Power of art: Caravaggio
Backed by a Church struggling to connect with the faithful, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted images imbued with physical immediacy and in-your-face drama. As this program shows, there was a trade-off: Caravaggio's biblical scenes frequently...
The ascent of man: music of the spheres
This is part five of a history of the cultural evolution of man, from primitive times to the present, presented by the late Dr. Jacob Bronowski. It concerns the evolution of mathematics, tracing the spread of Greek theories through Islam to Moorish ...
Power of art: Rothko
Life, death, heroism, tragedy - subjects that, until the latter half of the 20th century, propelled the canon of Western art. How do the abstractions of Mark Rothko figure in that tradition? Are they, in a sense, its swan song? This program depicts ...
Power of art: David
If the French Revolution had an official painter, it was Jacques-Louis David - although "official propagandist" is a much more accurate term. This program follows David's career from his early ambitions as a Prix de Rome scholar to the actions that ...