling Castle part of which they restyled according to the latest
24:15fashion they filled it with modish sculptures of
24:22European monarchs classical Heroes and lots of Italian
24:27putty and they invited musicians Scholars and scientists from all over Europe to come
24:38and work there one of the most eccentric was a young Italian called joavan Damiano or as the
24:47Scots called him John Damian John Damian was an alchemist and he divided opinion
24:56dramatically some people thought he was a charlatan and they accused him of murdering
25:02a priest in Italy and impersonating a doctor in France but the king thought
25:09he was a genius Daman was a contemporary of Leonardo and both were obsessed with
25:16the ultimate Renaissance ambition human flight in fact Leonardo's famous drawings
25:24of flying machines May well have inspired Damen to embark on his most audacious
25:30experiment it was the morning of the 27th of September 1 157 the king had just dispatched
25:42two ambassadors to France but as they exited Damian entered John Damian assembled the
25:50court and made a staggering announcement he would beat the ambassadors to Paris he then
25:58strapped on two large Wings which had' fashioned from hen feathers he stepped
26:02up onto those ramparts over there and when he had everyone's attention he leapt
26:09[Music]
26:12off in the end Damian didn't quite make it to France instead he landed
26:22in a dungill near the foot of the castle and broke his leg
26:30John Damian's flight could be seen as a miserable failure but I disagree these ramp parts are really
26:38really high and for him to jump off them and only break his leg well I think he must
26:42have flown at least for a bit which would make this one of the first human flights in British
26:48history John daman's Grand Ambitions pleased the king
26:56but many others at Court mocked and insulted him
26:59relentlessly and in doing so they revealed a broader tension at the heart of the British
27:08Renaissance the British Renaissance had started brilliantly but as I'm sure you've noticed it
27:30had not been very British its greatest sculptor had been Italian its greatest painter had come
27:36from Switzerland and its greatest inventor had been German and this was not lost on the natives
27:45for some time londoners had been concerned that foreigners were stealing their jobs in 1517 this
27:55resentment had bubbled over into outright [Music] violence it was about 9:00 in the evening when
28:06a thousand angry English apprentices gathered in the city of London they broke into Newgate Prison
28:14liberated several prisoners who' already been arrested for race crimes and then marched through
28:19the streets looting foreign Craftsman's workshops and assaulting anyone who got in their way
28:30by 3:00 a.m. the riots had been quelled but the problem would not go away British
28:37artists and Craftsmen soon realized that they would have to move with the [Music]
28:47times from the 1520s a new generation began to discover Renaissance ideas for
28:58themselves but they wouldn't simply copy Europe they would do things differently on
29:10the continent the Renaissance had typically been elegant and refined the British however
29:16were not a particularly elegant and refined Bunch so when we did the Renaissance it was
29:21earthy visceral and at first a bit rough around the edges the first of these native
29:29Pioneers was a young English courtier called Thomas Wyatt captured here by none other than H
29:36Hine Thomas Wyatt was a Playboy assassin spy Diplomat he's famous for having had a secret
29:48affair with Anne berin but the real reason we should remember him is this he was in my
29:54opinion the man who brought the Renaissance to England English [Music] literature before
30:03Wyatt English poetry was stuck in a rut in the 120 years since cha there hadn't been
30:11one original voice and Poets seemed content to translate French romances
30:17into bad English verse but Wyatt would turn his back on archaic fairy tales and
30:24make poetry one of Britain's most d dnamic art forms and it all started with a Chance
30:33encounter it was New Year 1527 Thomas Wyatt was 24 years old he was on the banks of the
30:45temps when he saw a man preparing a boat for travel Wyatt asked the man where he
30:51was going and the man said to Italy for the king Wyatt absorbed this information and then asked
30:58if he could join him the trip would Inspire Wyatt but it would also nearly cost him his
31:04life the two men arrived in Italy in February on a diplomatic mission to meet the
31:19pope but Italy was a lot more dangerous than Wyatt had bargained for [Music]
31:31while traveling alone to deliver a letter Wyatt was kidnapped by mercenaries held
31:36for ransom and finally released now at this point most people would have run
31:43home with their tails between their legs but not Thomas Wyatt because Wyatt was in
31:50love while traveling around Wyatt had seen the Italian Renaissance with his own eyes for the
32:03first time and he loved everything about it but nothing appealed to him quite like its
32:12poetry and most of all the Love lyrics of
32:18Petra Petra was a towering figure of the Italian Renaissance in fact many people think he actually
32:27invented the idea of the Renaissance but he was also a hopeless romantic petrarch was a
32:35pioneer of the sonnet a short poem made up of one verse and 14 lines Petra pretty much reinvented
