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00:00Leonardo da Vinci was one of the world's most brilliant and extraordinary men.
00:15He was endlessly curious, searching for answers in everything he did.
00:22We think of him as the ultimate Renaissance man.
00:25He created a new idea of beauty.
00:30He reinvented the art of painting.
00:33From The Last Supper, tragically deteriorating, but still full of power and drama,
00:41to the Mona Lisa, whose mysterious hint of a smile has intrigued generations.
00:52There are perhaps no more than 15 paintings by Leonardo in the world.
00:57They're scattered in different countries.
01:03Believed, until now, to be all that remains of Leonardo's work.
01:07But in New York, locked away at a secret address, is a newly discovered painting by Leonardo.
01:17Something that hasn't happened for over 100 years.
01:20The picture has never been filmed until now.
01:27It could be worth 125 million pounds.
01:31Leonardo is a man for whom the word genius could have been invented.
01:45And yet his reputation as an artist rests on just a handful of paintings.
01:49And some of them were never finished.
01:51So how did Leonardo become the most famous painter ever to have lived?
01:56The Last Supper
02:26dream at some point in their lives of discovering a lost masterpiece few allow themselves to dream
02:34of finding a painting by leonardo da vinci no artist has a higher reputation no artist's work
02:44is more highly coveted but there's so little of it i've come to new york to visit a gallery at a
02:54secret location and in it is a painting that's just been seen for a handful of experts if it's
03:00genuine it will be the discovery of a lifetime a painting by the greatest old master of the moor
03:15hello oh you must be fiona nice to meet you nice to meet you come this way
03:24restorer diane modestini and dealer and art historian robert simon have been guarding their
03:33secret for more than two years wow my goodness wow gosh to be that close to it amazing
03:49it's a painting of christ known as salvator mundi or the savior of the world
04:00it has got a real presence actually yes he begins to you know to really dominate the
04:07the space and capture your attention and the gaze as well yes the gaze
04:11that's not a kind of happy or inviting gaze he's kind of fixing you with his stare don't you think
04:22yeah no i mean it's it's it's it's it's a very intent very engaging and very powerful powerful image
04:29i think we've all felt in looking at it that it's as much as the subject obvious as a religious subject
04:34it's it's a spiritual quality that communicates rather than anything strictly religious
04:40the sense that this is really a man and it's a kind of a portrait of a man as christ is very powerful
04:46when you look at this now and its pristine state thanks to all your endeavors what are the bits that
04:53particularly strike you about it i mean the hand for example certainly for me is just so beautifully done
04:58yes it has an incredible presence that no other picture i've ever worked on and i've worked on some
05:05very important things um it has had this effect on me really yes if you watch how he emerges
05:14at the end of the day when the light goes down which is the kind of light that leonardo
05:19describes as being ideal for making pictures he starts to glow from within um and sort of pulse
05:25with life it's very it's eerie do you think you've been spending too long with that i may have been
05:29yes well i certainly you have spent hundreds of hours i think i've experienced it too actually
05:38there are details if you look even here at this rock crystal ball in which he's portrayed these
05:44inclusions in the the little floors in exactly in which everyone is individually lighted some from the
05:50top of it some in the shadow i mean it really boggles to see the degree of study and the degree of
05:55ability to be able to render that of course this enters into leonardo's own very deep study of
06:01optical effects of light and of science it would be a while before i got into the restoration studio to
06:13see the evidence to find out if this really is a lost leonardo if it is for some people it would be
06:24like finding a new planet it's a measure of the extraordinary veneration in which leonardo is held
06:33he is that kind of mysterious profound artist who seems to address the sort of mysteries and secrets
06:47of life and to give them such beautiful expression without ever tying them down
06:53something of a cult has grown up around leonardo it's not just art lovers thriller writers and
07:09conspiracy theorists are drawn to him fascinated by his obsessive inquiries into the frontiers of knowledge
07:18from the secret of flight to the motions of the moon
07:28to the hidden architecture of the human body
07:32all minutely noted in his mysterious mirror handwriting
07:39we've got thousands of pages of writing we've got these pictures not many to be sure but
