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00:00The terror of Attila the Khan had ravaged the hills of northern Italy.
00:16The refugees fled to a small group of islands in a marshy lagoon.
00:22This big wasteland would become the most beautiful city on earth, Venice.
00:29These people were fierce in war and rich in trade.
00:34And then one morning in April 1204, in pursuit of money and power,
00:40Venice led a vast army into one of the bloodiest battles in history,
00:45the Sack of Constantinople.
00:51With victory came the power to dominate the Mediterranean
00:55and a new empire that would span east and west.
01:25Venice was now the centre of the world.
01:37It became rich beyond its wildest dreams.
01:41And it spent its money on great new buildings, beautiful paintings and sculptures.
01:51This is the story of the greatest flowering of art in Venice's history.
01:57There seemed no end to what this city could achieve.
02:02But as the city's painters and architects became ever more daring and outrageous,
02:08Venice was to make many enemies
02:11would bring this period of great beauty and opulence to a crushing end.
02:22It all began with a mysterious arrival.
02:29In 1295, a man staggered into this courtyard.
02:35He wore torn, alien-looking clothes.
02:39It seemed he didn't belong in Venice.
02:44But he was coming back home.
02:49His name was Marco Polo.
02:57And he had just returned after 24 years of travel through China
03:02and other strange and fantastic lands.
03:11With the bizarre clothes, the weird accent and the savage look,
03:17he had become a stranger to his own family.
03:40A great banquet was given to celebrate Marco Polo's return.
03:45For this feast, he was to reveal his discoveries,
03:49things that Europe had never dreamt of.
03:54Polo had returned with more than just jewels.
03:58He brought back knowledge of a new world that was to make Venice rich.
04:04He told of extraordinary spices from India,
04:08the finest quality of silk from Vajur,
04:11gold and silver from Malabar,
04:14and the astonishing riches of the Chinese emperor Kublai Khan,
04:20with his millions of ships, his millions of horses,
04:24and millions of temples.
04:28Marco Polo became known as Marco Milione,
04:31or simply Il Milione, Mr. Millions,
04:34because the people of Venice didn't believe a word he said.
04:40For the rest of his life,
04:42no one of him, they even called this courtyard Il Milione.
04:48But these distant lands were truly as rich as he said,
04:53and Venice would establish a unique network of trading routes to the east.
04:59The city would be the gateway between Europe and the Orient,
05:03bringing us huge power and riches.
05:08It was truly the center of the world.
05:11And the place where the people of East and West literally met
05:16was in the Rialto, Venice's trading center.
05:25On a typical day, any time between the 11th and the 15th centuries,
05:30this place would have contained the richest mix of people
05:34to be found anywhere in the world.
05:37The Rialto market, with all the shops, stores, people,
05:41it feels like an eastern souk, almost a casbah.
05:46And still it does.
05:51In this tiny area of Venice,
05:54Europe could sample the world's most exotic goods.
05:58Strange fruits from Africa,
06:01perfumes from India,
06:03minerals and fabric dyes from Malaya,
06:06and pepper, cloves, and other spices from Arabia.
06:25More than a center of trade, the Rialto was the banking center of Venice,
06:30and Venice's banks were way ahead of their time.
06:37Ciao, Emanuele.
06:42This bar is the site of the first gyro bank,
06:46the place where credit was born, where paper replaced gold,
06:51and the first ever bank loans were issued here.
06:57During the 12th and the 13th centuries,
07:00this square was the financial center of the world.
07:05While the rest of Europe languished in the feudal age of masters and serfs,
07:11Venetian bankers gave financial backing
07:15to a new class of merchant adventurers.
07:20It was to fuel a modern credit boom.
07:26The spirit of Marco Polo and the money of Banco Gio
07:30created men like my ancestor, Alvise d'Amosto.
07:36Every great Venetian family had an explorer,
07:40and in my house, we have a statue of ours.
07:44This is my great-great-great-grandfather, Alvise d'Amosto.
