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Documentary, A History of Art in Three Colours - Gold - episode 1
#A HistoryofArt #inColours #Gold
#A HistoryofArt #inColours #Gold
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CreativityTranscript
00:00This is the BBC Television Service.
00:03We now present another programme in our series of experimental transmissions in colour.
00:08We live in a kaleidoscopic world.
00:13But colours are more than mere decoration.
00:19Colours carry deep and significant meanings for us all.
00:22And in this series, I want to unravel the stories of three colours.
00:31Three colours which, in the hands of artists, have stirred our emotions,
00:37changed the way we behave,
00:39and even altered the course of history.
00:44Blue.
00:46The arrival of lapis lazuli from the east made blue the colour of our dreams.
00:53A colour that's transported us to worlds beyond our horizons.
01:01White.
01:03Once the virtuous colour of ancient marbles came to embody our darkest instincts.
01:13But in this programme, I want to tell the story of a colour we've worshipped since the very beginning.
01:19One that, at first, may not seem like a colour at all.
01:24So this is the gold vault beneath the Bank of England.
01:34And in this room, there are about 65,000 bars of solid gold.
01:41And each one of them is worth almost half a million pounds.
01:47And I just can't resist picking one up.
01:52The first thing you notice is the weight.
01:57It's extraordinarily heavy.
02:00And you can see on the front there, it's 99.99% pure gold.
02:07And I really don't think I've ever held anything so valuable in my hands before.
02:13But gold has another quality, too.
02:17It's colour.
02:18This glorious, radiant yellowness.
02:21And I think this colour is one of the most alluring and beguiling colours of them all.
02:31This is a tale of our timeless obsession with all things golden.
02:35Across the millennia, we have used gold to revere the things we've held most sacred.
02:43And reflected in our works of art, we see the story of ourselves and our changing beliefs and perceptions.
02:51I'm aware that I'm praying with colour.
02:53I'm not just praying with words, but I'm praying with colour.
02:56From honouring our ancient gods
03:00to the worldly kings and queens of the Renaissance,
03:07we'll reveal the techniques which craftsmen have used.
03:12Look at that.
03:14From the fine arts of icon painting
03:16to the dark arts of alchemy.
03:19So really, this must have been a desperate time for Berger.
03:22He had to think about how to escape with his life.
03:26We'll see how, in the consumer age,
03:30gold came to represent little more than wealth itself.
03:34And we'll see how one painter
03:37attempted to restore the colour of gold to divine status.
03:41Nobody knows when humans first took gold from the Earth.
04:04This is perhaps what gold looked like when humans first set eyes on it.
04:18This is perhaps what gold looked like when humans first set eyes on it.
04:24You can see why they fell in love with it almost immediately.
04:26Not because of its rarity, because they didn't know it was rare.
04:31And not because of its versatility, because they didn't know what it could do.
04:36They fell in love with it because of the way it looked.
04:40Its wonderful, radiant, warm, yellowness.
04:44And there was really only one thing in the universe that looked anything like this substance.
04:51And that was the sun.
04:57Ancient people came to believe that gold and the sun were one and the same.
05:02So when they honoured the sun, only the colour of gold would suffice.
05:11A golden sun disk.
05:142000 BC.
05:21A ceremonial necklace.
05:24800 BC.
05:25And the most remarkable of all.
05:30A sun chariot.
05:32From 1500 BC.
05:35Now the star exhibit at the National Museum of Denmark.
05:49This is one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen in a museum.
05:55It's utterly breathtaking.
05:59Because what we have here, essentially, is a three and a half thousand year old miniature model chariot.
06:08In virtually mint condition.
06:11So you can see there's this utterly delightful bronze horse with its ears pricked up attentively.
06:18And it's standing on these four wheels and dragging this great disc behind it.
06:24And that disc is the sun.
06:28And for the people who made this, the sun was a great golden goddess that was being carried by this divine horse every day across the sky from east to west and then back again at night.
06:42And it is believed that the elders of the community, the priests, would actually pull it around back and forth to teach people about the importance of the sun.