07:44but but he remains elusive so there's a strange balance between being known and unknown
07:51and it's it's a very precious precarious balance and the unknown is sufficiently apparent that
07:59people can go in and see mysteries where there are no mysteries in fact
08:05is it possible to strip away the myths the cult of leonardo
08:09and see the truth about this flawed often puzzling man
08:30the medieval town of vinci in tuscany in northern italy
08:39it was here on the 15th of april 1452 that leonardo was born
08:50his surname da vinci literally means from the town of vinci
08:58leonardo's start in life wasn't auspicious he was illegitimate his father came from a respected
09:04local family his mother was a poor peasant girl his father's mistress
09:11leonardo was born and would always remain something of an outsider he never inherited his father's
09:17wealth he never settled anywhere for too long all his life he moved from place to place
09:24leonardo's schooling was basic he always called himself an uneducated man
09:39but he made a virtue of this his schoolroom was the tuscan countryside
09:44he began to draw
09:52over the course of his life he would fill hundreds of notebooks with minutely observed drawings of animals
09:58plants and natural forms
10:00there's a tenderness and sympathy in these pictures as well as remarkable skill
10:20at the age of 13 or so leonardo left this small country town he carried with him
10:25his love of the landscape his fascination with animals and the wonders of the natural world
10:31he set off for a new life in a very different sort of place
10:45Florence in the 1460s was wealthy cultured a magnet for the finest artists sculptors and architects
10:53an exciting place to be the city was the pinnacle of renaissance splendor
11:03what better place for an aspiring young artist to live and learn
11:10leonardo had come to work as an apprentice to a master artist and craftsman andrea del verrocchio
11:16artist studios were busy crowded dusty places
11:28in the workshops of florence's cathedral where sculptors still work in the same way they have for
11:33centuries you can get some sense of what it was like young apprentices learned everything from how
11:39to clean brushes to how to paint an angel's wing
11:46verrocchio's workshop would have been a hive of activity as well as producing paintings under the
11:51guidance of the master he would have produced sculptures in bronze and marble works in silver and gold
11:59theater sets really anything that the wealthy and cultured classes of florence desired
12:04but for leonardo the city itself became his studio
12:15he kept a notebook always dangling from his belt
12:19and he drew the faces he saw around him
12:34the turns and movement of the human body fascinated him
12:49in the city's uffizi gallery you can catch the first glimpse of the hand of leonardo the painter
13:08the moment when leonardo's master verrocchio decided it was time to let his talented pupil pick up a brush
13:23this is verrocchio's painting of christ with john the baptist
13:30except this isn't all verrocchio's work
13:33there's something very special about the kneeling angel here and leonardo was given the task of
13:38painting the angel when he was 23 or so just look a little bit more closely
13:44the fact that the angel is three-quarter turned away from us gazing raptly adoringly at christ that pose
13:53was groundbreaking at the time
13:55and look at the curls fine detail like ripples of water you'll see that more and more and then
14:06the subtlety of the blue and the shading of the drapes of the material apparently when verrocchio saw
14:12that the story goes he decided that he should put down his brush and stop painting altogether because
14:17he had been surpassed by his apprentice
14:27leonardo progressed to more ambitious and complex subjects though this painting in the uffizi is
14:33unfinished and at first glance looks a bit of a mess it's so dark and jumbled it's hard even to know
14:41what's going on
14:45it's a common religious subject the moment when the three wise men come to pay homage to the infant christ
14:54instead of the usual group of static silent reverential worshipers
15:01there's something completely different going on here the only still figure
15:05at the center is mary and baby jesus around her there's life vitality chaos and there's even
15:14something slightly threatening about the way the crowd is pressing in on her and the faces some of
15:22them seem rather skull-like there are horses in the background rearing there appears to be fighting
15:28going on there's a real sense that the old order has been thrown over and the new one is about to begin
15:35there's one interesting detail to the right of the picture the one figure who is standing looking
15:46away from the action many artists at the time would put a self-portrait in their work and it's believed
15:53that that is in fact a portrait of leonardo himself