32:43the sonnet as the perfect love poem one that could express the true complexity of emotion
32:50in an extremely condensed form his first eight lines they would set up the problem
32:56which was usually a bur burning desire for an unattainable woman and the last six lines well
33:01they would resolve that desire it was short it was sweet and it was passionate and Thomas Wyatt was
33:09smitten in May 1527 Wyatt returned to London wanting to Breathe new life into
33:23English [Music] poetry Wyatt took the Italian sonnet and put it to bold new use he wrote
33:32tortured love poems for his friends in the chuda court they were very private often
33:38intimate W's poems were written by hand onto small precious pieces of
33:47paper they were folded rolled up wrapped in ribbon and then furtively passed from
33:54person to person tucked into to a pocket or left under a pillow for a lucky lady to
34:01find unlike petar spiritual love poems Wyatts were more passionate more pained and more
34:10human this is a copy of one of his finest they flee from me that sometime did me seek with
34:23naked foot stalking in my chamber I have seen them gentle tame and meek that now are wild
34:33and do not remember what an explosive start to a poem they flee from me that sometime did me seek
34:43it's so simple yet so powerful it's about loss it's about rejection it's about heartbreak and
34:51who ultimately hasn't felt those things in their life and that ultimately is the most
34:57amazing thing about this poem Thomas Wyatt wrote it 500 years ago and you can still feel his pain
35:05today Wyatt repeatedly explored the pain of rejection I find no peace and all my war is
35:16done I fear and hope I burn and freeze like ice i Fly Above the wind yet can I not arise and not
35:24I have and all the world I seize on I desire to perish and yet I ask health I love another and
35:32thus I hate myself I love another and thus I hate myself that is a great lie that's a
35:38great lie how good a poet was he I think he was I think he was a genius I think that you if you
35:46spend some time with Wyatt's poetry the more you look at it the more impressive it is he produced
35:53a poetry which is much more human than pet poetry he produced a poem which actually addresses our
36:00own human feelings of frustration entitlement reject bewilderment rejection abandonment you
36:07know there isn't anybody who could read a Wyatt's poem and not feel yes I have been
36:11there I have been there Wyatt also didn't shy away from writing about sex when her loose gwn
36:20from her shoulders did fall and Shey Caught In Her Arms long and small there with all sweetly
36:26did me kiss and softly said Dear Heart how like you this it was no dream I lay broad waking but
36:38nobody in medieval poetry went to bed with anybody only in dreams that's why this is such a radical
36:44poem there is a real englishness to his poetry isn't there I think he is above all an English
36:51person unlike most of the other architects of the Renaissance he was English um you you know
36:56torano was Italian Hine was German so he had a conscious desire to write in English and make
37:04English a language which was as flexible and as beautiful and a vehicle for the expression
37:09of complex ideas as Latin or as Greek or as Italian had been Thomas Wyatt died when
37:17he was only 39 but his influence on English literature was profound he' taken a refined
37:25foreign art form and made it unmistakably English less concerned with Elegance than with capturing
37:31the messy quality of life as lived setting the tone for English poets from Shakespeare to Philip
37:39[Music]
37:45Lin if Thomas Wyatt introduced an unglamorous realism to poetry another Englishman would was
37:56to do the same with painting his name was John Betts like so many British artists of this period
38:07virtually nothing is known about John Betts but it seems he was trained by none other than Hans Hine
38:17now if that's true it makes him a crucial figure the first Renaissance trained British Artist in
38:24history only a handful of his portraits survive one of them of an unknown man is the earliest
38:32British picture in the Tate collection and this is it it was painted in 1545 just 2 years after
38:43Hine died now I'll be honest it's not as good as Hine but it's pretty darn good and it's got
38:50that defining Renaissance feature the desire to be realistic John Betts has individually
38:58painted every single curling hair in this man's Ginger beard he's used wet paint to capture the
39:05ruffle of the fur collar and the face well for maybe the first time in British art it's
39:15lifelike this picture is the beginning of a homegrown Renaissance in painting
39:26but it's a suggests that our Renaissance would not
39:28be about beauty Grace and endless cherubs it would instead have a solid and earthy
39:35reality but just as British painting was finally about to flourish the country descended Into
39:47Darkness after the death of Henry VII the long standing tensions between the
39:58old Catholic church and the new Protestant Faith erupted into
40:03violence in the 1550s over 300 innocent men and women were cruy and publicly burnt
40:22alive their crime being protest during the reign of a Catholic
40:28Monarch the new medium used to document these atrocities was the printed book and the man who
40:40made it happen was an Evangelical London printer called John Day a man who would arguably have
40:49a greater impact on the culture of this country than anyone of his generation John day was nearly
