[Claps hands] ♪ [Sighs] I can still see it.

[Crowd chatter, footsteps] Easter Sunday, during mass.

[Crowd laughter] My earliest memory carved into my mind.

♪ Our Lorenzo de' Medici ordered the assassins be hunted down like dogs.

My father lifted me up on his shoulders so I could see.

[Crowd shouting, booing] And what I saw was just what de' Medici vengeance looked like.

[Crowd booing] Arrgh!

Even before I held a chisel in my hand, I knew that this world was not one of beauty and creation alone... but also of blood and betrayal.

[Noose rope creaks] This was the world into which I was born.

♪ DAPHNE: The Renaissance is usually regarded as this beautiful period where everything is golden and shiny.

But there is another side to it.

[Crowd shouting] JERRY: It's endlessly bloody and conflicted and violent.

And that's what the art responds to.

The art feeds off that.

♪ SARAH: Art is propaganda in the Renaissance.

Images are extraordinarily powerful.

In that respect, it's actually very modern.

LESLIE: This is really the age where patrons realize the power of art.

And once you start to mix art and money, then it's a lethal cocktail.

♪ Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, they are really the first superstar artists.

♪ I am Michelangelo Buonarroti, artist and an old fool.

ANTONY: He lived for his art.

But it was almost like his vocation was a sentence.

♪ MICHELANGELO: I've had so many paymasters.

Bankers and princes, cardinals and popes.

But what I did was always in the service of God and in the pursuit of perfection.

JERRY: Two things go hand in hand in the Renaissance.

A ruthlessness in politics and a true belief in the power of art.

But to really understand the Renaissance, you have to tell the whole story.

♪ ♪ [Bells ringing, birds singing, crowd chatter] ♪ MICHELANGELO: By God's providence, I was born a Florentine.

So that one of her own citizens could bring to absolute perfection the achievements for which... she was already justly renowned.

Woman: 15th-century Florence is famous for banking, trade, and above all, the skill of its artists.

♪ It's one of a multitude of city states which make up the Italian peninsula, ruled by dukes, princes, and popes.

All of them in a near constant state of war.

JERRY: The Italian peninsula's like a massive chess board with city states all vying for power.

Different cities at this time are defined through different things.

So, Venice is connected to trade with the east.

Milan, very much, you know, a sort of powerhouse of northern militarism.

Florence is different.

[Crowd chatter] Woman: Florence is the richest, with a reputation as the cultural capital of Europe.

Florence is popping.

Art is flourishing.

And art becomes a synonym of the city and an incredibly profitable trade.

It becomes the thing that everybody envies.

MICHELANGELO: I love Florence.

[Chuckles] We had more artists than butchers.

Though some would have made better butchers, truth be told.

[Chuckles] LESLIE: The artists themselves aren't exalted in the way that we exalt them now.

They were still, in fact, mostly treated as craftspeople and were expected to act like tradesmen.

Woman: For Michelangelo's family, the job of artist is a lowly ambition.

WILLIAM: They come from an aristocratic family, so an artist is at the very lowest social station in a very hierarchical society.

There's a story about Michelangelo drawing on his kitchen wall and his father beating him and this is probably true.

His father absolutely would not want him to become an artist.

MICHELANGELO: This was my destiny.

God brought me into the world to show with these hands how man might attain the perfection of art, mm.

♪ Woman: Stubborn and determined, the teenage Michelangelo defies his father and lands a prestigious apprenticeship in the San Marco Sculpture Garden in Florence.

When I entered that garden and saw the works there and... savored their beauty...

I never wanted to leave.

I would stay all day there... wrapped in my studies.

♪ WILLIAM: All artists learn by copying.

You start by copying sculpture, you start by copying still things that aren't gonna move.

♪ Once he started drawing, Michelangelo was an immensely talented draftsman.

LESLIE: It's quite clear from early on that he was quite gifted.

It does show the shape of things to come.

As a boy, I could draw better than I do now.

[Scoffs] There was little any teacher might have taught me.

WILLIAM: Michelangelo has a very high regard of his abilities from a very, very early age.

LESLIE: He's also known to criticize other students about what they are doing and how they could do it better.

This doesn't win him any friends.

[Punch] ♪ I did nothing to warrant that boy's violent outburst.

He could control neither his charcoal nor his fists.

Ignorant worm.