07:48He was an explorer,
07:51and at the age of 22, he discovered Cape Verde Islands
07:56off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean.
08:00Now I'm 40, and with my little boat, I go around the lagoon.
08:06That is the difference between me and him.
08:18Alvise d'Amosto's incredible journey
08:21took him beyond the Christian world to pagan Africa,
08:25trade would be the new religion.
08:28The explorer merchants roamed from Jerusalem in the Holy Land
08:32to Muslim Egypt,
08:34from Beijing in China to Constantinople,
08:38the capital of Byzantium, the city we now call Istanbul.
08:42They traveled to make money,
08:45but they also brought back new ideas of art.
08:50This great building is the Fondaco dei Turchi,
08:54the word Fondaco derives from the Arabic funduq,
08:58meaning trading post.
09:00Dating from the early 13th century,
09:03the building served as lodging for foreign traders
09:07and a warehouse for their goods.
09:10The tall arches were inspired by Byzantium.
09:14The layout, a central courtyard with lodgings above,
09:18was an idea borrowed from the East.
09:21Buildings like this would change the look of Venice forever.
09:26But nothing is simple in Venice.
09:28Here, Byzantine style of the East
09:31mixed with Western Gothic style of Northern Europe,
09:35and Venetian buildings became a strange, almost alien mixture.
09:40No city in the world looked like this.
09:46The elongated round arch from the east
09:49merged with the Western Gothic arch,
09:53creating an elaborate new style,
09:57a unique architecture, Venetian Gothic.
10:05And it was this style that would stamp its identity
10:09on Venice's Grand Canal,
10:13the city's greatest waterway.
10:17It stretches from the great basin of St. Mark
10:20at one side of the city,
10:25winding snake-like through the great trading district of the Rialto.
10:36This is the main artery of Venice,
10:39all canals leading to the Grand Canal.
10:47The Grand Canal
10:52Throughout the 14th and the 15th centuries,
10:55fabulous Venetian Gothic palaces rose up along the Grand Canal.
11:01It was here that Venice's great traders
11:04would show off their wealth and splendor.
11:09These palaces were all built for merchants,
11:13and they would double as a place of work and a home.
11:17On the ground floor would be the warehouse space for merchandise,
11:22and on the first floor would be the grand living quarters.
11:26But these palaces had new features,
11:29which made them uniquely Venetian.
11:32Every palace had two very different entrances,
11:36one on the water and one on land.
11:39The land entrance was often small
11:42and lost down a dark back passage.
11:45By far the more important was the water entrance.
11:50Doubling as both a ceremonial entrance
11:53and the easiest place to unload merchandise,
11:57the Venetian Gothic palaces
11:59were lavish shows of wealth and power.
12:02The canal facade was most definitely the front of the house.
12:06It had to impress everyone,
12:08from private visitors to business rivals.
12:12Think about it,
12:14every one of these palaces
12:16was the headquarters of a family business.
12:19The facades were a way of representing success.
12:23Quite simply,
12:25the more money you had, the grander your facade.
12:29But as Venice was inclined to show off its wealth more and more,
12:34even the back entrances came in for some extravagant treatment.
12:56This is the Scala del Bobolo,
12:59a site famous all over the world,
13:02not because of the palace, but because of the staircase.
13:10It's a work of art in itself.
13:15Land was scarce in Venice,
13:18and buildings were crowded together,
13:21so light was vital.
13:24The early windows were made like bottle ends,
13:28the round disks held in place by lead.
13:32Venice pioneered the production of window glass,
13:36when other cities had only canvas or rags
13:40to keep out the wind and the rain.
13:43Glass allowed the palazzos to shimmer and shine
13:48in the glory of the Venetian light reflecting off the canals.
14:00One palace more than any other represents Venice.
14:06The Ca' d'Oro.
14:08The name means the house of gold.
14:12And when it was first built,
14:15the facade was covered with glistening gold leaf paint.