40:58murdered himself he was a passionate Protestant and during the reign of Catholic Mary chuda he
41:06was arrested for publicizing the Protestant cause but he was one of the lucky ones day watched in
41:14horror as hundreds of other Protestants were burnt at the stake and he became determined to avenge
41:22their deaths when Mary died day got his chance in the Autumn of 1559 John day was approached
41:33by a writer called John Fox Fox was a man on a mission for some time he'd been working on a
41:39book about the many Protestant Martyrs it would be a witness to what he believed was an English
41:45genocide John Day immediately agreed to print the book at whatever cost
41:53and crucially he insisted that it be Illustrated with nothing
41:57censored it's since become known as Fox's book of Mars and it's a milestone in the
42:06history of bookm 1,800 Pages 1.9 million Words the book of Martyrs
42:16was the longest book in British history and more than twice as long as the Bible
42:22however I think its Real Genius was not John Fox's text but John day's
42:28illustrations they depict the suffering of Protestants and
42:40they are vivid and gruesome burnings torture
42:44disembowelment Fox and day used the shock tactics of modern photojournalism but they
42:57weren't out merely to shock they wanted to expose the truth as in The Sensational
43:05case of a supposed suicide Richard hun was imprisoned after a minor disagreement with
43:13a priest a few days after his incarceration he was being brought some food in his cell when he
43:20was found dead hanging from his own belt the authorities thought it was a straightforward
43:29suicide but Fox and day did their homework they even read the coroner's report and they thought
43:35otherwise the report said that a fresh candle had been found snuffed out in the Dead Man's
43:47cell now why would Richard hun have done that why would he have extinguished his
43:54candle before he tied that noose and hanged himself for day and fox that candle was a
44:01clinching piece of evidence someone else must have done it someone who wanted to cover their
44:09tracks Fox and day were convinced that these three men have been sent by the
44:20Catholic Church to murder Richard hun and then make it look like suicide [Music]
44:30The Book Of Martyrs had more impact than day could ever have
44:34imagined it was distributed to churches schools and even pubs and it became the
44:42most widely read book in England for the next 200 years this book had a profound effect on
44:51the English people it helped Forge the identity of England as a Protestant Nation and John day's
44:58images were crucial to its success they ensured that all British people literate and illiterate
45:04alike could understand Fox's message The Book Of Martyrs is a Monumental work of the Renaissance
45:12but it is also the beginning of a distinctly British tradition a tradition of graphically
45:18exposing Injustice that runs all the way through our culture from William Hogarth to Gerald scarf
45:25[Music] by the middle of the century British artists and writers had not
45:36just absorbed the newest ideas from abroad they had brilliantly adapted them to their
45:41own tastes Thomas Wyatt had turned the Italian sonnet into the classic form of English poetry
45:51John Betts had combined hine's impeccable technique with an compromising realism and
45:59John Day had used a Renaissance invention to teach the English people about their own
46:04history in spite of the dark times they had lived through
46:10they had proved a match for their Continental
46:13counterparts but that wasn't
46:19enough now with the new Queen Elizabeth on the throne and the country more at ease
46:27with itself British artists wanted to produce work that was better than anything in Europe
46:35and that competitive Spirit would lead to one of the greatest pieces of music ever
46:40written according to one anecdote sometime in the 1500s an Italian song arrived in England for 30
46:52different voices on hearing it one great Juke challenged the the composers of England to do
46:57the same eventually one English composer came back with a song not for 30 voices but for 40
47:04voices his name was Thomas Talis he was an organist and singer for The Royal Court who
47:15over the course of a long life composed music for virtually the entire chuda Dynasty Thomas
47:22talis's greatest work was the one he produced as a result of that challenge a motet for 40
47:28voices called spem in alia Talis was used to composing for four five or six voices
47:38composing 40 different Melodies all to be sung at the same time was a huge leap but the result
47:46spem in alium is one of the richest and most ambitious pieces of coral music in the English
47:52Cannon it's so beautiful I'm not going to ruin it by
47:58[Music]
48:12talking [Music] [Applause] [Music]
48:45[Applause] [Music] David Hurley has sung spin alium many times so David what is it actually
49:23like to perform spem Alum it's quite terrifying actually I mean you you either are the person that
49:28comes in first which in itself is terrifying or you're in chire six or seven and you have to wait
49:36around for ages for the and work out exactly when um it is you're meant to come in when all those
49:42voices come in at that point of the music is it really it must be you know euphoric experience
49:48it must be wonderful it's an incredible sound I mean both for the people listening and actually