♪ Woman: Competition among the young artists is fierce, because of all the sculpture studios in Florence... this one belongs to the wealthiest and most powerful patron in the city.

MICHELANGELO: Not just Florence but all the arts owe a great debt to one man who understood the virtue and the value of art better than anybody else.

Lorenzo de' Medici, The Magnificent.

Il Magnifico, as he was known.

♪ Woman: Lorenzo is head of the vastly wealthy Medici family, who ruled Florence for decades.

JERRY: They're one of the most powerful families in Europe.

They are the preeminent bankers in Europe.

They'd made their money through innovations in finance and commerce.

They're developing bills of exchange which are our equivalent to paper money.

This is really the seeds of what we would call early capitalism.

The Medici wielding all this power can be seen a little bit as a mafioso family during the Renaissance.

Nothing moved in that city without Medici approval.

♪ Woman: Lorenzo has amassed a vast private art collection.

He also commissions new work.

He himself talks about the way in which he's invested the equivalent of tens of millions into the arts.

And he says this is worth it because all of the great patrons in this period know you spin your politics through art.

Back then they don't have the exposure to images that we have today, so when you walk into a church and you see this incredible painting, it stays with you.

And it's telling a story about who holds the power in that society.

Lorenzo de' Medici really understands the power of images and understands how to use them.

And art is one of the central ways in which he promotes the greatness of Florence and the greatness of the Medici.

DAPHNE: The Medici understand the value of art.

But not just that.

They also have taste.

They love beauty and they love talent.

And so they foster it.

♪ MICHELANGELO: Now, here was a man unique in all qualities of excellence to whom I owe such a great debt of gratitude.

♪ Lorenzo saw my ambitious nature.

He had high hopes for me.

He provided for me... a room in his house... and treated me like a son.

♪ DAPHNE: Lorenzo falls in love with Michelangelo's art and his talent.

All of a sudden, he is part of the family.

♪ Woman: In the Medici household, Michelangelo is schooled in radical new ideas.

For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church has dominated the way art is made and what it can represent.

But Michelangelo is born at a moment when all that is beginning to change.

Scholars from the east fleeing war and persecution arrive in Italy, bringing with them ancient texts and new ideas.

LESLIE: The Renaissance is in fact the rebirth.

That's what it means, or rinascimento in Italian.

It means rebirth, and the rebirth is of the classical ancient world.

♪ Woman: The rediscovery of the pagan pre-Christian world is liberating and shocking.

Statues of Greek and Roman gods, idealized human forms, and ideas that focus on the human over the divine.

Books are coming in through Constantinople of Plato, of Aristotle, of Quintillion, of all these other Greco-Roman writers literally kind of flooding the market.

And Florence is one of the first places that they hit.

It's an immense period of excitement.

Florence is like the Silicon Valley of the Renaissance.

This is a moment where everything comes together.

Money, power, new ideas.

And Lorenzo de' Medici is right at the heart of that.

Nowhere else in Europe at that time do you have that many people with money, with aspirations, trying to achieve something cultural.

And I think those two things together explain why the Renaissance grows out of Italy.

♪ Woman: Alongside collecting ancient art, Lorenzo collects new talent.

He uses his stable of artists to glorify himself and to be exchanged as a powerful commodity.

He's sending works of art.

He's even sending artists off to other city states for diplomatic purposes.

♪ JERRY: Artists are being used in a really astute way by Lorenzo, as sort of pawns in a wider geo-political game.

And he's very good at it.

Woman: Lorenzo identifies a Florentine artist down on his luck and looking for patronage.

He's 23 years older than Michelangelo and his name is Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo has his workshop in Florence.

He has a few commissions.

He's trying to get traction but he's not quite able to.

He's kind of late in finishing his commissions, and sometimes he doesn't finish them at all.

ILARIA: He doesn't have a formal training, but he insists this is not an obstacle to being a good artist.

He thinks of himself as someone who studies nature first.

He calls himself a "disciple of experience."

JERRY: He's part of a crowded market.

There are a lot of artists vying for attention.

He's by no means seen as somebody who is the great genius.

[Water splashes] Woman: Lorenzo sees an opportunity.

He introduces Leonardo to the Duke of Milan and in the process makes a useful alliance for himself.

MICHELANGELO: Leonardo was restless.

No wonder money was hard to come by, but to turn, of all places, to Milan and that Milanese barbarian, Ludovico Sforza.