15:57if that's true it may be the only image we have of leonardo as a young man
16:14it's not known why leonardo didn't finish the work but he became notorious for abandoning projects
16:20he was halfway through it drove his patrons mad with frustration
16:28time and time again leonardo couldn't or wouldn't finish the job his insatiable curiosity meant that
16:35he was often distracted by something new or something different and it's a paradox of leonardo's that a man
16:42who's obsessed with detail and with reproducing that detail in paint often just left his works unfinished
16:58i think with the adoration of the magi leonardo realized that he started a picture that he simply
17:02didn't know how to finish he'd bitten off more than he could chew if you like i think leonardo was
17:07sometimes intimidated by what he set out to do and he got to a point sometimes where he realized that
17:13he wasn't he wasn't going to be able to finish that he couldn't arrive at the perfect beauty that he had
17:21in his mind in some ways i think it's astonishing that he finished anything at all given what he wanted
17:27for painting what he what he thought painting should be able to achieve as he matured as an artist leonardo
17:41acquired a reputation for being unreliable a bit flaky even but an exceptional talent
17:52leonardo appeared to be living a charmed life in florence
17:55by the age of 20 he'd been accepted into the official florentine body of painters
18:00he was described as generous cultivated well-dressed extremely beautiful with his hair cascading down
18:10in ringlets to his chest one poet said he had infinite grace but a dark shadow was about to fall across his
18:19in his world
18:29renaissance florence was a small city no more than 60 000 inhabitants florentines knew each other's
18:36business they loved scandal
18:39they would write anonymous notes to the authorities denouncing anyone they thought guilty of a crime
18:50they dropped them into holes in the wall like this known as buki de la verita or holes of truth
18:57in early april 1476 someone dropped a denunciation into one of these holes and it read
19:03to the officers of the night i hereby testify that jacopo saltorelli aged 17 who dresses in black
19:12pursues many immoral activities and consents to satisfy those persons who request sinful things from him
19:20he means of course homosexuality and it goes on to list four of saltorelli's lovers or clients including
19:27one leonardo da vinci who works with a painter verrocchio
19:37homosexuality was common enough in 15th century florence particularly among artists and bohemians
19:44but it was still a crime punishable by death leonardo was forced to attend court
19:52but the charges against him were eventually dropped
19:54was leonardo gay
20:01some biographers say his art suggests he was
20:05the recurring image of a young man with curly hair is arguably based on a young man called salai
20:12an apprentice in leonardo's studio
20:14he's there in a lot of drawings seen often in profile with this um slightly decadent sort of profile
20:25and this cascade of ringleted hair this was something that leonardo really loved those angels
20:34they always have this cascade of flowing hair it was a kind of trademark in his paintings and drawings
20:40there are one or two comments he makes in his notebooks which suggest that he ran into a bit of trouble
20:49because his angels were considered a bit too much like the pretty boys
20:54from the street or the artist models on which they were no doubt based
20:58so i remained at leonardo's side for the next 30 years until leonardo's death
21:09pupil servant confidant and his lover so this is the key relationship probably in leonardo's life
21:20in florence leonardo was recognized as a supremely accomplished artist
21:35but it was in another italian city that he would achieve greatness
21:50so
21:53milan was the wealthiest city-state in renaissance italy
21:58if florence was a jewel of culture milan was a city of excess of ostentation
22:07it's fashion week here in milan there's something about the buzz and the glamour the excitement that
22:12brings to mind why leonardo came here all those years ago it was a place
22:17to see and be seen it was all about spectacle he came here not as a painter but as a musician
22:22not just any musician but with a lira da braccia which was a
22:26kind of violin made of solid silver in the shape of a horse's head
22:30it was quite an entrance
22:35leonardo's patron in milan was the duke ludovico sforza an immensely powerful and dangerous man
22:42leonardo saw him as a means to an end a way of pursuing his own developing ideas
22:55he brought with him an extraordinary letter of introduction
22:58this is leonardo presenting himself for employment to the duke of milan it's a cv but not what you'd
23:09expect it's calculated to appeal to a 15th century despot it starts with a bit of flattery he writes
23:17signor mio illustrissimo my most illustrious lord and then leonardo effectively goes on
