"This is the story of a superstar." "A sculptor, a painter, an architect, who stands astride the history of art like a colossus." "He was a tempestuous genius who would let nothing get in the way of his quest for eternal fame and riches untold." "He doesn't know perfection when he sees it" "He was an outsider who created works so big and so beautiful that nobody believed they were produced by a mere mortal." "I just created a giant" "He claimed he was divinely inspired." "Heavens own art" "Yet stole from Popes, fought with his rivals and struggled with his own demons." "His name was ichelangelo." "500 years ago, ichelangelo created three of the wonders of the world." "The David - the most famous sculpture in history." "The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel - the most awe inspiring painting." "And the dome of St Peter's - the jewel in the crown on the Roman skyline." "But what sort of man was capable of these incredible feats?" "What do you think I am?" "An ordinary labourer, you think I am the honest simple stone cutter who makes a living with his hands, look at that!" "What simple artisan could create something like that?" "Her face will live forever, not just from this century to the next but on  on  on  on  on." "Heavens own art, not mortal but divine." "How did ichelangelo actually do it?" "In this film, modern day artists explore the challenges he faced by trying to recreate his most famous works." "Engineers investigate his skills as an inventor." "They erect the scaffolding he needed to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling and re-build the massive vehicle used to transport the David." "A team of art historians reveal the origins of his genius and expose the shocking truth about his road to riches." "Together they debunk the many myths about ichelangelo." "The legend began with ichelangelo himself." "In old age he told his version of his life story to Ascanio Condivi, his biographer." "I think we should start with my birth, the 6th of arch 1475, 4 hours before dawn on a onday." "ercury  Venus were in the house of Jupiter foretelling the birth of a genius." "So I was destined to delight in the arts of the senses, painting, sculpture, architecture." "It's true that ichelangelo was born on the 6th arch 1475 in this house in the village of Caprese high in the mountains east of the Italian city of Florence." "But much of what he told Condivi was liberal with the truth." "I am descended from the counts of Canossa." "So there are connections with imperial blood." "You are getting all of this down, aren't you?" "It's absolute nonsense that he was related to the counts of Canossa, but it almost doesn't matter that we know now it's not true." "ichelangelo himself absolutely believed it sodidallofhiscontemporaries wasanessentialpartofthefamily  hisownsenseofself-definition." "Within a month of ichelangelo's birth his family moved to Florence." "He had an unhappy childhood." "His mother died when he was six, leaving his father Ludovico with five sons to bring up." "oney was always tight." "Ludovico was a lowly paid local official with aspirations of grandeur." "He was appalled by the young ichelangelo's love of the arts." "He was impervious to their nobility and excellence." "oreover, he thought I would bring disgrace on the family." "Of course this distressed me, but I would not turn back." "It probably is true that ichelangelo was beaten by his father." "It's precisely because the family claimed aristocratic roots ichelangelohadno business whatsoever becoming an artist." "It's the lowest level profession possible." "But, for all his father's opposition, ichelangelo persevered and produced works which showed an extraordinary talent." "Sixty years later he offered Condivi a bizarre explanation." "He said it was due to having a wet nurse who came from a family of stone carvers." "The power of her milk, transformed me into something quite different." "A special gift which change my whole life." "It was this which inspired me to become a sculptor" "Throughout his life, ichelangelo would claim his genius was somehow mystical." "But he also happened to grow up in the right place at the right time " "Florence in the late 15th century." "Florence was home to the Renaissance - the greatest flowering of the arts in history." "Florence was a city with a sense of manifest destiny, a city that new it had come into it's golden age." "A city that under the enlightened guidance of Lorenzo the agnificent was filled with a cultural optimism that it would never again know." "ichelangelo grew up therefore with a kind of limitless horizon before him thedriveto findanewlanguage in which to express this ambition." "Florence in the 1490's was one of the most exciting places in Europe." "It was a city filled with artisans reaching the pinnacle of their profession." "It was a perfect place for a person of talent like ichelangelo to come  learn the trades, where surrounded by workshops devoted to architecture, painting  sculpture ichelangelo came to master all three of these arts." "ichelangelo's first break came when his father finally relented and allowed him to become an artist's apprentice." "He joined the workshop of a revered painter called Domenico del Ghirlandaio." "There ichelangelo learnt to paint - a skill which would stand him in good stead later in life." "But he would look back bitterly on his time with Ghirlandaio." "Nature has always been my starting point." "If I wanted to draw fish I would go to the market to study fish, if I wanted to paint a horse I studied a horse, if I wanted to sculpt a man I went to the monastery to dissect the dead." "Even at such a young age I struggled for perfection peopleadmiredmy work Ghirlandaiowasenviousofme." "Now this is important because even to this day his son attributes my excellence to his fathers teaching hegaveme no helpwhatsoever." "It's just not true that ichelangelo learned nothing from Ghirlandaio." "He learned a whole range of skills during the time he was working with Ghirlandaio in the church behind me and these would serve him for the rest of his life." "It's only later in his career in retrospect looking back that the time with Ghirlandaio's workshop became increasingly insignificant." "An insufficient explanation for ichelangelo's fame." "I'm sure he was soundly taught how to grind colours, how to prepare panels, how to prepare walls for fresco, how to paint in fresco." "All that side of things I'm sure he must have learned perfectly well in Ghirlandaio's shop." "In 1490, at the age of 15, ichelangelo suddenly left Ghirlandaio's workshop." "His talent had been spotted by one of the greatest patrons of the Renaissance," "Lorenzo the agnificent." "Lorenzo was head of the edici family who ruled Florence." "He had taken a shine to the young artist." "He gave him a fine velvet cloak, a generous wage and a home in his palace." "ichelangelo had first come to Lorenzo's notice when he carved a mythical god, half man half goat, known as a faun." "I've seen your carving of the head of a faun." "I must say it is a fine piece of work." "But from his long beard he's quite clearly an old man." "Yet you've given him a full set of shining marble teeth." "Can you think of any old man who isn't missing a tooth or two?" "ichelangelo resented any kind of criticism, but to satisfy Lorenzo he immediately went and knocked out one of the faun's teeth." "From now on, ichelangelo became obsessed with perfection." "And he was determined to make everyone see he was the best." "Throughout his life, his competitive nature would bring conflict with other artists." "His first rival was fellow apprentice, Pietro Torrigiano." "The fight plays a big part in the ichelangelo myth." "He would be forever be disfigured by a broken nose and despair at his own ugliness." "This fuelled an obsessive pursuit of beauty - in his art." "The fight marked him for life, but what happened next turned the young ichlelangelo's world upside down." "On the 8th April, 1492 Lorenzo the agnificent died." "It was the end of an era." "His death would bring decades of conflict for Florence." "Lorenzo was succeeded by his son, Piero - a pathetic shadow of his father." "His nickname was Piero the Fatuous." "Piero was eager to use ichelangelo's talents." "But, in keeping with his nickname, he offered him a bizarre commission." "Hercules the snowman a work of art that will endure for ummm, two days!" "Has there ever been in the whole history of creation anything so pointless?" "Within days the snowman had disappeared with the thaw." "But this was the last time ichelangelo would let his work fade away." "By 1494, Piero had led Florence to the brink of collapse." "Foreign enemies were circling the city, but the real threat came from within - in the form of a pulpit-bashing Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola." "Savonarola was a hell, fire and brimstone preacher." "His pious words made a profound impression on the young ichelangelo." "15th Century Florence was a Florence of gaiety  joy  outrageous misbehaviour suddenlySavonarolacomesalong changesthewholething." "He's a sort of Billy Graham of his day." "Savonarola railed at the Renaissance passion for the pagan cultures of the ancient world - in particular their love of the male nude." "He launched a vicious attack on the arts, known as the Bonfire of the Vanities." "His followers burnt paintings, books and other luxuries." "ichelangelo was thrown into confusion." "He had strong religious faith and part of him was drawn to Savonarola's fundamentalist Christianity." "And yet his work was inspired by the pagan art of classical Rome." "The very thing Savonarola wanted to destroy." "If one walks around the back of the Christ in the Crucifix in the Santo Spirito looksatthewonderful pendulous unequal buttocks in the sinuous fleshiness of this handsome youthful body." "There is a practically pagan sensuality." "On the other hand, ichelangelo sensed that there was