14:24The Venetians had started to build their palaces
14:28in the 16th and 17th centuries,
14:32The Venetians had started building their houses
14:36out of mud and straw,
14:39but now they were building them out of gold.
14:43Look how far Venice had come.
14:47The Ca' d'Oro was designed by the architect brothers,
14:52Giovanni and Bartolomeo Bon,
14:55and built during the 1420s for the grand Contarini family,
15:00one of the most respected families in Venice.
15:04They too traded in spices, fabric and dyes.
15:09This would have been their warehouse space.
15:13But what a warehouse!
15:20In the internal courtyard is a well of red marble from Verona,
15:25decorated with the figures of charity, justice and fortitude,
15:31and an intricately carved Moorish-style staircase
15:36that shows us just how eastern-looking
15:40Venetian architecture could be.
15:49It's hard to imagine now, but to a visitor of the 15th century,
15:54the front of this palace might have seemed as if it was built by aliens.
16:00It was the greatest example of Venetian Gothic architecture,
16:05a style that was unique in the world.
16:14The cornulation around the roof is yet another brilliant marriage
16:19of eastern and western elements.
16:22The marble columns were brought from quarries in Greece and Verona,
16:28and the bas-relief panels were looted from buildings
16:32in the far eastern reaches of the Venetian Empire.
16:37Ingredients may have come from far and wide,
16:41but this brilliant confection could only be found on the Grand Canal in Venice.
16:52Through the rise and rise of the merchant class, trade prospered,
16:57and money flowed into Venice.
17:00Money for fine architecture was followed by money spent on fine art.
17:06Artists like Giovanni and Gentile Bellini and Vittorio Carpaccio
17:11emerged as much sought-after men in the life of the city,
17:17and the Venetian authorities recognized art
17:21as another trade to be supported by organized guilds.
17:32This painting by Carpaccio shows life on the Grand Canal in the 15th century.
17:38The crowds pouring across the old wooden Rialto Bridge.
17:42Merchants swagger along the canal's side with all the confidence of princes.
17:48The Grand Canal is teeming with life.
17:51Even on the rooftops, people hang their washing out to dry among the chimney pots.
17:59VENICE
18:08The city's confidence was founded on its empire and its trade routes,
18:14but something terrible was about to hit Venice.
18:18Turkish armies laid siege to Constantinople,
18:24the capital of Byzantium.
18:27For 250 years, the city had been key to Venetian prosperity.
18:34On the 29th of May, 1453,
18:38Sultan Mehmed II's terrified army of Turks marched into Constantinople and took the city.
18:47Venice had lost its most important imperial outpost.
18:52Now the Islamic Ottoman Empire dominated the east.
18:57If Venice was to retain any trading influence in Constantinople,
19:02the Venetians would have to make friends with the Turks.
19:07So who did Venice send to Constantinople?
19:10Not a soldier, not a sailor, not even a politician, but an artist.
19:18By the end of the 15th century, Venice knew that art was its most powerful asset.
19:27They sent the painter Gentile Bellini to win over Sultan Mehmed II.
19:34Gentile had just finished decorating the doge's palace.
19:40He had barely traveled beyond the Venetian lagoon,
19:44but he took with him the secret of Venetian art
19:49and the promise of painting a great portrait of the sultan himself.
19:59With its realism and psychological insight,
20:03this painting was a revelation at the court of the sultan.
20:07The picture bridged the divide between the Christian and Islamic worlds.
20:13Unlike any other major European trading power,
20:17Venice was happy to do business with the non-Christian world.
20:22It was behavior condemned by the Pope.
20:31Father, may I confess?
20:37Father, may I confess?
20:40How long has it been since you last confessed?
20:46I don't remember very well.
20:49Maybe a little over ten years.
20:53As we say in Venice, Venetians first, then Christians.
20:58We are Venetians first, and Christians second.
21:02Art and trade before faith.