23:24to sell himself as a an inventor and maker of fantastical weapons there's a whole list of them
23:31here he talks about ponti leggerissime forti bridges which are very light and very strong
23:38i can make an infinite variety of methods of attack and defense
23:43it's only at the end almost as an afterthought that he refers to himself as an artist he says
23:50i can further execute sculpture in clay marble and bronze also in painting i can do as much as
23:57anyone else whoever that may be now was he really that modest about his own talents or was it that he
24:04thought of all his talents his painting was the thing that would least appeal to the duke of milan at
24:09the time whatever he meant the letter reveals the dazzling diversity of leonardo's interests and talents
24:24designing machines of war studying the motion of water
24:30mapping the geometry of the human body relating it to the perfect forms of the circle and the square
24:42in the famous drawing known as the vitruvian man
24:52that person in the circle as well as expressing certain ideas of proportion and harmony
24:57and therefore being a rather abstract composition that person is undoubtedly a real person
25:06you can see his feet sort of pressing against the edge of the circle
25:10you can see the muscles straining as he puts his arms out in the sort of flying position as it seems to be
25:19and then very much you have very specific features a rather saturnine figure with long hair
25:26parted in the middle and these eyes boring out
25:33and if you look hard at the face of the vitruvian man which people strange enough don't often do
25:40because they're so aware of it as a sort of emblematic figure kind of logo almost of the renaissance as
25:46it's used that people don't tend to suddenly think well who is this guy well i think the answer is it's a
25:51a self-portrait of leonardo da vinci who better to express the sort of secrets of human proportion than
25:59the philosophical artist scientist leonardo da vinci himself
26:09in the court of ludovico sforza leonardo was employed on a surprising range of projects
26:15he didn't make his main living by being paid to make pictures he made his living at the court he
26:23was paid at the court to do great festival designs he was paid at the court to do military designs and
26:30when he was asked to do these great designs for weddings or whatever i think he got very involved with
26:36it and he could always see possibilities i suspect probably he would have grown initially and then
26:41suddenly become captivated by the project but leonardo was also experimenting with painting portraits
26:54i must say i don't warm to this young lady she looks decidedly frosty so why is she so admired
27:03the portrait of ginevra de benci is curiously unlovable she really stares at us with a quite sort
27:11of chilly menacing gaze i think what leonardo was trying to do was to make her very remotely beautiful
27:19was to raise her beauty above a kind of ordinary human level to something that was poetic and almost
27:26otherworldly i think she comes over as rather as if she's carved from marble rather than like a living
27:34breathing human being and i think he moved on a great deal in his subsequent portraits
27:45one picture in particular would take the art of portrait painting to new heights
27:50it's thought by some to be leonardo's unsung masterpiece but it's left italy forever
27:59it's now hanging 700 miles away in poland
28:12i've come to see a painting that some experts believe is more beautiful than the mona lisa
28:26and to think it was almost completely unknown to the western art world until the beginning of the 20th
28:32century in 1798 it was bought by a polish prince in its long life it's been walled up in a palace
28:46hidden in a hotel cellar and survived two world wars it formed part of hitler's private collection of
28:54looted art its present home is the royal castle in warsaw the portrait is of ludovico sforza's elegant
29:07young mistress cecilia gallerani it's become known as the lady with the ermine
29:14an italian poet writing when this was painted said that cecilia appeared so lifelike it was almost
29:24as if she was listening and when you look at her pose see if i can get this right
29:32it's as if someone's just caught her attention just outside the frame
29:39and this was revolutionary no one else was painting like this getting the body and that kind of movement
29:44is
29:48look at her hand you can see under the skin the bones and the muscles and the tendons
29:55just look at her face young modest but intelligent and alert you can see that
30:01and that's why i love this painting
30:06and what about the ermine or the stoke that she's holding i mean what's that all about certainly not a
30:12pet but to anyone at the time the symbolism of the ermine would have been immediately apparent
30:18the ermine was the symbol of of purity of chastity the story was that the ermine would rather die than