something potentially menacing in that for those called to follow Christ." "To make matters worse, a friend told him about a dream he had which predicted dark times ahead for Florence." "ichelangelo heeded these omens and fled." "He travelled around Italy looking for work." "He went to Venice but found none." "He was still an unknown artist." "Then he used his Florentine connections to secure a commission in Bologna - sculpting an angel for a tomb." "But ichelangelo missed Florence desperately, and as soon as he felt safe to return, he did." "He had no money and no patron." "ichelangelo had to make something quickly." "And it had to be something that would sell." "He started work on a Sleeping Cupid - a naked, winged boy, an ancient Roman god of love." "But then a friend pointed out that a new work like this, however beautiful, would not make him any real money." "The Cupid would be far more valuable if it appeared to be antique." "This was the moment when ichelangelo became a forger." "If he succeeded he would be rich, if he failed he risked everything." "His Sleeping Cupid no longer survives." "But to understand how he went about his deception, sculptor arcello Giorgi is attempting to recreate ichelangelo's lost masterpiece." "He starts by developing his ideas in clay, just as ichelangelo would have done." "ichelangelo's Sleeping Cupid is one of the great mysteries in the history of art." "There have been dozens of versions of the Sleeping Cupid either rediscovered or identified, but you have your own ideas about how ichelangelo went about the Sleeping Cupid." "Yeah, Yeah, I think that his cupid was a different cupid from the classical." "I think it for ichelangelo it was very important the body not the base." "So you're concentrating just on the body of cupid." "So how does it feel to recreate a ichelangelo work or be ichelangelo." "Naturally it's very difficult but I try to give just an idea." "I don't think to do a work like ichelangelo." "I am not crazy." "Sculpting the Cupid takes a lot of detective work." "arcello needs to get into ichelangelo's mind." "He knows the artist was deeply troubled." "So he is making the Cupid's pose unsettled - unlike Classical Cupids." "It's known that ichelangelo's Cupid broke with tradition in another way - it was an older child." "For its face arcello has taken inspiration from the angel ichelangelo sculpted in Bologna." "Two months later, William returns to arcello's studio to judge whether he's succeeded in recreating the lost statue." "Oh arcello, it's fabulous, it's fantastic." "You are ichelangelo." "Thank you very much" "So of all those various versions of the cupid you've made one that's?" "Well how would you describe it?" "I think I tried to do a cupid who don't sleep very relaxing." "It's like a cupid who had a bad dream." "Yes  the hair is somewhat wild?" "Yes also, sure themouthslightlyopen" "You know open the mouth, yeah." "It's marvellous, it's marvelous I think we've found ichelangelo's cupid." "Now, arcello makes a resin cast of the Cupid from his clay model." "ichelangelo's Cupid would have been in marble, but it would have looked just as white and gleaming." "This was only the starting point." "To make it valuable he had to make it look old." "A thousand years old." "arcello's Sleeping Cupid is now brought to London where artist Leo Stevenson is going to apply the techniques ichelangelo would have used to turn the sculpture into a priceless antique." "Right well, we've got a marvelous new cast here, but it's too white." "We've got to take the curse of that whiteness." "ichelangelo would have used something like liquorish juice or possibly a powder colour asolventlikespirittobind." "The next stage is something ichelangelo would have known in fact any faker would have known that'stousesomeorganicmatter on the surface of the marble." "Here we've got a rather special ingredient this is excrement because it's full of bacteria isexactlywhatyou want, liveyoghurtalsofullofbacteria." "Disgusting, but you've got to do it." "Break that down a bit  paint it on." "Yeah, get plenty of biological, bacteriological action going on here it'lljustbe readyfor the nextstage." "The next stage is to bury the Cupid, just as ichelangelo did." "It's six weeks later." "Leo is about to find out if his attempt at creating a fake has worked." "It's brilliant, it's a thousand years older." "ichelangelo took his fake classical sculpture to a dealer to sell." "And the dealer soon found a buyer." "No ordinary buyer, but one of the most powerful men in Rome." "Art historian Rab Hatfield has been investigating ichelangelo's accounts to find the truth about these shady dealings." "ichelangelo gave the statue to an agent or dealer who in return sold the statue to the Cardinal Riario, one of the wealthiest men of his day theownerof afamedstatuecollection." "For the price of 200 ducats which was a great deal of money." "But ichelangelo only received a fraction of that price  we know from a letter that he wrote to his father that he was very upset at the amount of money he received." "ichelangelo the faker had been cheated himself, but it was only the start of his troubles." "He was summoned to Rome by Cardinal Riario." "It was a terrifying moment for the young artist." "He must have feared he'd been exposed as a fraud." "The cardinal was not the sort of man you crossed." "I was desperate to get the cupid back." "I offered to return the money." "When that didn't work, I went to see the Cardinal." "I had no choice." "If my reputation was destroyed, I'd never work again." "Leo and arcello are taking their Sleeping Cupid to the British useum where it will be judged by former chairman of Sothebys, Tim Wonnacott." "What would Cardinal Riario have made of the Cupid?" "I think the colour, Leo, looks very realistic, I mean like a piece of marble would look if it had been buried." "Yes it looks nice and old. lt's lovely." "It's sculpted the way ichelangelo would have sculpted it." "l mean the pose  everything." "Yeah, yeah" "You think this is the right attitude with these bent legs thisverykindoftensesleep ?" "Yes, I think he made a new Cupid." "He made a new Sleeping Cupid, well l mean that's a, a mighty risky process isn't it?" "Because if you're going to make a new looking Cupid itcertainlydoesn'tlook like an antique one, it doesn't look like the Roman example in front." "If you're going to do that you're going to be in trouble, couldn't you, I mean big trouble." "ichelangelo had been too original to be a good forger." "The condition of the sculpture may have looked old, but his design was far too modern to be convincing." "Cardinal Riario knew it was a fake." "But rather than punishing ichelangelo for his deceit, he rewarded him." "Um, I can't quite believe this but, apparently the cardinal likes my work he'saskedme to find a large piece of marble, to carve something beautiful for his sculpture garden." "He even wants me to choose the subject  the pose myself." "ichelangelo chose a popular classical theme " "Bacchus, the god of wine." "But his take on it was typically bold and outrageous." "ichelangelo has gone it alone  done the most extraordinary interpretation of the figure of Bacchus." "He's clearly inebriated, instead of standing 4 square on both feet, he's toppling over  his head is in one direction, one leg is up  one leg is fairly firmly placed on the ground." "He looks tipsy  he's not meant to be inebriated at all, he was the man who invented wine, who enjoyed wine, but he certainly wasn't inebriated by it." "This looks more like a reveller in his rout." "I never drink too much." "A man who loses himself in sensual appetites indulging in the grape and its liquor, will in the end lose himself." "Cardinal Riario rejected the Bacchus." "This was unheard of." "Perhaps it was too erotic." "It's embarrassingly sexual, of course he's no longer got a penis but as far as his testicles are concerned, they're very much in evidence hehadan almostfemalebelly, quite emphatic nipples as well." "One's not sure when one's looking at this piece of sculpture whether one's not looking at an androgynous figure almost like an hermaphrodite." "So for a man like for example Riario, who was a classical scholar it might have been a bit of a shock." "ichelangelo was incensed by the rejection and attempted to write Riario out of his story." "Riario, Riario I never worked on any commission for Riario." "Riario was an artistic ignoramus who had no understanding of sculpture whatsoever." "The Bacchus was made for a Roman gentleman of very fine intellect named Jacopo Galli." "You make sure you write that down!" "Riario... ichelangelo's bank accounts tell a very different story." "The statue in fact, was commissioned by the cardinal Riario who paid a very good price for it  paid for it in full." "The rejection was devastating, but the Bacchus taught ichelangelo a lesson which would stay with him all of his life." "The marble for the statue had been flawed and scarred the god's otherwise beautiful face." "His quest for perfection would now take him to the very source of the marble." "In November 1497, ichelangelo travelled to Carrara in North-West Italy to find a block of marble." "The stakes were high. lt was a make or break moment of the young artist." "After the humiliation of the Bacchus, he was given one more chance to prove himself." "He was commissioned by a French Cardinal to carve a Pieta - a sculpture of the Virgin ary cradling her dead son." "Choosing the right block of marble was crucial, and still is." "American attorney, Jim Case, wants a full-size copy of the Pieta to grace his new home in Florida." "He's being advised by William and sculptor Stephen Cox." "They've come to the same quarry ichelangelo used." "Well my affection for the Pieta goes back to 1971 , when I first saw it in Rome Iwasmemorisedby the beauty  emotion of the piece." "theseedwasplantedIbegantothink  that perhaps it could be recreated, ifyoutwogentlemencandirectme