Huh!

♪ Woman: Ludovico Sforza ruled the state of Milan with an iron fist.

But his position is tenuous.

He is the regent, so will only stay in power until his nephew, the rightful heir, comes of age.

SARAH: Quite a lot of these city states have kind of bullyboy families that have clubbed and stabbed their way into power.

Those families were walking a precipice a lot of the time.

Woman: Sforza has built a reputation as a ruthless ruler.

But he has enemies on all sides.

As the northernmost Italian state, Milan faces a threat from the Kingdom of France to the northwest, and constant aggression from rival states to the south.

Leonardo knows that the Duke of Milan is always in battle, fighting the other Italian city states.

And so, he realizes that the best way to get a job is not to say, I can paint Madonnas but instead say, I can make weapons of war.

♪ Ends up writing what may be the best job application letter in history.

It's, "Hey, I'm a really good engineer, so, if you want "somebody who understands warfare, "if you want somebody who can build you a cannon, I'm your man."

He only mentions the fact that, "Yeah, I can decorate all your palaces, too" at the end of the letter.

JERRY: I think Sforza gets exactly what he wants.

And especially at that point, when it's looking like the whole peninsula is just gonna explode into war.

♪ Leonardo joins Sforza's court in Milan and pleases his patron with everything from war machines to theatrical stage sets.

He's also given free rein to immerse himself in study and invention and to enjoy the intellectual freedom of Renaissance ideas.

ILARIA: Like many other Renaissance artists, Leonardo really is starting to look at things with new eyes.

♪ JERRY: People like Leonardo are reading text, which is saying, look at the world around you.

Look at the natural world.

Look at the body that we are given.

Look at the heavens around you.

Study them, analyze them.

Now, for an artist, this is just, this is catnip, this is brilliant.

WALTER: He's doing experiments, studying mathematics and applying it to art.

He's understanding perspective.

He studied how the wings of birds move up and down.

He's dissecting human corpses.

His curiosity and his talents are so broad.

He has the mind of a kind of magpie on speed.

ILARIA: Of course, a court artist has small commissions that he has to do in order to please the Duke.

And one of them is the portrait of Ludovico's lover.

♪ Leonardo takes the opportunity of painting this portrait to show what he has learned.

♪ Leonardo has this theory that the body reacts to the emotions and moves accordingly.

It is the portrait of a reaction.

Not an action but a reaction.

You feel that Ludovico Sforza has just opened the door to see his mistress.

And you see her twisting.

You see the mind moving and you can almost feel the body moving.

You can almost feel what she's thinking.

♪ ILARIA: The ermine represents Ludovico.

He sits on her lap and is stroked by her, this beautiful animal.

This is an act of intimacy between the two lovers.

WALTER: Lady with an Ermine is an absolute breakthrough in art.

Suddenly, paintings aren't just two-dimensional, flat things.

He's making it into a narrative.

Suddenly the artist is not just somebody turning out a commission as a tradesperson would.

It's an artist expressing himself.

There's a magical aura, I think, which is starting to build up around the artist.

So, we have Leonardo, he will make extraordinary things for us.

♪ Woman: Word reaches Florence of Leonardo's success in Milan.

For the young Michelangelo, this sets the bar for what an artist can achieve.

Leonardo da Vinci, hmm.

A man to admire, yes.

When I first saw his work, I was astonished.

He could capture beauty and grace like no other.

He had a mind for innovation.

My path was very different to his.

Not to remake the world but to capture the essence of God's creation.

Woman: But the young Michelangelo is yet to make anything for a paying patron.

♪ For now, he's the favorite apprentice in Lorenzo's household, and mixing with some of the greatest thinkers of the day.

And this is another thing Lorenzo de' Medici is collecting.

He's collecting intellectuals.

These are the most brilliant people of their time.

I would say that two years in the Medici household is something like an entire Oxford education.

MICHELANGELO: I grew up in Lorenzo's household.

I joined his table.

At which as befits such a man, personages of the highest nobility were seated every day.

LESLIE: Around the table is Poliziano.

Agnolo Poliziano is the preeminent scholar of his day.

So therefore, you're getting in with the big boys, as it were.

It's more than likely that Poliziano was, in fact, homosexual.

♪ WILLIAM: Living in the Medici household and being surrounded by these people, just probably allowing Michelangelo the freedom and the liberation to explore his own sexuality, which is probably confused at this moment.