30:24let its pure white coat be soiled but also this was about sex because the ermine was the symbol of
30:33of cecilia's lover of ludovico sforza and when you look at him
30:36look he's muscular he's got his claws digging into her arm he looks like he might take a nip out of
30:42her at any moment this is about sex and about power
30:54so
31:00back in milan in 1495 leonardo began work on a painting that would confirm him
31:05as the greatest artist of his age
31:11the monastery of santa maria de la grazia was funded by leonardo's patron ludovico sforza
31:16he commissioned leonardo to paint a huge picture for the monk's dining room
31:27the result would bring triumph but also tragedy
31:35it's visited by thousands of people every year
31:39their time limited to just 15 minutes in the presence of the masterpiece
31:47it's approached through a series of airlocks
31:55it's more like a hospital protecting the patient from contamination
32:10the stage management of the entrance and exit this work is very important
32:15because this is a deliberately dramatic work of art
32:35it's such a famous image
32:37but nothing prepares you for seeing it in the flesh leonardo's epic painting shows the last supper
32:46the meal christ shares with his disciples just before his death
32:52and in it leonardo has taken everything he's learned from the portraits about revealing the life within
32:57and choreographed it on a huge scale
33:07he's painted the precise moment when christ says one of you will betray me
33:12and the reaction of the disciples is frozen in time but you can see that bombshell ripple out through the
33:19painting in their faces in their body language and very italian in their hands
33:37this is not some traditional flat rather sterile religious image this is human drama on a scale larger
33:46than life it is realistic it has perspective passion it's like a story in widescreen
33:58but the painting we see today is the ghost of what it was because only 20 percent of the original remains
34:07so what happened the clue is in the way leonardo chose to work unorthodox and eventually disastrous
34:22paintings on walls frescoes have to be painted quickly onto wet plaster
34:27but leonardo knew he was anything but a fast worker he chose to work in oil paint on plaster that had already dried
34:40the result within a few decades the picture began to deteriorate
34:47several desperate attempts have been made over the centuries to salvage it
34:51what we think that could have damaged the painting a lot especially is that of the environmental humidity
35:02the environmental humidity that was caused by an humidity that was rising from the murals
35:08because the murals for the metals were placed on the water
35:12and for you I have seen a description that you made of the restoration
35:17it was like a millimeter by millimeter but it was a discovery like you said it was a journalier
35:26so at the end of the day I recovered a few centimeters it was just a conquest
35:34it was just a conquest, a conquest, a conquest, a conquest, a conquest, a conquest, a struggle
35:38because above all I had everyone who looked at me.
35:47Leonardo's slow painstaking approach to painting brought the monks to a frenzy of impatience
35:56eyewitnesses sent to spy on him reported he would sometimes work from dawn to dusk
36:02and then do nothing for days except stand and look
36:05the detail of Leonardo's painting can never be recovered
36:17but a key to what it looked like can be found surprisingly close to home
36:21in the chapel of maudlin college in oxford and quite unknown to most people hangs britain's last supper
36:49it was painted in Leonardo's day thought to be by a pupil of Leonardo copied from the original
37:01possibly approved by the master himself
37:10details which have disappeared forever from Leonardo's picture can be seen clearly in this one
37:15the food on the table
37:25the sandaled feet of the disciples
37:31and most dramatically the face of simon stubborn and disbelieving
37:43in 1499 Leonardo left milan his restless inquiring nature took him off in pursuit of new often wildly ambitious projects
37:59in venice he tried to persuade the authorities to let him build underwater defenses for the city
38:05in rome he worked on designs for grand villas and statues
38:15he dreamed up a scheme to divert the waters of the river around florence to make it navigable
38:20eventually he settled back in florence the city that had made him a painter but things had changed here
38:35in a city already crowded with talent a new star had emerged whose talents as a painter and sculptor
38:42threatened to eclipse leonardo's he was arrogant aggressively ambitious
38:48his name was michelangelo and the two men would become fierce rivals
38:58in 1501 michelangelo won the commission to build a colossal statue for the city
39:04of david the slayer of goliath leonardo was piqued and unimpressed
39:10the two artists couldn't have been more different whereas michelangelo's figures are virile supermen or