to the right piece of marble, I believe it's possible." "It's going to be difficult to find a block of marble for Jim's copy of the Pieta - one as perfect as ichelangelo's." "arble was vitally important to ichelangelo." "It was the material which brought him fame, but it was the one which caused him some of his greatest difficulties." "arble embodies contradictions lt is hard, yet malleable, cold and yet very warm." "There is not a single idea, not even from the best artist, which cannot be realised within it." "But first it must be separated from the mountain." "Then I must build roads to take it to the town, devise pulley systems, design carts." "There are many arts to being a sculptor." "The owner of the ichelangelo Quarry - Giuseppe Barratini - is taking Jim to a seam of the purest white marble." "The best material we're going to find in the world today for making statues." "So I think we may have found your Pieta, Jim." "thecolouris ,lookatthat ..." "Belissimo, it's almost transparent, illuminoso." "When we carve our Pieta, Jim, we better make sure that the Virgin's face doesn't show up right in here where there might be a little bit of black discolouration wecertainlydon'twantthat  crack running anywhere near your block." "But how exactly did ichelangelo extract the marble from the mountain?" "it's the same process used today as was used in ancient times." "Two men will have used the saw blade fed with abrasive material, sand or carborundam." "themotors that generate the movement have changed from hand of man doing this to a machine which does this." "ichelangelo would have exploited natural faults in the marble and used wooden or stone wedges to help lever the great blocks out of the mountainside." "ofcoursenowwebringitdownby trucks but he would have bought it straight down the mountainside  we are very high up." "hewouldhaveboughtit straight down on wooden sleds." "By a system called 'netsitora' with ropes  a lot of man power." "It was a very dangerous averylongprocess therealwaysthehazardsof loosing a block or loosing a man." "ore than once ichelangelo himself almost lost his life in this process of bringing marble down the mountain." "When the marble had been brought down the mountain there was still a lot of work for ichelangelo to do." "It had to be transported to the sea and then shipped to Rome where he would carve his Pieta." "Jim's block of marble has been delivered to the Italian town of Pietrasanta where sculptor Franco Cervietti begins work on the copy of the Pieta." "As if finding the marble hadn't been hard enough, when ichelangelo began to conceive his divine vision for the Pieta he became distracted by problems back home in Florence." "y father!" "Nothing is ever good enough." "I'm struggling to make a name for myself and he's complaining that I am not earning money." "As if it were my responsibility to look after him." "He's constantly moaning that he has to do things for himself, like making his own dinner, washing his own dishes, oh, such hardship!" "The reality of the situation is the French Cardinal who commissioned this thing has just died." "I haven't been paid, I knon't know if I'll ever be paid." "Look at the state of me, this is all I've got left to eat." "ichelangelo himself lived in the most utter squalor." "He smelt like goodness knows what clearly, because his father told him never to wash." "So he used to scrape himself down from time to time." "I almost always sleep in my clothes and in my boots." "Sometimes I go months without taking them off." "I have always lived like a poor man." "Eating sparingly, drinking almost nothing." "One of the reasons we know so much about ichelangelo's frugality is that he often refers to it himself." "One of his most remarkable statements is one to his father in which he recommends to his father that he should live more frugally himself." "Live like Jesus as ichelangelo himself was doing." "But living like Jesus didn't prevent ichelangelo from earning a lot of money." "For the Pieta he eventually received 450 ducats - the equivalent today of 30,000 pounds." "After a year's wait, Jim is about to see his Pieta for the first time." "Oh my goodness it's the re-creation 500 years later of one of the most, if not the most, beautiful sculptures in the world." "Can we touch it?" "Of course" "Cos it's the thing you can't do with the original." "It's extraordinarily sensuous isn't it the folds of drapery thecontrastbetweenthe flesh thedraperyis reallyquiteremarkable." "awesome, everything is perfect." "You see it in reality, you see it charged with emotion." "Grief, sadness." "I think it's universally moving to everybody who sees it." "It's transcendental." "This is about the loss of a son, a mother's grief over her child." "The depiction of the mother of the child as being so youthful given the fact that he was 33 years old when he died, do you have thoughts on that?" "Well we even have some of ichelangelo's own thoughts, he makes a rather large point about the virgin being unsullied by sex." "She is pure, she has had a child by virgin birth." "Chaste women retain their fresh looks much longer than those who are more liberal with their favours." "And none so chaste as the Virgin." "It's true for us all." "If you want to live a long life resist carnal desires." "I don't want friends it's too dangerous I almost always fall in love with people who show brilliance at what they do." "I already have a wife who is far too much for me;" "she is my art and my works are my children." "The Pieta was to be ichelangelo's great breakthrough." "It's now in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican at the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church." "When the Pieta was unveiled, ichelangelo was just 23 years old." "It was immediately hailed as a masterpiece." "But at first, he didn't receive the recognition he felt he deserved." "He was still a relatively unknown artist and there was no way of telling he had sculpted it." "ichelangelo was determined to put this right." "He did what no other sculptor dared to do." "He guaranteed that his name would never be forgotten." "I overhead some idiots from Lombardy saying it was carved by ll Gobbo - the hunchback of ilan." "Of course Gobbo, the great Gobbo - it's got his signature all over it!" "While ichelangelo was making a name for himself in Rome," "Florence had been in turmoil." "Savonarola's fundamentalist regime had met a gruesome end." "Under the orders of the Pope, he was burnt at the stake in the main square in Florence." "A new Republican government had come to power." "ichelangelo returned home to his father and brothers, although he complained about them he'd missed them during his five years away." "Within months of getting back he faced a superhuman task:" "to give the home of the Renaissance its greatest treasure." "For forty years a huge chunk of marble had been waiting for the right sculptor." "It was intended for a colossal statue of the biblical hero" "David to stand on a buttress of the cathedral." "Two renowned artists had already tried and failed." "ichelangelo was bold enough to take up the challenge." "William and Stephen are looking for a block of marble the same size as the one ichelangelo confronted in 1501 ." "I think 70 tonnes?" "thisisevenbigger" "What about this one up here?" "This looks more  more like the David block" "The block was five metres tall and just over a metre deep." "The marble itself was far from perfect." "Shall we check  see if the size is right?" "Well looks like we getting there Bill, with this one." "We've got 15, 16, 16  a half feet, probably even push it to 1 7, we're almost exactly the kind of..." "that's right..." "Exactly!" "It's there... this is our David wehaveto lookata block like this  imagine a figure lying down..." "He saw it probably looking like this..." "As a sculpture are you able to look at a block like this  begin to see a figure?" "We say that about ichelangelo but I wonder if it's really true?" "I would imagine, I mean my way of looking at something like that would be to say okay, I'd have the block, I'd measure it up, I'd draw it, I'd see where certain types of forms were." "You've got something heavy at the top, shoulders perhaps here." "That great head  those fiery eyes probably emerging here  I'm sure that the amount of stone that he had determined the positions of arms etc." "He wasn't applying the forms of a model to a block, it wasn't going to yield what he wanted so." "He had a given." "He had to pay a lot of attention to faults  impurities thesearethekindsofthings that drive sculptors crazy, right?" "Well absolutely  these kinds of things were yeah, nightmare." "ichelangelo described this block as well cooked, it had been outside for 40 years itwaslyingdown." "It is almost stunning that he would take on that challenge accepttotakeontheblock  trycarvesomethingfrom it." "It seems almost impossible." "Yeah, amazing ichelangelo was determined to carve the David out of the one slender, flawed block." "His reputation was on the line." "But he was convinced that with God's help he could create a statue on a scale not seen since classical times." "God's gift to me was talent, my duty is perfection, not just with my hands, but in the conception of ideas." "The understanding of frailty  passion." "y enemies say that I'm arrogant because I like to be alone." "When else can I hear God's voice?" "As ichelangelo prepared to begin work on the David, his obsessive personality sparked rumours that he'd committed murder in the name of art." "Yes I've heard the rumours too." "You can believe them if you like, but there's no true in them whatsoever." "This young nobleman here died in a pathetic fight over a courtesan." "This disgusts me to the pit of my stomach." "As you can see it's actually harming my health." "But how am I expected to sculpt bones, tendons, muscles without seeing what lies beneath the flesh?" "Now ichelangelo had to translate his