Tim Marlow TV - Art of the Heist TV -
The artist they saw as their father figure began his life as a humble shepherd boy. A painter whose brush brought the Bible to life, and made art seem more substantial, more real. For many the story of Western art starts here. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e1: Giotto, Sky Arts 2003
The realistic treatment of human figures, expressions and in particular tangible spaces were significant developments in art. ibid.
Giotto’s emphasis is on story-telling; his paintings are human dramas; his settings have a believable feel. ibid.
In January 1337 at the age of 70 Giotto died, to be buried with almost state-like funeral in the cathedral here. ibid.
Giotto had transformed religious art, infusing painting with a new naturalism and solidity, and creating something of the illusion of pictorial space. It was his revolutionary vision that laid the foundations for the next generation – the artists of the Italian Renaissance. ibid.
Adored by poets, plagiarised by artists, parodied by critics and even stolen by an Italian workman – the most famous painting in the world by the most celebrated artist in the world – Leonardo da Vinci. A man who completed barely twenty pictures but whose influence was immense. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e2: Leonardo
The Last Supper was commissioned in 1495. ibid.
Durer was born into an exciting age of invention and discovery. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e3: Durer
The output was varied – portraits and religious images, alter-pieces and stained-glass windows, but at the core were his woodcuts and engravings. ibid.
Durer’s drawings of new and different species were among the first to be made. ibid.
Durer’s achievements were vast. ibid.
Michelangelo is probably the most potent sculpture who ever wielded a chisel. He was also a great painter and architect too. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e4: Michelangelo
In 1496 Michelangelo decided to try his luck here in Rome. ibid.
His first commission in Rome: Baccus. It’s a garden statue. ibid.
It’s a heroic celebration of human form. And in many ways David perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the renaissance. ibid.
He found it hard to reconcile his homosexuality with his love of God. ibid.
His peers called divine. ibid.
For centuries Raphael’s painting was held to be the most complete expression of the values of the Italian Renaissance. While his older contemporaries sought to re-produce Nature, Raphael sought nurture and an idealised vision of the world. He was a sensualist whose work was graceful and harmonious, and for many in his world came closest to visual perfection. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e5: Raphael
One subject among all others – the Madonna and child. ibid.
Raphael continued to thrive in Rome. He was universally admired for his painting and also for his manners. ibid.
For the next four centuries in many respects Raphael was the dominant figure in western art. ibid.
By 1514 ... Titian established his own workshop. His artistic rivals had either left Venice, grown old or been struck by the plague. Allowing his workshop quickly to become one of the most successful in town. Titian had painted a number of commissions in churches but in 1516 he got a big commission that established his reputation throughout Venice and beyond ... The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e6: Titian
Everyone wanted Titian to paint in their churches. ibid.
One of the reasons for Titian’s swift rise to celebrity was his large and varied output. ibid.
By his early thirties Titian was well established as the leading Venetian artist. ibid.
He turns paint itself into something life flesh. ibid.
An increasingly loose and liberated style. ibid.
In northern Europe another less heroic but equally dramatic vision was being forged. Pieter Bruegel’s world is filed with the mundane and the macabre. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e7: Bruegel
His interest in the everyday was epic in itself. ibid.
He deliberately rejected the Italian style. ibid.
Cheaper than oil paintings, prints had a wider market ... and gave him a steady source of income. ibid.
Bruegel’s fame and success continued to grow in Antwerp. ibid.
The Massacre of the Innocents is a Biblical story set in a contemporary Flemish village. ibid.
The Peasant Wedding Feast ... We see individual faces ... People are eating; they are eating voraciously. ibid.
On his deathbed in order to protect his family he ordered his wife to destroy any paintings in the house which might be politically dangerous. Still only in his early forties Bruegel died in 1569. The painter’s popularity continued to grow after his death. ibid.
Bruegel founded a whole tradition of low-life paintings in the Netherlands. ibid.
El Greco was a sixteenth-century maverick. A curious figure full of contradictions. He was a devout and orthodox Catholic but a radical artist. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e8: El Greco
By the time he was twenty-five El Greco had established himself, decorating churches and painting alter-pieces. ibid.
Peter Paul Rubens: the Flemish painter sought by popes and princes, saints and the odd sinner, in order to embellish the walls and ceilings of their palaces and churches, and to polish up the odd ego. He put the voluptuous female form right at the heart of western art. He used it as a vehicle to express everything from desire to human destiny. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e9: Rubens
But above all by the Venetian painter Titian, whose luminous use of colour and free use of brush strokes was to have a profound effect on the young artist. ibid.
But it’s the theatricality that strikes the strongest chord. The dramatic use of light and colour which formed part of an emerging style known as the Baroque. And Rubens became its grandest exponent. ibid.
In 1611 Rubens was commissioned ... to design an altar piece for a chapel in the transept of the cathedral here in Antwerp. And the result was one of the most spectacular paintings in the history of sacred art: it’s called the Descent from the Cross, and shows Christ’s limp lifeless body being taken down from the wooden cross into the arms of St John. ibid.
London also gave Rubens the chance to paint on a grand scale when he was asked by Charles I to decorate the new Banqueting House being designed by Inigo Jones. ibid.
An artist who transformed both the image of seventeenth-century Spanish Royal court and the process of painting itself. With a degree of realism that had never been seen before. Diego Velazquez de Silva was born in Seville in 1599. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e10: Velazquez
The competition itself was quite complex; it involved a commission to paint a painting for the Alcazar Palace that showed Philip III, Philip IV’s father, expelling the Moors from Spain. There were three other court painters involved ... There could only be one winner. ibid.
During the 1630s portraits of the king and the royal family formed the chief part of Velázquez’s work. ibid.
It’s unprecedented to show the painter and the royal subjects in the same image. ibid.
Rembrandt’s is perhaps the most familiar face in Western art. He painted, sketched and etched it over and over again as a way of exploring the range of human expression and emotion, and as a way of chronicling a life lived and a body growing old. More than any other artist Rembrandt makes us aware of our own mortality. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e11: Rembrandt
There were over seventy-five self-portraits made ... About 10% of Rembrandt’s total output. ibid.
He was a popular master and had numerous paying apprentices. But despite his increasing success and recognition, his experience on the home front was tragic. ibid.
Rembrandt’s vision and genius as an artist was undeniable. But his powerfully psychological portraits began to draw some criticism. ibid.
He was particularly demanding of his sitters. ibid.