39:19muscle and swagger leonardo was always after delicacy and subtlety he even had a go at figures
39:26like that saying their bulging muscles made them look ridiculous like un sacco de noche a bag of nuts
39:40leonardo was much in demand as military engineer map maker architect designer and though he was
39:48celebrated as a painter he was notorious for late delivery one man wrote of him leonardo is better
39:56than anyone but he won't leave a picture alone it was a quality that got him into trouble more than
40:03once at the age of 54 he received a summons from some rich patrons in milan come back and finish our
40:10painting the painting in question is a mysterious reimagining of the madonna and child
40:23once again leonardo brought to a conventional subject an unusual approach
40:29he places them in a strange cavern of rocks a remote deserted place suggesting a world before time began
40:40instead of the bright sharp colors of the day he creates an atmosphere of shadows and subtle shifts
40:47of light and shade
41:00before leonardo people were very very interested in in line and in contour and leonardo on the other hand
41:07believed in dissolving those contours to make something which was which was really modeled
41:12from from light and shade and he used a technique known as fumato which literally means smoked or smoky so
41:19that's about those misty transitions of of light and shade which which he applied to a face like the the
41:25virgin and in virgin of the rocks it was really an entirely revolutionary process was and was born from the fact that he
41:32understood the the way in which light fell on objects like no other artist before him
41:45the painting now hangs in the national gallery in london
41:48it's being restored for a major leonardo exhibition there
41:55the restoration is a terrifyingly delicate business
42:01just how much do you tinker with a leonardo
42:04on the one hand it's a restoration of a renaissance painting on the other hand it is leonardo which
42:13is no small thing the retouching that i'm doing is quite reversible and it's separated from the actual
42:21paint of leonardo by a modern varnish player
42:24leonardo is really exploring the possibilities of using oil paint to to do this kind of um
42:36modeling from light to dark in a kind of consistent way i think he's exploring the difference between
42:41you know quite dark very dark and extremely dark in a way that other artists up to then hadn't really done
42:46one of the things that i think is essential about leonardo you can see when you look closely at this
42:54picture is the way that he didn't seem to like to produce a definitive answer to anything you know
43:01contours are always being adjusted nothing is quite final there's often the possibility of just a slight
43:08change a little modification here a twist there a line a little different than it was
43:16and the fact that so many of his works are unfinished speaks to that kind of
43:20psychological tendency i think he always saw another possibility another way of doing something
43:46lyonado would never lose his habit of seeing other possibilities
43:56he spent many months here at the monastery of santissima annunziata in the center of florence
44:02the monks would certainly have appreciated a painting from him
44:06but one who visited him at work in his studio reported
44:10interested in picking up a brush.
44:16Leonardo's attention had been seized by new kinds of exploration,
44:20including the study of the human body.
44:29From dissections he made in the city's hospitals,
44:32he analysed the architecture of the body
44:35and noted the minute workings of its internal organs.
44:40The anatomical drawings are incredibly beautiful,
44:47and he would regard the inside of the body
44:50as at least as beautiful as the outside.
44:53So if he draws, say, the branching of the air passages in the lung,
44:57it becomes like a coral.
44:59It's a beautiful structure.
45:01And that's not a loose analogy,
45:03because he saw branching in nature as all the same thing.
45:07How are tree branches? How are vessels branch? How rivers come together?
45:12These are all systems which are essentially the same.
45:19During these intense philosophical investigations,
45:22painting seems to have been forgotten.
45:25Until...
45:27One day, Leonardo received a request to paint a portrait.
45:30It probably came from Francesco del Giocondo, a silk and cloth merchant.
45:35And he wanted Leonardo to paint a portrait of his wife.
45:38Nothing unusual in that, a perfectly ordinary, everyday subject.
45:43What Leonardo could not have imagined is that this would be the painting
45:49that defined him,
45:51that would become the most famous painting in the world.
45:57As so often with Leonardo,
45:59you can see glimpses of future masterpieces in his sketchbooks.
46:03The merchant del Giocondo never actually received the portrait of his wife,
46:16which he'd commissioned.