knowledge of the human body into the giant block of marble." "David is imprisoned inside the block of marble." "All I have to do is release it." "The figure of David was a popular theme among Renaissance artists, including Donatello." "But ichelangelo's take on it would be revolutionary." "He decided to focus, not on the aftermath of David's clash with Goliath, but on the dramatic moment just before he killed the giant." "To do this ichelangelo needed to capture David's steely determination." "The key to this lay in his face." "Sculptor Romolo Burati is copying David's facial features using the same chisels and methods as ichelangelo, he is starting with the nose" "Sculpting in marble combines brute force with the dexterity of a surgeon." "A careless slip of the chisel could be disastrous." "It's very tough but it also requires a great amount of skill, lt's very, very hard work even with a small hammer, although in time an artist working all his life wielding a hammer builds up the muscles that make it just like breathing really." "ichelangelo would have worked knowing the form of the nose having it in his head, like any great genius of any sort." "The science of being able to hold an image in your mind like ichelangelo could do hiseaseof whichheworkedwithtools enabled him to reveal in stone his imagination." "As the David took shape its raw emotional power emerged." "This eye is still on fire after 500 years." "This mouth is still a mouth of sensuality in the extreme." "The nose which is classical  proud, not Roman, not Greek, but somehow modern  even in this very, very small section," "In early 1504 the David was ready." "It took ichelangelo two and a half years to complete." "I made him out of one piece of marble, using the whole block so there's no waste at all, ratherlikeDavidhere slue Goliath with his sling, with my chisel I conquered nature  created a giant." "mmm,  they said it couldn't be done." "But according to the leader of the Florentine Republic, the David's nose was too big, he wanted it changed." "ichelangelo pretended to chip away at the nose and showered his critic with marble dust." "So Soderini looks up at the David hesaysoh yesthat'smuch better." "Oh the arrogance of ignorance." "But ichelangelo still faced a major problem." "The David is more than five metres tall and more than a hundred times the weight of a man." "How could he move this giant?" "An ingenious vehicle would have to be built." "William consults engineer Nick aclean about how he did it." "There have been a number of recreations wehaveonehereonCD Rom." "We do actually have this diary entry from 1504 from an actual eyewitness hewritesthatitwassuspended didnottouchthe groundwith it's feet  theyhadto labourfourdays  to come to the square." "40 men to move it." "is it possible that an engineer can give us a proper structure?" "Oh I'm sure, because what we start with is the same things that they had to consider all those years ago." "Uneven road, a certain weight  gravity, these things haven't changed." "Nick's team of carpenters are building a full-size replica of the vehicle." "A team of strong men will move a copy of the David from a workshop to a new position in the main square of Pietrasanta." "They will transport it the same distance through narrow streets as ichelangelo did 500 years ago." "If they make a mistake, the David could crash to the ground, crushing anything in its path." "It's several tones therealproblemwillbe if it's starts to roll away thenithitabump ." "That's when things will start flying around  we don't want that." "Somebody could have been easily crushed in the suspension of the ichelangelo yeah?" "the hands go, feet" "All the circular movement in the ropes just a tiny few feet either way, especially when it's all packed in so tightly." "One rope broken, maybe they all go." "One rope goes, ping, ping, ping" "Let's hope for better" "For ichelangelo moving the David must have been a nerve-wracking experience." "After carving his masterpiece against the odds, now it could be destroyed at the last hurdle." "All is going smoothly until the David reaches the gateway into the main square." "Will the David will pass underneath." "Do you think it will go through?" "lt's obviously a close run thing" "Remember when ichelangelo had to take it through the gate of the ll Duomo, he had to actually take down the arch in order to make it fit through." "Yes that's right wehaven'tsortpermissionhere  heprobablydidn'thaveto." "That was close." "Very close." "The last part" "That's it, it's there" "In a sense this is the beginning of ichelangelo's career as an engineer." "This is a really major problem, not only carving the sculpture, but moving it." "We always think of Leonardo as the great engineer, but ichelangelo was the doer." "He's the engineer who actually accomplishes fantastic feats." "Where to position the David in Florence led to one of the greatest confrontations in the history of art." "ichelangelo now wanted it to stand outside the palace in the main square." "His rival Leonardo da Vinci was lobbying for it to be in a far less prominent site up against a wall on the side of the square." "Ah, ichelangelo, tell us about Dante" "Look at you, with your fawning beardless boys, just what have you got to show with all your big ideas?" "Nothing!" "I've just created a giant." "It amuses him to mock me as if I was some uneducated craftsman." "He once compared me to a baker." "The truth is he's jealous." "He could never have finished the David." "For twenty years he talked about the big bronze horse he was going to make for the for the Duke of ilan and whatever happened to that?" "He's incapable of finishing anything." "ichelangelo won the day." "The David was placed in front of the palace." "It was a prime location." "There it immediately became a potent political symbol for Florence's Republican government in its valiant struggle for survival." "The David faced south in defiance of enemy forces poised to attack." "But ichelangelo also trumped Leonardo in one other - gratifying - way." "We know from his bank account records, that ichelangelo deposited 900 duckets to his savings account at about aged 30." "This sum slightly exceeded the amount that Leonardo da Vinci was able to put into his savings account over his whole lifetime." "ichelangelo was already a wealthy as well as recognised as one of the greatest artists in the world." "For almost 400 years the David stood proudly outside the palace." "But this is not the original." "It's a copy from the 19th century, when the real one was moved to the more sheltered Galleria della Accademia." "No matter how many times you see the David it never fails to impress one." "I think the reason is that ichelangelo has done something that nobody had done before or since." "What's so remarkable is the ability of the sense he's captured of imminent movement." "Nothing actually is taking place before us, but everything is about to unfold." "ichelangelo has chosen the moment before the battle with Goliath so the sense of danger of imminent combat is terrific  somewhat terrifying." "His body is different from all different angles, if we stand here we're directly in front where he looks somewhat vulnerable hisnudityis completelyrevealedtous ." "If we move around somewhat to the side, we notice first of all how terribly, terribly thin the block of David is from which ichelangelo carved the marble." "Barely 4 feet wide." "ichelangelo had absolutely no room to manoeuvre, no room for error  so in a way he's created this incredibly perfected figure of human beauty from an almost intractable impossiblecondition." "We know that the David was always intended to be seen high up so we would always be looking at it from below as we are now." "He has in a sense reversed the perspective so that the overly large hands  head keep us focused on the most important parts of the body." "For after all it is through the head that David triumphs over Goliath, with the hand with his physical strength throughtheheadwithhisintelligence." "oreover I think through the outside the sun would capture the face ichelangelo'sactuallyinvented a way of drilling out the pupils so as to capture sunlight so as to create this pool of shadows so that the intensity of the gaze becomes that much more impressive." "David has become a god, he is god like in his scale, he is godlike in his beauty, in his youth  especially in a description of the body." "The David immortalised ichelangelo." "It would become the most famous statue in the world." "In next week's film, ichelangelo is offered a dream job, but it will turn into his worst nightmare." "Such a tragedy my greatest regret." "Pope Julius ll commissions him to sculpt a monumental tomb covered in forty statues." "The Pope pays in advance for the mountain of marble needed." "But ichelangelo embezzles the money and buys himself a farm." "When the Pope cancels the tomb, ichelangelo finds himself in trouble and flees for his life." "But the Pope has his revenge." "He sets ichelangelo an impossible challenge - a challenge that will result in his greatest work of all." "the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel." "In 1506 war clouds were gathering over Italy." "The Vatican and Florence were locked in a battle over an artist - this was no ordinary artist, but a tempestuous genius by the name of ichelangelo." "The epic struggle that followed would result in one of the most extraordinary works of art the world would ever see " "one worthy of a man who saw himself as no less than God's own artist." "By the age of 30 ichelangelo had a reputation as one of the most brilliant artists alive - and one of the most difficult." "He had made his name with a sublime sculpture of the Virgin ary and Christ - the Piet?" "... ...and with his giant statue of David - which was to become the most famous statue in the world." "But he wanted more than just fame in his own life-time, he wanted it for eternity." "ichelangelo