21:05But if Venice's secular attitude allowed trade to flourish,
21:10the city knew better than to trust the increasingly expansionist Turks.
21:16So Venice would smile at the East, but be ready for a fight at any moment.
21:24This is the Arsenale, a temple to military and trading power.
21:29Venice's shipbuilding and weapons factory.
21:34The engine that ran the Venetian empire.
21:38It occupied the whole easternmost boundary of the city.
21:43This place was so important that the whole of Venice
21:47kept time according to work hours at the Arsenale.
21:52At sunrise every morning, the bell in the Campanile would ring out across the city,
21:57and thousands of Venetians would make their way to the Arsenale.
22:02The bell is still known as La Marangona, the carpenter,
22:07named after the workers who had half an hour to get to the factory.
22:12Here they worked every hour of daylight
22:15to ensure Venetian trade routes were never threatened.
22:20This place could produce 200 ships in a month.
22:24That's 50 ships in a week, seven per day.
22:29It was the first factory production line in the world.
22:43All this in the second half of the 15th century,
22:48at a time when English carpenters took months just to build one ship.
22:56But something very strange, even wonderful, had happened at the Arsenale.
23:04Just to the left, on the southernmost water entrance,
23:08almost pushed to one side,
23:11is a truly revelatory moment in Venetian architecture.
23:16This is the land gate to the Arsenale, built in 1460.
23:21Its scale is modest, but its look is triumphant.
23:26It is the first classical structure in the city,
23:30its roots firmly in the ancient world of Greece and Rome.
23:38For now, this wonderful gateway would sit here alone,
23:45out of time and out of place in this Gothic city.
23:52But on one fateful night, in 1514,
24:03the opportunity to rebuild Venice was presented in the most terrifying way.
24:12On the 10th of January, 1514, Venice burned.
24:21But how could this be?
24:23Fighting fires in Venice should be easy.
24:26There is water everywhere.
24:29Alas, Venice was in the grip of winter.
24:35The canals were frozen solid.
24:38The city burned for 24 hours.
24:42The whole of the Rialto, Venice's commercial center, was destroyed.
24:48This was the great fire of Venice, a tragedy,
24:53but also a great opportunity.
24:55They would have to rebuild, and there was a choice, Gothic or classical.
25:08And the choice was classical.
25:10Out of the tragedy would come triumphalism.
25:14And one of its most famous monuments, the Rialto Bridge.
25:20The old wooden bridge had to be replaced.
25:25Now, this important thoroughfare,
25:28linking the commercial heart of the Rialto
25:31to the political heart of San Marco,
25:34would be a monument to permanence and power.
25:45An architectural competition was held,
25:48attracting the best of Italian architects.
25:51Even Michelangelo entered.
25:54But Venice, being Venice, would choose one of its own
25:58to build the emblem of the new age.
26:02Michelangelo's design was thrown out,
26:05and the job was given to a little-regarded architect
26:09who'd done some of the best of Italian architecture.
26:14He did some repair work for the doge, Antonio da Ponte.
26:19And just like everything else in Venice,
26:22the design was fueled by trade.
26:25With the shops that lined it,
26:27the bridge became an extension of the Rialto market itself.
26:32The winning design had one giant single span
26:35of over 90 feet across the canal.
26:38Above it, a classical arcade of finest white marble from Istria,
26:43meeting at the middle in a great arch.
26:50The enormous weight of the bridge
26:52is supported by more than 12,000 wooden stakes,
26:56sunk into the shifting ground on either side.
27:02From far, the Rialto Bridge appears so gentle, so light.
27:09But as nearer you go, and you feel the power of the stones.
27:15When they built it,
27:17they had to strengthen the both sides for 100 metres.
27:22It's incredible, after 500 years,
27:25it's like the first day, it's perfect.
27:30It's strange, but...
27:34it's always an emotion to pass under,
27:38like it was the first time.
27:44Oh!
27:49And after 500 years, it's still perfect.
27:55And after 500 years, it's still perfect.
27:59Same stones.