46:20When Leonardo left Italy for the last time in 1516,
46:23he took it with him.
46:25He had an invitation from the young French king, Francis I.
46:37Francis saw in Leonardo a mentor and a genius who would adorn his court.
46:50But Leonardo never stopped working on his portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant.
46:54She now hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
47:04She's known, of course, as the Mona Lisa.
47:09I've come here for a private audience with her,
47:11to try and see why she's become the most iconic image in the world.
47:24It's not obvious.
47:27On first impressions, she's very small,
47:31very dark,
47:33and very yellow.
47:36I know this is the most famous painting in the world,
47:38and is considered a work of genius.
47:41But I just don't quite get it.
47:43What is so good about the Mona Lisa?
47:45The first time we see the Joconde,
47:47we're a bit surprised.
47:48I was surprised when I saw it the first time.
47:50Because I found that she was small.
47:54For the first time, the artist had the idea
47:56of representing her model
47:58in the most natural way possible.
48:01And, of course, she starts to smile.
48:03She is a smile.
48:04She is not exactly a smile.
48:05She is a smile.
48:06She is a smile.
48:07So, she's really in communion, in conversation with us.
48:11There's a very intimate relationship between the viewer and the painting.
48:16You think it's possible to separate the myth
48:21around this painting from the reality?
48:26No, I don't think it's possible.
48:27It's part of our history.
48:29The Joconde, it's the mystery,
48:30but practically in any country reculé of the world,
48:33we know this face, this position, this smile.
48:36We can't forget it.
48:37Maybe that's why it's so appreciated.
48:40Yes, of course.
48:46How did Leonardo manage to create this mysterious and captivating woman?
48:58It is uncanny.
49:00It lives in a very extraordinary way.
49:02This is, you know, it sounds kind of pretentious,
49:04but there's no other way of describing it.
49:06The figure seems not just to be inert pigments on a surface,
49:11but seems to be living and breathing.
49:16Now, the way Leonardo did that is not by some kind of mystery.
49:23He did it by technique.
49:25And he did it by mixing in the flesh, in these key areas,
49:31these very subtle, thin layers of paint called glazes.
49:35It's just a little thin stain of colour,
49:38a lot of oil and just little dispersed bits of pigment.
49:41So he lays that down on top of a white priming.
49:44Then he'll lay another stain down, then another one, and another one.
49:49Sometimes adding a bit of shadow, sometimes a little bit of highlight.
49:52But basically, he's relying upon the light coming through from the white panel.
49:58So he's using this transparency.
50:01And it means the light comes through and is very subtle, very elusive.
50:06And you don't have fixed edges.
50:09He doesn't draw the edge of a nose as a line.
50:12It's very ambiguous, very elusive.
50:15That is uncanny. It's spine-tingling.
50:18Leonardo spent the last years of his life at the court of the French king.
50:33Relieved of all pressure to deliver paintings, free to follow wherever his curiosity led him.
50:46I think at the end of his life, Leonardo was, if anything, more of a celebrity than a painter.
50:52And when he moved to France, it was not necessarily because King Francis wanted somebody who was going to paint enormous fresco cycles in the various chateaux that he owned.
51:06I think it was more that he wanted to be seen to offer protection to perhaps the greatest man in Christendom of the day.
51:14His last self-portrait seems to show the face of a man who spent a lifetime inquiring into everything.
51:29He died on the 2nd of May, 1519, at the age of 67, in the arms, so the story goes, of the French king.
51:41Francis declared he did not believe that a man had been born who knew as much as Leonardo.
51:52Leonardo left several of his paintings to his favourite, Salai.
51:57Among them was the Mona Lisa.
52:04She won't be travelling to London for the exhibition.
52:07Instead, the buzz will be about a picture that most people will never have heard of.
52:13The newly discovered Salvator Mundi.
52:21It's an amazing story.
52:28It's been known for centuries that Leonardo painted such a picture.
52:31Until now, it was thought lost.
52:37This is how the picture looked before it was restored.
52:41Dismissed as a crude copy, buried in a private collection.