created his own legend - the story of a divinely-inspired, impoverished artist." "In old age he told his biographer Ascanio Condivi:" "I've always lived like a poor man, eating sparingly, drinking almost nothing and sleeping little." "I have devoted myself to the beautiful ideas which spring from a divine spirit" "In this film, we search for the truth behind the ichelangelo's story." "odern artists will put his genius to the test by trying to recreate the most famous scene from one of the artistic wonders of the world - his painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel." "And we will reveal just how far ichelangelo was willing to go to become the greatest and the richest artist in history." "ichelangelo's troubles had begun in 1505 when Pope Julius ll offered him the opportunity of a life-time - to sculpt his tomb." "ichelangelo had planned an enormous marble edifice covered with forty statues." "But then suddenly the Pope had cancelled the commission." "ichelangelo stormed out of the Vatican with five papal henchmen in pursuit." "The artist had a guilty secret." "He'd already pocketed most of the money the Pope had paid in advance for the tomb, and bought himself a farm." "STOP!" "Now listen, we're on Florentine territory, so you can't touch me and you know it." "Now you go back to Rome and you tell your Pope that if he wants me back he pays me for the tomb and we make the tomb." "Right?" "Now get out of my way." "ichelangelo returned safely to his home town of Florence." "The Pope was determined to make the government there send him back." "ichelangelo, the sculptor, who left us without reason and in a fit of petulance is afraid, we are told, of returning." "Though we are not angry with him, knowing the moods of such men of genius." "In order that we may lay aside all anxiety, we rely upon your loyalty to convince him that if he...that when he returns, he shall be unharmed." "Julius ll was the only equal that ichelangelo had in his lifetime I think in many respects." "This monster Prince, a battling fellow, an extremely tough fellow indeed." "It was rather unusual for a Pope to actually get on a horse and lead his armies into battle, but apparently this is exactly what was Julius' character and he was known as the Warrior pope because he literally went out to re-conquer the Papal lands for the Papacy" "and re-establish the authority of the Pope in a very physical and important way." "The government in Florence was desperate to avert war with the Vatican." "They pleaded with ichelangelo to go back to work for the Pope." "Back in Rome, the Pope offered ichelangelo a job." "Not the job he wanted - sculpting the tomb, but painting a ceiling - the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the very heart of Christendom." "Twenty metres off the ground it was the size of a football pitch." "ichelangelo was beside himself with rage." "He blamed his enemy - the Pope's Architect, Bramante." "It was Bramante, as always Bramante." "He convinced the Pope that I should paint the vault of the Sistine chapel." "Purely malicious." "He was bamboozled into doing it largely by Bramante, by suggesting that he painted the Sistine ceiling and by painting the Sistine ceiling, he was going to make a muck of it." "And he was going to fall from grace with the Pope and that would be the end of it." "He thought I couldn't paint." "He thought that my work would be inferior to that of his charming protege, Raphael." "He wanted me to fail." "He wanted to shame me." "I think he had rivalries with practically every one of his contemporaries, but I think this is a naturally A type character that we're seeing in ichelangelo - that he was naturally rivalrous and essentially dismissive of anybody else" "who didn't achieve the same level of accomplishment that he himself did." "ichelangelo was a perfectionist." "He was afraid he would not be able to meet his own high standards when he painted the ceiling." "ichelangelo was convinced he was not the man for the job." "He was a sculptor." "I'm constantly worn out." "I haven't even got room to sleep." "I am not a painter!" "Painting is for women and mediocrities like Raphael." "Sculpture... sculpture and painting are as different from each another as the sun is from the moon." "I long to touch marble again, to feel the weight of a chisel in my hand." "But if I walk away again, there's no chance I will escape the wrath of his holiness." "His Holiness!" "He'll have me killed first and offer me penitence afterwards." "As he began painting, he fully understood how ill-equipped he was to the undertaking." "He sent for assistants from Florence, he wrote to friends asking to be reminded of some of the techniques of fresco painting." "It is a simply unbelievable challenge, ichelangelo despaired at the task ahead." "As a teenage apprentice in an artist's workshop, he had been trained in fresco." "But that was twenty years ago and he hadn't done any since." "He knew fresco was the toughest of all arts." "It required painting quickly onto damp plaster." "Painting the ceiling was to become the greatest odyssey in the history of art." "Now 500 years later, artist Leo Stevenson is about to follow in ichelangelo's footsteps." "Like ichelangelo, he has done virtually no fresco." "But working with him is Fleur Kelly, an experienced fresco artist." "They've come to St Joseph's Church in East London to meet Father Dennis Hall." "Here they'll attempt to paint the iconic scene from the Sistine Chapel where God creates Adam." "This is a fabulous image." "It's so famous, it's almost invisible." "I mean those hands - zzzzzt - you know, it's just absolutely extraordinary." "That's like the smile on the ona Lisa - that's the most famous bit of the whole work." "Within the clich?" "is, in fact, the most wonderful, wonderful painting." "It has such a powerful meaning for the whole World and to actually have it in the context of this church, with the other paintings that we have, is going to be, a tremendous source of, I think, spiritual strength for people." "St Joseph's is a busy East End Church." "asses will continue throughout the painting of the ceiling." "An inventive scaffolding design is needed to allow the artists to work without disturbing the congregation." "This is the same problem ichelangelo encountered." "He too needed specialist scaffolding at the Sistine Chapel in 1508." "The job of designing it fell initially to his rival, Bramante." "The Vatican architect Bramante came up with this ingenious scheme of drilling holes in the vault, from which he'd suspend ropes to hold the scaffolding." "So I said to him," "Bramante that is a brilliant idea you are a genius." "Just one question what happens when we take the scaffolding down?" "No?" "..." "Great big holes in the painting!"" ""Oh don't worry about that", he said, "we'll sort that out later"." "Perhaps he thinks I'm going to sprout wings or something I don't know." "It was ichelangelo himself who came up with the solution." "His ingenious idea was to brace the scaffolding between the walls." "Leo consults engineer Nick acLean about doing the same at St Joseph's." "There's an amazing sketch by ichelangelo that he did where it shows him in a kind of a stepped sort-of structure." "And we can't have any supports directly underneath this because that's not what he did." "Now what I want you to do is to work out a design based on that, that's not going to break my neck because I'm very scared of heights." "Sounds silly but..." "Well, no it's not silly." "He would have started by saying 'okay, there is the shape, I need to be a certain distance from that'." "It's curving and so the steps that he has drawn here are a natural follow-on from that requirement." "And then we know that we cannot have supports down to the ground because this thing is going to be in place a very long time and the church has to function." "And it leads automatically to our truss design and in engineering terms leads naturally to the shape." "And it's all going to be very strong." "It's all going to be very strong and it's also going to be quite stiff, so that as you're trying to make your delicate little paintbrush strokes, it doesn't keep swaying underneath you." "I feel ichelangelo's abilities as an engineer have altogether been under-estimated." "He was the doer." "Leonardo da Vinci was the ingenious thinker, imaginer." "But ichelangelo was the person who actually accomplished and carried them out." "And the scaffolding is just one indication of ichelangelo's true interest in engineering problems and his ability to solve them in the most logical and practical way." "One, two, three." "Pretty solid to me." "The time has arrived for Leo and Fleur to see the scaffolding for the first time." "Oh wow." "Look at that." "Well done." "Extraordinary" "Now they can begin the daunting task of painting the fresco." "They will use the same techniques and materials as ichelangelo." "And will work at the same rate." "This gives them only a week to complete the scene." "It was a huge undertaking ordering and mixing the paints, slaking the lime, preparing the plaster, deciding on the content of the paintings, executing the drawings, transferring the drawings to the ceiling huge and I did it all myself." "It's impossible that ichelangelo painted the Sistine alone." "Fresco is an enormously complicated endeavour." "It requires sort of entrepreneurial skills of organisation." "One needs to mix plaster, one needs to construct scaffolding, mix paints." "So ichelangelo probably had as many as thirteen assistants over the course of four years." "ichelangelo painted the ceiling with a technique known as buon fresco." "This means applying the colour or pigment to a fine layer of damp plaster." "Before he could do this the ceiling had to be prepared with several base coats of coarse plaster." "This is the first job at St Joseph's." "This is the basis of all fresco painting." "This stuff is quick-lime or Calcium