28:01The angels on the sides.
28:06Because a bridge is something against nature,
28:10and you have to put yourself in the angels' hands.
28:18For Da Ponte, it was over.
28:21The Rialto Bridge is one monument to posterity,
28:25but already a battle had begun for the architectural soul of Venice.
28:33Just as Venice had made the Gothic its own,
28:36so it would reinterpret classicism.
28:40It would be a battle of architects.
28:43But whose classicism would win?
28:48A charismatic man who made his buildings rich and ornate.
28:54This is Andrea Palladio.
28:56He was clever, but he knew it.
28:59His designs were monumental.
29:02The story of their rivalry would take Venice to new heights of beauty,
29:08but it would come at a difficult time for the Republic.
29:13Let me explain.
29:15The Republic of Venice was losing power.
29:18It needed to feel solid, lasting, impenetrable.
29:23So Sansovino and Palladio were trying to rebuild it as a great ancient city.
29:29And classical architecture gave the feeling of order and security to Venice.
29:39Ciao.
29:45Ciao.
29:51Andrea Palladio was a brilliant scholar of ancient architecture.
29:58But his designs were too bold for the conservative Venetians.
30:05Palladio was frequently rejected in favour of Jacopo Sansovino,
30:11an outgoing, healthy leading man who was fond of cucumbers.
30:16With his charm, Sansovino had quickly found favour with the Venetian establishment.
30:25Sansovino was successful, popular and well-to-do.
30:30Sansovino was successful, popular and well-connected.
30:34By 1529, he was employed as the superintendent of works for St. Mark's Square and the Doge's Palace.
30:46The chief architect of Venice.
30:49His buildings were certainly bold,
30:52but their elaborate facades seemed to the authorities to complement the older Venetian Gothic.
31:04It looked as though Palladio's cause was hopeless.
31:08But fate, or incompetence, would intervene.
31:13While Palladio struggled to get work in Venice,
31:16Sansovino started the building that would dominate his life.
31:20It would make him imprisoned and bankrupt.
31:23But at the end it was a triumph.
31:25It was the library of St. Mark.
31:38This is classicism, following the rules of ancient Rome,
31:42with its fine Doric arcade below and Ionic upper storey.
31:51But it is classicism with a Venetian flourish,
31:55hailed in the city as the richest, most ornate building since antiquity.
32:03It's as though Sansovino was playing to his audience.
32:07Confident of Venice's love of ornate decoration,
32:11he covered the building with fine detail,
32:14putting the frieze and graceful figures on the balustrade.
32:26But Sansovino had got carried away.
32:30On the 18th of December, 1545, disaster struck.
32:35A grand floor vault over the main hall collapsed,
32:39bringing down the floor above it.
32:45Sansovino was thrown into jail.
32:58Sansovino had fallen from grace,
33:01from superstar architect to common criminal.
33:05He had blamed the collapse of the building on frost
33:09and the gunfire from a nearby ship,
33:12but the authorities held him personally responsible.
33:18Sansovino was made to pay for the rebuilding himself.
33:22It took him 25 years.
33:25At last, the time had come for the radical vision of Andrea Palladio.
33:56This is the church of San Francisco della Vigna.
34:00The interior was designed by Sansovino,
34:04but the exterior was given to Andrea Palladio,
34:08the new star of Venetian architecture.
34:12Quite simply, Palladio has taken all Sansovino has done,
34:19and he made it bigger and bolder.
34:26This building, more than any other,
34:29signalled the fall of Sansovino and the rise of Palladio.
34:37Palladio brought something entirely new to Venice.
34:44He took the classicism of Rome and made it even greater.
34:50His buildings felt as though they would last forever,
34:54and whatever their size,
34:56his structures seemed enormous, monumentali.
35:07But perhaps Palladio's greatest work
35:10is the monastery and church of San Giorgio Maggiore.
35:15When this was built, it shocked and astonished the Venetians.