But nonetheless, he has a proclivity to, an interest in, in homosexual relations.

Michelangelo is gay.

I'll, I'll just say it.

[Laughs] Historical records tell us that same-sex relationships, homosexuality was very widespread in Florence at the time.

If you really venerate Greek culture and Roman culture and you've noticed that they also think that men and boys are incredibly beautiful, it does give you that legitimacy that it's more highbrow than people might like to think it is because the ancient Greeks were doing it.

But Michelangelo is deeply conflicted because he was deeply devout, as most people were.

Sodomy was one of the great sins of the church.

People were actually executed for this.

There was a whole office called Officers of the Night who would condemn these people.

The Office for the Night gets some really big names to their tally.

Leonardo da Vinci is accused; no charges are brought.

Up to half of all Florentine men are being accused of homosexuality throughout the 15th century.

So, I imagine Michelangelo not really understanding what on earth was going on there.

Understanding the beauty and appreciating it but also being really scared for his soul.

♪ Woman: While in the Medici household, Michelangelo is given his first chance to carve the male body in stone.

♪ LESLIE: What Michelangelo is doing is thinking about the male form.

What we see is bodies writhing and enmeshed together.

They're all entangled in a bit of a mess.

It's hard to unpick which one's legs belong to which one's arms.

♪ Michelangelo is fascinated by the structure of men's bodies and how to reproduce them in a classical way.

♪ For me, the Battle of the Centaurs and those rippling muscles under the skin but also in the interlocking of bodies, one to the other, is this energetic flow.

And he manages to make the body into a vehicle of God's work.

KATE: God made man in his image.

Not woman.

Woman was made from a bit of man.

But man was made in God's image.

God must have a body like a man, therefore the male body is also holy and spiritual and beautiful and deserving of worship.

♪ Renaissance artists return to it again and again and again.

This beautifully sculptured, buffed body.

All beautifully in proportion, the face in proportion.

Because to be perfect brings you closer to God.

Now, I don't say this to boast.

I'm a modest man.

But I did do it well.

This was my destiny.

♪ Woman: In Milan, Leonardo's patron Ludovico Sforza is tightening his grip on power.

♪ He has the rightful heir, his own nephew, poisoned... and takes permanent control.

He has to justify his power.

He has to solidify his power.

He's gotten there by all sorts of nefarious means.

It's not some great hereditary dukedom.

Woman: Sforza knows an effective ruler needs not just brute force but propaganda.

He wants art that shows Milan and the rest of the world he's a ruler to be reckoned with.

So, he commissions his in-house artist Leonardo to make him a magnificent public statue to glorify the Sforza name.

For the Sforza, it's about a big, commanding display.

To have an iconic image of an imperial figure on a big, rearing horse, that's very Greco-Roman.

It's very in your face.

It says, I'm gonna trample all over you.

Sforza wanted more than flattery.

He wanted art to rival a Roman emperor.

[Laughs] What a piece of work it could have been!

The colossus.

He wants it to be 8 meters tall.

[Laughs] And it's 70 tons of bronze.

It's a monster.

♪ WALTER: Leonardo does incredible drawings that show the legs, the faces of each horse.

He even dissects some horses, so he can see the muscles underneath the skin.

JERRY: How you cast that in bronze is an unbelievably difficult challenge.

Nobody's done it before.

You start by making a clay model.

This is what Leonardo creates.

People talk about it and say it's the most amazing thing that they've ever seen.

And it's exciting for the Sforza because Ludovico can think I'm gonna get something that nobody else has got.

But politics intervenes.

For years, France has been eyeing Italy's wealth and tensions are escalating.

Milan sits at the gateway to Italy and Sforza sees an opportunity.

He makes a powerplay.

JERRY: Sforza thinks he can do a deal with the French which would make the Milanese basically powerbrokers in Italy.

But it's an incredibly dangerous game.

He invites the French to effectively invade, and it wreaks havoc.

The French basically just push their way right through central Italy and the Sforza just can't control it.

Ludovico needs the bronze that he's allocated for the statue for munitions.

So, Leonardo has it literally snatched out of his hand.

Leonardo's just then left with the clay cast.

And eventually, when the French get to town, they use it for target practice with their arrows, so it gets destroyed.

Poor Leonardo.

[Sighs] Must have crushed him to realize his horse would never be cast in bronze, hmm.