52:46Last sold for £45 in 1958.
52:49I went to the restoration studio to see the evidence for myself.
53:02What had led restorer Diane Modestini to believe she'd discovered a lost Leonardo?
53:09First of all, X-rays revealed what lay beneath the surface of the painting.
53:14That's the face, isn't it?
53:17Yes, which you can just barely make out the features.
53:20And what about these sort of cracks?
53:23What are they up there to the left?
53:25That is the crack in the wood.
53:27It just missed his face. I'd imagine if you'd gone through the middle.
53:31Miraculous. Just missed the face.
53:33You see, it all came from this knot.
53:36Oh, a knot in the wood?
53:38There was a knot in the wood.
53:39Oh, I see.
53:40The wood had this defect.
53:42Leonardo was never very careful about his wooden supports.
53:47Given how meticulous he was about everything else, that's quite surprising, isn't it?
53:49It's very surprising.
53:51So the wood is basically warped and split from that knot?
53:54Yes.
53:56One of the things you must have been looking for, which is a classic clue to whether or not a work is original,
54:01it's a pentimento, it's called, isn't it?
54:02That's right.
54:03Which is where an artist has had a number of goes at painting something a particular way before settling on, you know, painting a hand in a particular way or a drape of cloth.
54:13And you can see him trying to work it out on the canvas.
54:15Yes.
54:17It doesn't look like there are any here in the x-ray.
54:19No, we don't see any in this x-ray, but where we do see them is in the infrared reflectogram.
54:25So what are we looking at here?
54:30Here we can see quite clearly, I think, that there is a first idea for the thumb.
54:38Oh, yes.
54:40So it was more upright?
54:42It was more upright.
54:44But this was the moment that gave us a clue and gave us some hope, which wouldn't have entered our minds previously,
54:51that we might be dealing with the lost original.
54:58As it became clear to you that this could well be an original Leonardo,
55:03did you ever have a moment where you think,
55:05if I do the wrong thing here, this could all, this could all rest on your shoulders?
55:13Yeah, I couldn't let myself think about that.
55:16I couldn't.
55:17I would never have dared to touch it.
55:21The discovery of a different first design for the thumb was an incredible breakthrough.
55:32No one painting a mere copy would experiment in this way.
55:41When the picture was finally shown to leading Leonardo experts,
55:44they examined everything, its history, its hidden details, the paint itself.
55:51I walked into the conservation studios where it was being displayed at that point,
55:57and, yeah, you get that, that tingle, you think, ah, this is...
56:01But then I always have a gravitational pull, I say, don't believe it, don't believe it.
56:06Because Leonardo painting hasn't come along like that since the early 20th century.
56:12So one every hundred years is kind of rare.
56:16So there is that long process of research where you're putting the counter arguments and saying,
56:23you know, let's look for what's wrong with it.
56:26And in this case I couldn't find anything wrong.
56:28So the verdict is in. It's the real thing.
56:44Getting the Salvator Mundi and all the other paintings to London poses a massive challenge.
56:49Especially the huge copy of The Last Supper in Oxford.
56:58Moving the picture is a two-day operation.
57:03Once it's lowered from the walls,
57:06it's removed from the wooden stretchers that keep the canvas taut.
57:12The canvas is carefully rolled around a drum,
57:15painted side outwards to stop it cracking.
57:27Then it's off to the National Gallery to take its place alongside work by Leonardo himself.
57:39Never before will so many Leonardo paintings and drawings
57:43have been assembled in one place.
57:47And almost certainly they never will be again.
57:52So valuable, so delicate,
57:55it's unlikely anyone would dare risk moving them again.
58:03When you strip away the cult that has grown up around Leonardo,
58:06his sheer skill and vision as a painter still tower above all others.
58:15But there is also mystery.
58:17He's an artist who continues to intrigue and baffle and astonish.
58:23And that enduring mystery has earned him a unique place in our history.
58:28Lee Maxx in the chair for Have I Got A Bit More news for you after the news next here on BBC One.
58:36Or on BBC Four now, an idyllic marriage turned upside down in the romantic film drama Cloud Nine.
58:41.
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