35:20The huge columns, the triangular porticoes,
35:24were like nothing they had ever seen.
35:27And even if they didn't like it,
35:30they would have turned their heads and screamed,
35:33looking down from the top of the tower.
35:37Inside, Palladio even incorporates his love
35:41of circular, ancient temples.
35:44This is one of the most beautiful buildings in Venice.
35:48It was built in the 11th century,
35:51and it was built in the 11th century.
35:54It was built in the 11th century,
35:57and it was built in the 11th century.
36:00It was built in the 11th century,
36:03with the help of circular ancient temples,
36:06by planning the church's shape
36:09around a huge dome
36:12placed exactly at the center of the building.
36:33With this and other churches in Venice, Palladio was at last hailed as the architectural genius
36:50of the age.
37:02Palladio's great triumphs allowed Venetians to take refuge in the look of their city.
37:08But they could not master reality.
37:10The foundations of Venice's success were crumbling away.
37:14In 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama had rounded the Cape of Good Hope at
37:22the tip of Africa.
37:25It would change the trading map of the world.
37:28It created a new trade route by ship to the east, to India, China, and Central Asia.
37:36A faster and cheaper route, a route that bypassed Venice.
37:44Venice had been the gateway to the east, but the trade routes were largely across land.
37:51Often the terrain was dangerous and difficult, and a camel train could only carry a fraction
37:57of the goods that could go by ship.
38:01The news of Vasco da Gama's discovery travelled fast.
38:06There was now little point in European traders using Venice as a stop-off, or even an intermediary
38:15trading post.
38:21When the news hit the Rialto, banks closed overnight.
38:26Venice was a total nightmare.
38:28Almost overnight, Venice was penniless, facing ruin.
38:34They really had to do something to survive, but what they did shocked the rest of the
38:40Christian world.
38:44The Jews were reviled by the Catholic Church.
38:48But at a time when much of Europe was expelling them from its cities, Venice saw the Jews
38:55as great traders and money makers.
38:59Like the Venetians themselves, their trading contacts spread far and wide.
39:06In 1516, Venice set up a Jewish quarter in the city, and before long, Jews arrived from
39:13all over Europe.
39:15They brought money, expertise, and trading contacts.
39:19This is where they had to live, an island at the heart of Venice.
39:26In this island, there was an old forge, and the Venetian word for a forge was ghetto.
39:33This was the first Jewish ghetto in the world, and it gave its name to the concept of captivity
39:40and cruelty that exists still now.
39:44And the marks of the gates are still here.
39:48The Jews were heavily taxed, forced to wear yellow hats as a mark of distinction, and
39:58the gates were locked at nightfall.
40:01The guards on the gates were Christians, paid for by the Jews.
40:07Yet despite their treatment, Venice's Jewish population flourished, and life was better
40:13in Venice than just about anywhere else in Europe.
40:19Venetian Jews were money lenders, pawnbrokers, merchants, doctors, and dealers in second-hand goods.
40:43The ghetto is the place you still come in Venice for second-hand goods.
41:14As the Jewish community expanded, the ghetto grew upwards.
41:21These houses are higher than most Venetian houses, as more floors were added to accommodate
41:28more people.
41:30The windows are so close together because the ceilings are so low.
41:37Many of the buildings were linked internally by passages and staircases, and contain some
41:44of Venice's great hidden treasures.
41:48This is one of four synagogues inside the houses of the ghetto.
41:53It is like no other synagogue in the world.
41:59Jewish architects were forbidden in Venice, so this synagogue was built by a Venetian.
42:06And you can tell, it is typical of the Venetian love of show and wealth, and it feels more
42:16like a theater than a place of worship.
42:24After Vasco da Gama's dramatic discovery, Venice's deal with the Jews brought the city
42:30back from the brink of disaster.
42:33But once again, it rocked Venice's relations with the Catholic Church.
42:39As Venice turned its back on the Church, so did its artists.