Still, it brought him even greater fame.

I hoped one day it might be my name that everyone spoke of.

♪ [Bell rings] But then my chance of making something of myself was suddenly diminished.

Lorenzo the Magnificent departed this life.

♪ Michelangelo is bereft at the death of Lorenzo, his patron, his benefactor, his friend.

♪ Woman: Lorenzo's son Piero succeeds him, but he is a hopeless ruler.

And it becomes clear that beneath the glittering façade, the city's coffers are empty.

There's a sense in which Florence has had this amazing, sort of flowering of art, of culture, of conspicuous consumption.

And suddenly it really comes to an end with Lorenzo's death.

For decades, the Medici had been lending to increasingly profligate European rulers and princes and emperors.

Well, those people aren't gonna repay you.

[Laughs] And that's what's happened.

It's all become, sort of, completely out of control.

What you're left with is a political vacuum and also a, a sort of moral vacuum.

It was only a matter of time before the people turned against the Medici.

And Piero had his father's name but none of his charisma, none of his virtue.

He just was not capable of guiding Florence through the gathering storm.

♪ Woman: Into the vacuum steps a religious zealot, Girolamo Savonarola.

♪ He's come to Florence to take a stand against sin and excess, and his sermons are hypnotizing large crowds.

♪ MICHELANGELO: I've seen him preach.

[Scoffs] He, he was a, a powerful, frightening speaker.

After all these years, the memory of that vivid voice remains in my mind.

♪ FR.

MICHAEL: He's a high-pitched voice.

His accent from Ferrara annoys the people who listen to him.

And yet, he manages to rise to the top.

And the reason is simple.

The people understand what he's saying.

Florence appears to be the wealthy city.

But the people don't see much of that wealth.

People feel that they've been betrayed, and Savonarola says that that is through the dishonesty of the bankers and through the corruption of the church.

He's the classic populist.

What he's actually doing is saying there's something wrong with Florence.

She is no longer a godlike city.

"Believe in me and I can get you out of this mess."

It's an absolutely extraordinary shift from Lorenzo and all the art and all the luxury to this real ground zero religious zealotry of Savonarola.

But it speaks to the people, many of whom, of course, have not had a renaissance.

They have not been having a wonderful time.

They've been dealing with failing harvests and perpetual warfare.

So, somebody who says, "I can lead you to a new Jerusalem," you can see why people are seduced by it and go with it.

♪ Woman: Savonarola seizes a chance to turn popularity into power.

Thanks to Ludovico Sforza in Milan, the French army has been marching south through Italy and are at the gates of Florence.

Savonarola rides out to meet them.

He persuades the pious French King to spare the city and promises to cleanse it of its sins.

He expels the remaining Medici and takes control.

MICHELANGELO: The city belonged to Savonarola.

Perhaps Florence is being punished for all of her sins.

What Lorenzo had built... was no more.

DAPHNE: It's not a good time for artists anymore.

Savonarola is really a great example of cancel culture.

He just decides that all the art done beforehand represents the lasciviousness of the previous Florence.

The Florence before him.

The only type of art that he would permit would be religious art.

SARAH: Michelangelo until that moment has been a favorite of the Medici.

You know, his career is looking really good.

He's doing dissections on human bodies.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Savonarola thinks is the devil's work.

This is the moment in time when Michelangelo realizes that this is not the city for him.

I had no choice.

If I was to pursue my destiny, I had to leave Florence.

I had to imagine making my way elsewhere.

Just as Leonardo had done.

[Birds chattering] Woman: Seeking opportunity, Michelangelo looks to Rome.

There, a new Pope has just come to power.

Alexander VI, from the ruthless and ambitious family, the Borgias, has a reputation for extravagance and debauchery.

Rome is as corrupt as Florence may have been in Savonarola's mind.

Alexander VI had a notoriously wild reputation and an interest in classical antiquity, too, but as an excuse to indulge in the excesses of classical antiquity.

Parties and orgies.

Woman: Without Lorenzo to guide him, Michelangelo must navigate the treacherous world of patronage.

He's taken on by Cardinal Riario, who's close to the Pope, to make a marble sculpture for the grounds of his new palace.

It's Michelangelo's first full-scale commission.

He's been asked to imitate the classical past but to innovate as well and do something new.

This is an immense opportunity for Michelangelo.