oxide." "And it's from this that we make most of the materials we need for the painting." "If I add water to it, there's a very hungry reaction." "This chemical wants the water inside it." "And when it gets the water, what happens is it hydrates." "And that gives it a basic lime putty." "Of course this would have been done on a really industrial scale in ichelangelo's day." "What would have happened now is that stuff would have been left for five years, maybe even ten years for really good stuff." "The longer it's left, the better, because it really turns into lovely creamy rich consistency." "You can't use it fresh." "So what we have here is the stuff that's already aged and this is gorgeous." "ichelangelo's mission was to come up with a design big and bold enough to bring to life this huge expanse of plaster." "The Pope had set his heart on something from the New Testament." "The Pope's design for the ceiling was poor." "There were swirls and swirls of geometric squares and circles and twelve separate panels for the twelve apostles." "There was no drama, no scope to study the human form." "I've kept the Pope's drawings - in here somewhere." "But I can't find anything." "y eyes you see I paid for the Sistine ceiling with my eyes." "ichelangelo defied the Pope." "Instead of the New Testament, he turned to the Old Testament for inspiration." "He began by making sketches." "Leo is drawing ichelangelo's Adam to prepare for painting the fresco at St Joseph's." "ichelangelo wants to create somebody like the first human being, the first one ever." "So its an ideal perfection of extreme ascu - on his mind" "The interesting thing about ichelangelo with his models and stuff like that, I mean they were all men for a start." "And, in fact, actually that shows up in ichelangelo's work, because most of his women just look like men with breasts, because he may not have seen a naked female form at all." "ichelangelo's really mixed up isn't he sexually?" "I mean, I'd love to know what a psychiatrist would say about him now." "He's very very interested in carnal things, there's no doubt about it." "He gets tremendous excitement out of flesh." "The male body is a paragon of beauty, a marvel of symmetry, strength, grace." "There is nothing so expressive of idea, expression, thought, emotion." "In the small mind, it might inspire carnal thoughts." "To me, it is God's clay, in which he moulds his own image." "What ichelangelo would have done is do a drawing on this scale, grid it all up, and then proportionately make a large grid of squares on a bigger sheet of paper." "So, having done the master drawing, the next step is to get a gigantic piece of paper and to draw Adam the size he will be on the ceiling." "Now the next stage after that is to prick and pounce." "This is a little bodkin - little sharp point." "What I'm doing here is I'm just pricking through lots of little holes in the outline of Adam." "I have a feeling that ichelangelo would have actually had an assistant to do this because it's very laborious." "A fine top coat of plaster is applied to the ceiling." "Just enough for one day's painting." "It's known as a giornata." "So this is the basic plan." "These show the giornate, which is the day work that I'm going to complete." "ichelangelo split the scene up into fourteen of these giornate." "With Leo painting Adam and Fleur painting God, they will each have seven working days." "While it is still damp, the artists can transfer their drawings onto the plaster." "I'm going to put this on the ceiling and then pounce through it with a little bag of charcoal and make little marks all the way along, leaving the outline, take the paper away and then join up the dots." "Like ichelangelo, Leo and Fleur must choose their pigments carefully." "If they get it wrong it could spell disaster." "I've sent some money to my father to buy an ounce of azurite." "I told him to buy the best there is." "If you can't get the best, don't bother." "ichelangelo demanded the finest quality and value for money." "Some earth pigments, like terra verde and raw umber - were very cheap because they were dug up in Italy." "But others - like ultramarine blue were as expensive as gold." "It was imported from faraway Afghanistan." "the essence of fresco painting is very very simple - just the raw powder pigment, a bit of water." "And unlike oil painting where the oil holds the pigment together, in this it's the surface you paint on, the plaster itself becomes the binder." "I've marked out the giornate, which is the work that I can do in a day" "And into that, you're going to do your magic on your side and I'll do mine on mine..." "and the last one to finish is a sissy." "I'll accept being a sissy... I'm a perfectionist" "Fresco painting is a race against the clock." "The hot weather means the artists have just a few hours before the plaster becomes too dry to paint." "They must work at speed and get everything right first time, every time." "But, it's difficult to get a sense of perspective working so close to the ceiling, as Leo discovers." "It just doesn't look like anything." "It just looks like a great big pink blancmange." "Despite working night and day, ichelangelo struggled to meet the challenge." "In the winter of 1508 his lack of experience began to show as he worked on his first scene - the Flood." "ildew began appearing all over the painting." "ichelangelo's worst fears were realised." "He got the plaster and pigments wrong." "He had to destroy his work and start all over again." "This was a huge set-back." "But if that wasn't bad enough, ichelangelo had to endure regular delays." "Every time the chapel was needed for a ass, he had to down his brushes and wait silently." "At St Joseph's, Leo and Fleur are facing the same frustrations." "After just three days, painting the ceiling is taking its toll on Leo." "Well, everything was going well with this ceiling and then came Saturday night and Saturday night I just couldn't sleep because of the pain and I thought I've had enough of this and I found myself in hospital" "and I've done something to a muscle on the back of my neck." "No pain no gain." "Painting the ceiling was hell for ichelangelo." "It inspired him to write a poem - possibly one of the greatest odes to agony ever written." "I've already ruptured myself from all this strain" "Just like it pisses down on cats in Lombardy y beard points towards Heaven." "I feel the back of my brain upon my neck y chest is like a Harpy's y hips have entered my belly, making a counterweight of my arse." "And without my eyes, I move in vain." "Can you show me how you're working for most of the day?" "Well, most of it is stretching up like that, I mean not absolutely full-length arm, but sort of like that sort of height." "The pain is too much for Leo." "Osteopath Karen Eastwood has been called in." "You're doing this for how many hours a day?" "It varies between about 8 and about 13 I've been doing" "And how long did ichelangelo do it for?" "4 years" "And this is for you after a week" "Yeah." "What a wimp." "What a wimp!" "So, if you imagine you're in this position all day, there are lots of blood vessels and nerves supplying to the back of the head, so you're compressing all those structures, so you would expect to have headaches possibly by the end of the day... tightness through the shoulders, so you're working through here." "With ichelangelo, he probably would have ended up with structural changes to his neck, maybe even more bony formations." "Really?" "So his body changed as he was doing it?" "Yeah, after 4 years." "Extraordinary." "If the pain was not enough, ichelangelo also had to contend with the impatience of Julius ll." "The Pope demanded that I dismantle the scaffolding so that he could see the work." "I was furious." "He was so keen that he arrived before even the dust had settled." "The ceiling was only half-finished." "But the Pope stood in awe." "The Pope may have been impressed, but ichelangelo, two years'hard labour, was in fact shocked by what he saw." "When he looked up from twenty metres below he found that the figures in the Flood were too small to see." "Working so close to the ceiling, he had misjudged the scale." "ichelangelo now feared that his old adversary Bramante would use this mistake to persuade the Pope to replace him with his protege Raphael." "Bramante, always Bramante tried to persuade the Pope to let him take over but I finally persuaded the Pope of Bramante's deficiencies as an architect and Rafael never got near the ceiling." "When ichelangelo began work on the second half of the ceiling, he was determined not to make the same mistake again." "He was about to show his true genius as a painter." "That's one of the things about ichelangelo - his foreshortening and his use of his perspective tricks to move things through space and make them believable." "I quite like the way he's done that arm actually - it really is convincingly foreshortened." "I think with the way he's done it and sort of darkened off the bicep and not painted the forearm." "It's quite a neat trick." "Of course, he's painting like a sculptor - and he was." "See you in the morning." "I can hear the whispers, drifting up from down there." "I can hear them saying 'ooh he's just a simple sculptor, he's not capable of foreshortening, not like the great Raphael, with his fancy clothes and his fancy women'." "But just look up there." "Look at God creating the grass and the plants." "Wherever you go, he follows you." "From down there, it will look like magic." "Everything was going well with the painting." "But then there was yet another delay." "This time it was a row about money." "He went to get his money but the Pope was no longer there." "The Pope was in Bologna fighting a war." "What does he do?" "He goes to Bologna, to ask the Pope for the money that is due to him." "Having succeeded apparently in telling the Pope that he needed his money, he went back to Rome, the money did