42:45One saucy young painter took Venetian painting to a new level of beauty, sexuality, and ungodly
42:53eroticism.
42:58His name was Tiziano Vecelio.
43:02In his lifetime, he was to become Venice's most famous artist.
43:07But his fate would be horribly linked to that of the city.
43:12We know him by the name Tiziano.
43:19This is where Tiziano lived.
43:27His studio was at the end of the garden.
43:30As his fame grew, he entertained scholars, artists, and many of the most beautiful women
43:37in Venice.
43:39Tiziano set a new style for the artist, no longer subservient to religion and the Church.
43:48His friends were free-thinking painters, poets, and philosophers.
43:55People like Veronese, the poet Aretino, and the musician Irene da Spilimbergo.
44:03With Tiziano's circle, the idea of the artist as a romantic figure was born.
44:10Someone who enjoyed life as an individual, free of the dictates of a rich patron.
44:21Tiziano was a Venetian, and like all of us Venetians, trade was in his blood.
44:28He started to see the financial possibilities of his paintings.
44:35Painterly mythologies, allegories, and portraits flowed from his studio, all in his distinctive
44:43style.
44:44He had taken the realistic brushstroke of the Florentine Renaissance artists and given
44:51it a softer, more expressive edge.
45:00Royals and noblemen from all over the world sent agents to Venice to buy Tiziano's paintings.
45:08Kings and princes vied with each other to be painted by the great man, and Tiziano
45:15got rich on the proceeds.
45:19Now art was a commodity to be traded in.
45:23To get rich on, it was fast becoming Venice's most important export.
45:35And among Tiziano's hundreds of sitters were the beautiful women of Venice.
45:42It was in the representations of these women as Venus that Tiziano was to take art and
45:49Venice to a deeply immoral place it had never been before.
45:55Like his portraits, his nudes celebrate life in a new, secular way.
46:04His bodies are real.
46:05They have a feeling of a real flesh, of a carnale.
46:13One painting more than any shows the spirit of the age.
46:18Tiziano had been commissioned by the Duke of Urbino's son to paint an image of Venus.
46:25This was the result of the commission, the Venus of Urbino.
46:31The nude had appeared in art for many centuries before, and the nudes of the Renaissance had
46:38become erotic icons.
46:41But there was something in the figures that was chaste.
46:45They closed their eyes or looked away from the gaze of the viewer.
46:50But the Venus of Urbino was different.
46:53She looked straight at the viewer.
46:56In an earlier painting by Tiziano's teacher, Giorgione, the goddess of love, touches herself,
47:04but her eyes are closed.
47:07She's in her own world.
47:13As her hand creeps between her legs, acknowledging her sex, Tiziano makes Venus look straight
47:21at us.
47:22It is what made this the most shocking and astonishing picture of its time.
47:28No other nude had ever stared out at the viewer.
47:41Venice's relationship with the Catholic Church had been already taken to the limit.
47:46But now Tiziano and a new group of artists went too far with their own Christian art.
47:52The Church was already unhappy about Tiziano's seductive painting, The Assumption of the
47:58Virgin, in the Friary Church.
48:03But the paintings of Tiziano's friend, Paolo Veronese, scandalized the authorities.
48:11This is the Church of San Sebastiano, almost entirely decorated by Veronese.
48:17But his versions of traditional Christian scenes were scandalously modern.
48:23Veronese makes no effort to depict religious scenes in their traditional surroundings.
48:29He moved historical figures from one scene to another, with little respect for religious
48:35history.
48:37He introduces humorous and irreverent details.
48:43In this painting, The Fist at Cana, he even had the audacity to portray Venetian painters
48:49as the musicians entertaining Christ.
48:53The bearded bass viola player on the right, wearing red, is Tiziano.
48:59The musician in white, to the left, is Veronese himself.
49:04Veronese was brilliant, and the Church wanted brilliant paintings.
49:09But he was teasing them with his irreverent work.