And he just suddenly comes up with one of the masterpieces of the world and carves a Bacchus.

♪ JERRY: Bacchus is the god of wine and what Michelangelo does is produce this, it's a sort of woozily erotic image.

WILLIAM: The Bacchus, he's stumbling, he's allowed to spill the cup of wine.

His eyes are, sort of, almost crossed and he has in his hair grape leaves.

JERRY: It's very sexy but it's not classically muscly sexy.

The Bacchus figure has got a little bit of a tummy.

It's all so homoerotic.

WILLIAM: The Bacchus is precisely the proper figure for Michelangelo to carve for this worldly cardinal who's putting on these kinds of parties in Rome.

But it comes at the wrong moment.

♪ Woman: Alexander VI's son is found murdered.

His body is pulled from the River Tiber and the Pope is stricken with grief.

Alexander thinks the death of his favorite son is a punishment for his sins.

And now he has to, not only reform his own life, but that of the whole Papal Court.

Cardinals shouldn't have lavish parties.

Cardinals shouldn't keep bawdy company.

This is very awkward for Cardinal Riario.

♪ By the time that Michelangelo finishes the Bacchus, it's suddenly not acceptable for Cardinal Riario to place this in the center of his beautiful palace.

JERRY: Michelangelo's captured that decadent world of Rome.

Of, you know, parties, of drunkenness.

He's almost rent the veil of what's happening.

But he goes too far, and the Cardinal rejects it, says he doesn't want it, and this is a disaster.

It's an absolute disaster for Michelangelo.

That the Cardinal had little understanding or enjoyment of sculpture was abundantly clear.

WILLIAM: Michelangelo's furious.

And of course he's gonna tell the story that the Cardinal had no taste and he didn't understand Michelangelo.

JESSICA: With the Bacchus, Michelangelo must learn quite an important lesson.

Rome is a place of great opportunity but it's an environment that's fickle.

You've not only got the taste of the day, what people are interested in, but you've also got the mood of the Papal Court.

♪ Woman: The commission that might have launched Michelangelo's career now threatens to poison it.

The Cardinal abandons him, and Michelangelo is out of work once again.

Rome is much more cutthroat even than Florence in a way.

So, he's gotta tread really carefully from now on.

He does not have autonomy over how he makes his work.

If he wants to get more work, he has to please the patron.

I had news from Milan.

[Sighs] Leonardo had gone from strength to strength.

He'd won a commission from the Sforza greater than ever before.

Woman: Ludovico Sforza was double-crossed by the French in his last bid for power.

Now he switches sides.

He forges an alliance with other city states to drive the French out of Italy.

But his strategic blunder has cost him.

He needs to repair his reputation.

He wants a big statement about his authority and a sense of almost his divine authority as ruler of Milan.

An obvious way of doing this is a large, almost like a sort of billboard poster for a mausoleum for his family.

In this case, of "The Last Supper."

An iconic religious image.

♪ WALTER: Leonardo uses every one of his talents.

The mathematics of perspective, the brilliance of stagecraft.

How people's faces reflect their emotions and how you can put a narrative into a painting.

As Jesus says, "One of you shall betray me."

And you see it ripple outward.

You see each one of the people performing this narrative scene.

♪ ILARIA: "The Last Supper" measures over 4 meters high and almost 9 nine meters wide.

This is an example of Leonardo's incredible control of geometry, incredible control of the composition.

The head of Christ is the point where all the perspective lines converge.

And the composition is an interlocking of pyramids and triangles.

There is this geometric repetition that makes the whole composition balanced and beautiful.

WALTER: As Leonardo's doing the painting, it's clear it's gonna be sensational.

And people start coming to just stand there and watch him paint.

And when it's finished... it's obviously gorgeous.

And Leonardo moves to a new level of fame.

Huh.

[Sighs] After all these years away from Florence, Leonardo had found his own way.

His fame spread across all of Italy.

My name was barely even a whisper.

[Sighs] I was nothing.

♪ Woman: Then, Michelangelo gets a second chance to make his name.

The French have withdrawn from Italy, but their ambassador stays in Rome, and he's spotted Michelangelo's potential.

♪ WILLIAM: Even though the Bacchus is rejected by the Cardinal and put into a garden and sort of becomes a, a public figure in a way.

So, there's a French cardinal who recognized that this is a carver of talent.

And he commissions Michelangelo to carve a pietà.