not arrive." "He went to Bologna a second time... before the money finally arrived." "After eight months the Pope returned from the war." "The first thing he wanted to see was his ceiling." "But ichelangelo wouldn't let him anywhere near it." "The Pope just tried to climb up here." "So I blocked him by sitting on this ladder." "The other day I ended up throwing planks at him." "He shouted up at me" "'When are you going to finish that ceiling?" "You've been up there for months - what are you playing at?" "'" "So I replied, quite reasonably in my opinion, I'll finish that ceiling when I can, when I can." "When I can, when I can, when I can..." "By 151 1 - after three years' work - ichelangelo could just about see the light at the end of the tunnel." "You know, I think I've worked harder than anyone who's ever lived." "I'm completely exhausted." "But it's almost finished" "and I'll be home in Florence before All Saints... if I don't drop dead in the meantime." "It's the final day for Leo and Fleur." "They are finishing with minutes to spare." "In the end we can't write this out much longer" "That's going to have to do." "no come on, that's it." "that's it, yeah." "well, one could go back and have another go." "well, no, you could fiddle and fiddle and fiddle... job done!" "Job done." "Well done Leo!" "Well done Fleur!" "Leo and Fleur have met their deadline." "But is their fresco a success?" "This will be determined by the congregation below." "It's the big day." "The fresco is being unveiled at a special ass." "Today I am very pleased to be able to present to you a fresco by ichelangelo of the creation of Adam." "I am absolutely flabbergasted." "I think it's beautiful and as the proud mother of course I'm very pleased with it." "It's really nice, it's a very beautiful thing." "e, as a parishioner, I'm happy." "It shows the connection of human and God, so I'm privileged for it being in my church." "After all the turmoil and hard work, the final result is absolutely wonderful," "We're seeing the purity of the creation by God of us as human beings." "Fleur and Leo had painted one scene covering twelve square metres" "ichelangelo painted nine main scenes and in total covered more than 500 square metres." "He finally unveiled the Ceiling to the Pope on the 31 st of October, 1512." "The Pope proved a hard man to please." "At first the Pope said he was pleased, said he liked it." "Then he changed his mind - said he wanted changes - more ultramarine, more flecks of gold." "It looks poor without gold he said." "So I said to him, the people depicted in this painting, they are poor too, struggling, suffering, but you wouldn't know about that would you?" "." "I'm not going to change it, not a single detail." "If he doesn't know perfection when he sees it." "And now, after all my struggling and suffering, there's not the sign of a single ducat he owes me as a bonus." "But history would judge the ceiling differently." "It was to become one of the world's greatest treasures." "Fleur and Leo have come to the Vatican to see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel." "Fleur has seen it before, but this is the first time for Leo." "Oh dear... can't believe this." "That's what we've done." "I just want to reach out and touch it." "Tremble in wonder." "Yes I've seen this a thousand times in books and there's no book will ever do justice to it." "Look at the quality the quality of the tones and the colours... the quantity is absolutely staggering." "ichelangelo me old son, you are one hell of a hard act to follow, a very hard act to follow." "As one artist to another, I have to say, you do take some beating." "ichelangelo was only 37." "He had created a vision of Heaven on earth, yet he still yearned for more." "He would one day return to the Sistine Chapel to conclude the Biblical story with a final extraordinary painting." "Within months of the ceiling being completed," "Pope Julius ll died." "It was the end of an era." "ichelangelo had lost his greatest critic and his greatest patron." "But he could at last resume work on the Pope's tomb - a job which had been postponed eight years earlier." "So once again, I embarked on the tragedy of the tomb and it worked out just as unhappily as before," "worse in fact." "ore difficulties, more disappointments, more anxieties." "Because of the malice of certain men, it brought disgrace which will follow me to my grave." "But in 1513 ichelangelo approached the tomb with vigour." "He had big ambitions for the colossal monument covered with statues." "He comes back to Florence and he begins working on four or more statues simultaneously and this was common for ichelangelo, never to do one and finish one work but to constantly work simultaneously on many of them... and we begin to see the sense of his energy" "and almost fury in attacking the marble as he once again has the opportunity to become a sculptor." "We can see the chunks of marble coming off of this as he creates these Slaves or Captives intended to garland the lower storey of the Julius tomb, one of forty original figures." "ichelangelo would never finish the Slaves." "He completed just one statue - the oses." "Time and time again he was distracted." "The heirs of Julius ll were becoming increasingly impatient with ichelangelo." "But the tomb saga would rumble on for another thirty years." "In the end, the Pope's heirs had to settle for a much more modest tomb, with the oses as its centrepiece." "One of the tragedies of ichelangelo's life is that he never completed the tomb and we're left with that appalling mess." "To go from the more than forty colossal statues originally planned to this walled tomb with one great statue and then a number of other figures carved to ichelangelo's design by his assistants was an amazing humiliation." "Julius' heirs wanted to know why they had received so little for their money." "I was not paid 16,000 ducats for the tomb." "I was perfectly happy to fulfil my obligation, but Julius cancelled the commission." "I did finish the amended commission when it was finally renewed, for which I received a mere 3,000 ducats, which was recorded in a certificate drawn up by a notary." "Please write this." "I will not be remembered as little better than a thief." "The records show beyond a shadow of doubt that ichelangelo received 12,000 ducats for the tomb project, at least 9,000 of that was profit." "That's more than half a million pounds in today's money." "The reason ichelangelo lost interest in the tomb was that he received a more lucrative and prestigious offer." "It was a commission which he believed would bring him immortality." "And it reunited him with his first great patrons - the edici family." "The new Pope, Leo X, was a edici." "He had known ichelangelo when they were growing up together in the edici Palace 25 years earlier." "Now Leo saw a new role for ichelangelo - as an architect." "He asked him to build an imposing facade for the edici church of San Lorenzo in the heart of Florence." "It's truly one of the most ambitious projects of all time." "The final price agreed on for the facade was 40,000 ducats." "This was his most ambitious, his most expensive project ever." "It was a facade entirely built out of white Carrara marble." "In order to carry out the commission, ichelangelo spent nearly three years in the marble quarries and supervised teams of workers and brought out hundreds of blocks and in the process developed rather close relationships with a number of his workers," "many of whom we know from wonderful nicknames:" "the Cat, the Carrot, Oddball and Stumpy," "Lefty, Nero and the Priest and my favourite, the Antichrist." "And many of these people remained with ichelangelo for years and years, and so we can throw out one of the most obvious myths about ichelangelo that he always worked alone." "In fact, he was an artist who was also an entrepreneur." "Then out of the blue in 1520 the commission was cancelled." "After 3 years of toil, I'm left pissing in the wind." "I offered them something which would have been, with God's help, the finest work ever created." "And now they say they've run out of money." "I'm going to send them a bill for my time, a bill for the insult to my genius" "and a bill for stealing from the World its greatest masterpiece." "The edici appeased ichelangelo with a smaller commission - a church library, at San Lorenzo." "It may not have been on the same scale as the facade, but the Laurentian Library would herald ichelangelo's arrival as a revolutionary rchitect." "He created a building the like of which had never been seen before." "ichelangelo reinvented classical architecture and created his own brilliant and distinctive style." "He designed every last detail from the floor to the desks." "But as he worked, ichelangelo was caught up in a war which would test his loyalties to the extreme." "For years, the edici family had vied for power in Florence against the Republican Government." "When the edici were overthrown in 1527, ichelangelo took the side of the Republic." "This was a mistake which would threaten his life." "When the edici returned to power, they were determined to avenge his treachery." "Thirty years ago a remarkable discovery was made at the San Lorenzo church which sheds light on this dark episode in ichelangelo's life." "A security guard discovered a hidden door leading to a long-lost room." "Inside the walls were covered with drawings, but this was no ordinary graffiti." "It's a fascinating series of drawings, many of which relate to ichelangelo's work." "And when they were first discovered, many people were certain they were by ichelangelo." "And down the wall here, a figure from the Sistine chapel ceiling, Eve." "So many people believe this was the place where he hid for three months after the fall of the Republic." "I've heard rumours that a man has been hired to assassinate me." "This morning I was coming out of the San Niccolo gate and suddenly there's this