49:13And when he was commissioned to paint The Last Supper in 1573, he pushed the tolerance
49:20of the Catholic Church one step too far.
49:28Veronese's painting of The Last Supper was considered deeply blasphemous.
49:34And he incurred the wrath of the Vatican's secret police, the Inquisition.
49:41The Church condemned the painting for showing buffoons, drunkards, dwarfs, and similar vulgarities.
49:54Veronese was forced to change the name and subject of the picture to The Fist at the
50:00House of Levi.
50:08But Venetian artists wouldn't stop breaking Catholic laws.
50:13The poet Aretino defied the Pope by publishing a set of pornographic prints already banned
50:21by the Vatican.
50:25Venetian's friend, Aretino, wrote a sonnet to accompany each image.
50:55These artists were sacrilegious, but they saw their art as more important than anything
51:17else.
51:18Ultimately, Venice would pay the price.
51:24During its golden age, Venice committed ungodly acts.
51:29As the city's population reached an all-time high, Titian and his friends might have gone
51:34too far.
51:35And on the evening of the 25th of June of 1575, it seemed that the vengeance of the
51:47most biblical kind was delivered upon the city and its most famous artist.
51:58Titian and Venice were struck by the plague.
52:01The disease spread like wildfire through the city.
52:07And for the Venetians, it seemed like a punishment from God, or worse, a punishment from God
52:14ordered by the Pope.
52:17The symptoms were severe chills, vomiting of blood, and huge boils that would form a
52:25black crust when they burst.
52:29If you were lucky, you died within the day.
52:35If you were unlucky, you might live on in agony for a week.
52:46Venetian plague doctors patrolled the alleys and canals with only capes and snout-nosed
52:52masks full of paper for protection.
52:59The plague has had a massive impact on the history of Venice.
53:04This is a traveler's city, and disease has traveled to and from it many times.
53:12But it was from the East that it first came.
53:16The route that brought Venice its riches would also be the route that brought so much death.
53:35Victims were dying by the hundreds every day.
53:42Criminals were freed from the city's prisons to deal with the corpses and ferry the ill.
53:51And with the city overflowing with the dead, there was only one place to take them, the
54:07lagoon.
54:14All around would be death, galleys full of dying people, guarded by warships, to make
54:22sure no one escaped.
54:27Those who did try to escape would be hung over the water.
54:34This was the victim's destination, the old plague hospital of Lazzaretto Vecchio.
54:45The island is now home to no one but a pack of stray dogs, wild like the souls of the
54:53dead.
55:05Someone unfortunate enough to experience this hell wrote about what he saw.
55:12The stench was unbearable.
55:15The air filled with the groans and pained sighs of the dying.
55:21The smoke rising from the burned bodies of the dead.
55:27The sick were placed three or four to a bed.
55:32In agony, unable to speak from the pain they were suffering, they were thrown onto cars
55:38piled up with corpses.
55:45For two years they were brought here and they died in their thousands, their tens of thousands.
55:55Most of the bodies were burned here.
56:00Only the dead of the noble families were taken away and even they didn't get any marked graves.
56:14But in the deeper reaches of the lagoon lies Venice's true island of the dead.
56:28The plague dead of Venice's noble families were taken to the island of Sant'Aviano.
56:35Here they were not burned but buried in shallow mass graves where they lie to this day.
56:50The only victim to get a marked grave was Dician himself.
56:59On this island lie the remains of all the other nobles who died.
57:10Fragments of human bones everywhere.
57:16We'll never know who these people were.
57:22Maybe friends of our ancestors.
57:32Childs that lost their chance of life.
57:40Maybe death was the end of sufferance.
57:44Who knows?
57:56Over a repositing patch.
58:02At the height of the plague 51,000 had died.
58:07Almost a third of the population of Venice.
58:17From her place at the center of the world Venice had fallen.
58:23Now she was a city to avoid.
58:27It seemed like it was the end for Venice.
58:31But the city would make a comeback.
58:35A comeback of the most surprising kind.