49:52for the people involved it's just this all this this wall of sound an ancient Renaissance version
50:00of surround sound before its time so was that a broader you know feel of the time that the
50:06English were competing with what was coming from the continent yes I think I think we had
50:11a little bit of an inferiority complex and their way of dealing with it was to make England this
50:17incredibly important Place artistically English music is very much an important part of showing
50:24how wonderful England [Music] was in Rising to the Italian challenge Talis had created a
50:35work that was as sophisticated as anything on the continent but at the same time distinctly
50:41English a breathtaking feat of virtuosity that was a sign of the country's growing
50:48confidence [Music] by the 1560s the British Renaissance had serious momentum and yet if
51:06you walked through any Town you'd be forgiven for thinking you were still
51:10in the Middle Ages because our buildings were still resolutely
51:15medieval that finally began to change when a few Builders started to dabble in the new classical
51:24style of the European Renaissance and they got their ideas from architectural pattern books
51:32from France and Italy when it comes to classical architecture there is pretty much everything here
51:39you could ever want so what have we got we have Doric columns like those used on the pathon we
51:47have ionic columns and you can always tell an ionic column because it has these little curls
51:53on the top and we have Corinthian columns Corinthian columns with their acanthus Leaf
51:59capitals there are also pediments domes Temple fronts and triumphal arches like
52:08those built by the Roman emperors but it took one determined even
52:15obsessive Englishman to bring all these ideas together and to create
52:20something that was both utterly unique and unmistakably British his name was John
52:28Finn John Finn was born in 1515 he was the son of a Midlands farmer but he had Grand
52:39designs he married the Lord May of London's daughter and with his wife's Fortune bought
52:45a former prian Wilshire and proceeded to turn it into his family's seat John Finn
52:53was frankly pretty unpleasant he was famously impatient and had a ferocious temper but he was
53:01also ambitious and single minded and when he set his mind on something he never gave
53:07up he wanted a house to suit his ego it had to be new it had to be modern
53:16and for John Finn that meant it had to be classical Finn was so determined to
53:23get his house just right that he wrote letters to his Builders every single
53:28day I would you do not forget to mend the lanes with gravel in such places as need or require also
53:40let there be haste made with the top of my tower further I would you not forget to get planks swn
53:48for my dos every single detail of his house he's writing about must have been a nightmare
53:55their employer but John th's obsessive attention to detail eventually paid off in 1568 after 30
54:06years of building and rebuilding and rebuilding again he finished his house it's still standing
54:14today it is called [Music] longle and it's the first of England's Great stately homes
54:33longle is completely unlike the Fortified Mana houses of its time
54:39it's symmetrical and it's smothered in classical
54:43[Applause]
54:47features but it's also unlike any classical building in Europe it doesn't
54:55slavishly follow the architectural pattern books it mixes everything
54:59up creating an Eclectic exuberant and Rule breaking English [Music]
55:04[Music]
55:04style Finn loved to take his guests behind the scenes of his
55:23lavish home [Music] for he had a surprise to show
55:30them after dinner John Finn would lead his guests up this staircase
55:39they can't have had a clue where he was taking
55:40them but it was worth the [Music] climb this is the roof at longle and when John
55:58Finn's guests came up here they must have been completely overwhelmed it must have
56:03been like nothing they had ever seen before because it's filled with columns
56:08and statues and domes and John Finn's land stretches out for as far as the eye can see
56:16it's utterly amazing and back then it must have felt like the entire Renaissance had
56:22been assembled and then set down on top of one house but John finin had another trick up his
56:30sleeve he would present his guests with a very special work of art exquisitly designed
56:41sculptures some of them covered in Gold they were phenomenally fashionable and phenomenally
56:48expensive these are sugar sculptures and and they would have appeared at
56:56any self-respecting Renaissance banquet and they are Exquisite
57:00little things and the best thing of all is everything here is edible even the
57:07plates but that was just the icing on the cake long Le itself is a seminal Masterpiece
57:19impossible without foreign inspiration yet like so much in our Renaissance quintessentially
57:26British it was 60 years since Petro torano had stepped foot on English soil but Britain
57:38was no longer a cultural Backwater it was on the verge of becoming a cultural superpower
57:46and this was only the beginning next time as the nation's confidence grows its artists turn
57:54turn away from Europe completely they fill their paintings with secret signs and their buildings
58:01with riddles and finally they set sail taking their Renaissance to the new [Music] [Applause]
58:08world
58:24[Music]