figure here, whispering in my ear that if I don't get out of town immediately my life is in serious danger." "And just as suddenly, he's gone." "Now I don't know if this was God or the Devil, but I'm leaving." "ichelangelo returned only when the edici Pope, Clement Vll, guaranteed his safety in return for ichelangelo resuming work - on a family mausoleum at San Lorenzo." "Here in the edici chapel, for the first time ichelangelo realises a lifelong ambition to combine architecture and sculpture." "But ichelangelo has broken every single rule in the book and he has, in a sense, liberated architecture from this point onward." "People begin to invent and do things with architecture." "Notice how the doors are so much smaller than the tabernacles over top." "The whole architecture seems to be stretched upwards, so that up at the very top, there are even windows that seem to taper towards the light because, after all, we are meant to be feeling we are in the realm of the dead." "And we will resurrect our bodies to the realm of light." "In the architecture of death that ichelangelo has created, of course, these are the famous statues that everyone pays attention to." "The two Ducal tombs of Lorenzo and Juliano behind me, with the four famous figures of the times of day." "I portrayed Night as a woman and put an owl, the bird of night, at her feet." "I even left a small piece of marble to carve as a mouse." "If only I'd had a chance to finish it." "Such a pertinent symbol, the mouse." "Forever gnawing." "Like time, it devours everything." "Before the edici tombs could be finished ichelangelo suddenly left for Rome, never to return to Florence." "He was drawn there by a young nobleman whom he'd met in the autumn of 1532." "His name was Tomasso de' Cavalieri." "After years of claiming he needed no-one, ichelangelo had fallen in love." "And I shall deeply grieve not to be able to have the past again, so as to serve you for longer than just in the future, which will be short, because I am too old." "There is no more to say." "Read the heart, not the letter, for the pen cannot encompass fond feelings." "As a famous artist, to be attracted to this young man, who was awed to have drawn the admiration of such a figure was perhaps for ichelangelo to see in Tomasso Cavalieri, in his aristocracy, in his education, in his beauty" "all that ichelangelo himself in one sense would have wanted to be." "I love you with my lips, then groan that still" "Your love can't reach my heart" "Nor will it knock and force the door" "That joys of all kinds flock about my heart" "Your purpose to fulfil ichelangelo writes these sonnets to him that are breathless in their love for him." "There's no question about it." "You can feel him palpitating with love for this man." "You are to make it quite clear this was a love of pure beauty." "There was nothing indecent or lascivious in it." "I don't believe it for a moment." "I think he's covering up quite a lot over that." "One must also remember that, as far as homosexual love was concerned, in Fifteenth and early Sixteenth century Italy, you could actually be executed for it, although there was an awful lot which went on." "At the time a harsh moral climate was closing in." "The Catholic Church faced the biggest challenge in its history." "Rome had been sacked by foreign soldiers and the Protestant Reformation was sweeping Europe." "ichelangelo's next masterpiece would be shaped by these turbulent times." "30 years after he'd completed the ceiling of the Sistine chapel he was commissioned to paint one final scene - the Last Judgement on the altar wall." "This new painting would send shockwaves through the Vatican." "One of the Cardinals who is an interfering half wit is complaining to the Pope that so many nudes exposing their private parts is improper for the Papal chapel." "Here we have before us the Last Judgement, the Apocalypse, the end of the World and all he's worried about is what we're going to be wearing, or not wearing." "There was a growing sense that what had been acceptable in the Fifteen teens was no longer politically correct in the late 1530s and the 1540s." "The nudes are always directly in front of those present at the Pope's mass." "One cannot therefore pray at the Pope's mass without seeing ichelangelo's nudes." "Despite the criticism, ichelangelo would persevere against all odds." "Even when he fell from the scaffolding he refused treatment." "The Last Judgement was so close to his heart that he included himself among the resurrected - in the flailed skin of Saint Bartholomew." "He took revenge on the aster of Ceremonies who had complained about the nudity by consigning him to hell." "One's first impression of the Last Judgement is just the confrontation of hundreds and hundreds of figures, but I think it's an extremely subtle and sophisticated organisation, utilising what is standard the layering of the souls and the movement down on one side of the damned" "and the rising of the resurrected." "All of his contemporaries recognize the Last Judgement to be one of the final statements of ichelangelo's art and of Catholic theology." "The Sistine Chapel was now complete." "From the Creation to the Apocalypse, ichelangelo had depicted the greatest story ever told, at the very heart of Christendom." "By now ichelangelo was in his seventies." "His health was failing, but the reigning Pope, Paul lll, had one last challenge for him." "It was nothing less than building the new Rome, a city that would surpass the glories of its classical past." "Here we see the principles of architecture at work - order, proportion, design and style." "Rome will be the better for it" "Yes, Rome certainly was better off." "In a sense, ichelangelo introduced cutting edge, pioneering classical architecture to the city, an architecture which evoked the power and memory of ancient Rome." "Take the Campidoglio, for example." "This was the political heart of Rome at the time, the hub of power." "And here he created the city's first formal" "Renaissance Piazza, quite incredible." "And then the Porta Pia, this great gate he designed." "And then there's the Palazzo Farnese, completed by ichelangelo for his patron and friend Pope Paul lll." "And of course this is a fantastic building because it's established as a prototype for the kind of contemporary Renaissance palazzo." "But there was one building above all which would satisfy his life-long quest to create something truly divine." "A work which would guarantee his place in posterity on this earth and in Heaven too." "ichelangelo was asked to take over the design of St Peter's - the spiritual home of the Roman Catholic Church." "I wanted to be seen as independent, incorruptible." "I wanted an outward sign to myself and others of my inner resolve, to move closer to faith and the love of God." "I vowed to myself that I would refuse all payment." "ost of the time that ichelangelo was working on St Peter's, he was on his regular salary, so in fact he was receiving about a thousand ducats a year and that made him one of the highest paid architects that St Peter's ever had." "St Peter's crowning glory would be a dome on a scale not seen in Rome since the Pantheon was built more than a thousand years before." "Building a Dome was one of the great engineering challenges because, by its nature, it wants to fall down." "And here you see an early sketch by ichelangelo for St Peter's." "The dome is formed by a series of stone ribs and these are restrained by the great drum here." "And the outward thrust tends to sort of spread itself out." "So what ichelangelo does here is to have these great buttresses, you see, there's a pair of columns and these occur around the drum, below the rib." "So that is the system he used - a very advanced system of engineered construction." "The dome would take many years to build and time was running out for ichelangelo." "In his final years he wanted to ensure his family would achieve the aristocratic status he always craved." "His hopes rested on his nephew, Lionardo." "y dear Lionardo, choose a wife who is noble and poor." "Not to ennoble yourself, for it is known we are ancient citizens of Florence." "But to have a companion worthy to bear our name." "He was delighted when Lionardo married into one of Florence's oldest families." "At last he had a worthy heir." "ichelangelo was now preparing for the end and how he would be remembered by history." "He began to destroy drawings and poems he didn't think were good enough." "He even attacked one of his last works of sculpture:" "the Florentine Pieta which was intended for his own tomb." "It's his most personal and moving work." "ichelangelo himself is supporting the dead Christ - the divine artist and the saviour united for eternity." "Tell me I was not greedy." "That I was never jealous of others, but praised them... even Raphael and Leonardo." "And that in all my works, I was devoted only to the greater glory and love and beauty of your divine creation." "Oh Lord, have mercy on my soul" "ichelangelo died on 18th February, 1564." "He was almost 89." "ere mortal once" "Divine though born to be" "Short time on Earth, but Heaven's forever mine" "Rapturous change" "When even death's benign" "Deadly to many" "But new life to me" "The divine ichelangelo left a worldly fortune:" "8000 gold ducats; numerous bank accounts and landed estates in Tuscany." "By today's standards, he was a millionaire several times over, making him the richest artist the world had ever known." "His nephew Lionardo inherited everything." "ichelangelo's final legacy to the world was completed thirty years after his death - the great dome of St Peter's." "By designing the most important building in Christendom, ichelangelo achieved the divine status he always sought." "He was God's sculptor" "God's painter and now God's architect." "From the dome to the David, the Pieta and the Sistine Chapel, ichelangelo had created a unique vision of Heaven on earth."