♪ LESLIE: There have been previous pietàs in the past, so the subject matter is not a new one.

Pietà means "pity or sorrow."

It's an image of the dead Christ in the lap of the virgin.

I think this piece is make or break for Michelangelo.

'Cause you can't fail twice.

Written into my contract with the French Ambassador were these very words.

"My pietà would be the most "beautiful work of marble in Rome.

One that no living artist could better."

♪ Woman: Michelangelo selects the finest marble from a quarry in Tuscany for his pietà.

On his way back to Rome, he stops in his hometown of Florence and is appalled by what he sees.

[Shouts] LESLIE: His beloved Florence has gone from being the cradle of the Renaissance to being a really austere and forbidding place.

Savonarola is becoming increasingly puritan and strident.

Homosexuality is condemned and punishable by imprisonment, torture, and even death.

♪ KATE: Savonarola employed a gang of thugs.

They go around Florence arresting people.

Anyone committing sodomy is in danger, but also anybody who is immodestly dressed.

Anybody who is blaspheming, there's a couple of examples of them having their tongues cut out for that.

[Distant shouting] It must be absolutely terrifying to be in Florence at this time.

[Shouting] LESLIE: Savonarola believes that many of the works of art that were produced in this period were against God and should, in fact, be destroyed and, of course, this is what leads to what we now know as the Bonfire of the Vanities.

[Crowd chants] FR.

MICHAEL: Savonarola gets together a little army of about 6,000 boys who run from house to house asking the people to give them furniture, paintings, works of art.

Anything which would detract them from the Christian life.

He invites the people to bring them to the public square, where they can be burned.

[Fire crackles] From being the most cultured in the forefront of the Italian Renaissance, suddenly Florence is like a fundamentalist theocracy.

And it is a really terrifying period of time.

JERRY: I think Savonarola produces a great crisis for Michelangelo because he's devout.

His religious beliefs are very sincere.

MICHELANGELO: What Savonarola stood for resonated with me.

I, too, sought an honest relationship with God.

To be true to him in all I did and to honor the talent he had given me.

LESLIE: He does indeed wonder, has God, in fact, been erased from the picture, in terms of the reason why he's creating the art in the first place?

What I'd seen in Florence strengthened my resolve.

My pietà must be true to the emotion... of a mother... cradling... her dying son.

Now, I knew that God had intended for me to do this work.

I was emboldened and clear-sighted.

I would make something of such great and rare beauty that no-one who saw it... would not be moved to pity.

♪ ANTONY: Why is it that the pietà is such a powerful vehicle for him?

Well, I think it's to do with the fundamental challenge of sculpture.

How do you make inert matter live?

♪ JERRY: Michelangelo produces, for me, one of the most extraordinary and moving pieces of art in the entire Renaissance.

I remember first going to Rome and seeing it myself and I could not believe it.

The power of that image could be created through marble.

I was completely stunned by it.

ALISON: There's not a chisel mark to be seen.

It's absolutely beautiful.

It's like Christ isn't even dead because his veins are still up.

♪ It looks like he's asleep.

WILLIAM: Michelangelo is the most unbelievable technician in the world.

I mean, look at her hand.

Projecting into the air.

♪ This is the most difficult thing in the world to carve.

Every single finger is at a different angle.

Separated.

And that hand offers us the body of her son.

♪ ALISON: And she's so serene.

The grief that I can associate with losing your son isn't on her face at all.

♪ Maybe it's more about that quiet moment of being with her son.

It's not Christ, it's not anybody else, it's her son!

♪ In that quiet moment, is she somehow saying to God, "This is my everything and I'm giving him to you."

♪ So touching.

It's impossible not to be touched by the work.

♪ I merely liberated my pietà from that block of stone.

Through this work, I acquired great fame and reputation.

So much that already in the opinion of the world...

I had not only surpassed every man of my time and of the time before, but...

I had even rivalled the ancients.

♪ LESLIE: This is the actual moment that Michelangelo makes it.

This is the arrival on the big stage.

The moment when he realizes just how powerful art can be.

♪ JERRY: The fact that he carves his name into this piece I think says something about his belief in how powerful it is.

I think he knows he's done something truly exceptional, even for him.

He's saying this is me.

Nobody else can do this.

He's saying...

I am the artist.

I've arrived.

The artist known as Michelangelo is here.

♪ ♪ This program is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video ♪