06:52And it's decorated with all these exquisite patterns that represent the radiating rays of the sun, that pulsating light and its movement through the years.
07:05It's an explicit connection between the colour of gold and the colour of the sun.
07:14Both of them have this warm, radiant yellowness, both of them have this terrific sparkle, and both of them have this eternal shine.
07:24Because it's three and a half thousand years later now, everything else has deteriorated.
07:28But the gold on this disc, like the sun outside this room, is still shining.
07:39The desire to honour the sun with gold is as old as civilisation itself.
07:46But one civilisation would come to be identified with golden treasures like no other.
07:58The ancient Egyptians were unique.
08:09While many cultures had to hunt down gold in far-off lands, trade or barter for it,
08:19here in north-east Africa, the Egyptians found gold everywhere.
08:28Now, the ancient Egyptians were very, very lucky.
08:33Their territory here was blessed with seemingly unlimited reserves of gold.
08:40There were hundreds of deposits dotted all over the place.
08:44And the richest of these deposits were here in these mountains of the eastern desert,
08:49and here farther south into Sudan and Nubia.
08:53And what's more, the Egyptians were very, very good at extracting that gold.
08:59They had huge teams of men working day in, day out, bringing out of the earth.
09:03And for that reason, Egypt quickly became the world's first great gold-producing state.
09:08But to understand the exquisite gold work in ancient Egypt,
09:23we have to leave Cairo and head south into the desert.
09:29This is Saqqara, home to some of the oldest tombs in Egypt.
09:47And here is some remarkable evidence of the reverence the Egyptians had for their goldsmiths.
09:544,000 years ago, the Grand Vizier Mereruka was interred in these chambers.
10:10In life, he was entrusted with the production and protection of Egypt's gold.
10:16And carved onto the walls of his tomb are depictions of his invaluable work.
10:32These relief carvings depict pretty much the entire Egyptian gold-working process
10:39from start all the way to finish.
10:42So the first step is recorded here.
10:45And this involves the weighing of the gold.
10:48And you know, what I find interesting about that is,
10:50of course, the Egyptians had plentiful quantities of gold,
10:54and yet still it was so valuable
10:56that the pharaoh didn't want even a single little bit unaccounted for.
11:02But the two most remarkable images, I think, in this entire relief,
11:06are these two here.
11:08And I think they're remarkable for two reasons.
11:11First, the hieroglyphs.
11:13You can see there and there.
11:15Now, usually we presume ancient hieroglyphs to impart some solemn wisdom,
11:21but not these ones.
11:23Because this man is saying to that man,
11:25Ooh, isn't this beautiful?
11:27And this man is saying to that guy,
11:30Get a move on with your work, slow coach.
11:33It's just an amazing moment, amazing moment of humour and life and reality
11:39from thousands of years ago.
11:41But the other remarkable thing about these images here
11:47is all four goldsmiths are dwarfs.
11:51All across ancient Egypt, dwarfs are depicted as gold workers
11:57because they were actually perceived by my ancient Egyptians
12:00as possessing magical powers.
12:02So it seems utterly logical
12:04that who would you get to work with your most precious and special material?
12:08You would get your most precious and special people.
12:12For millennia, the great creations of these goldsmiths were mostly lost to view.
12:25They were melted down by grave robbers,
12:28or simply lay undiscovered deep beneath the sands.
12:35But in the 20th century, one British archaeologist was determined to bring them to light.
12:42Howard Carter was a maverick who had come to Egypt in search of gold.
12:51And it was he who made the greatest archaeological discovery of all time.
12:59On the 26th of November, 1922, Carter broke into the tomb of Tutankhamun.
13:07A gasp of wonderment escaped our lips.
13:12So gorgeous was the sight that met our eyes.
13:16Everywhere the glint of gold.
13:22The golden treasures of Tutankhamun were never intended to be seen by human eyes.
13:33But Carter removed them from their resting place.
13:37And bundled them off to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
13:42The hoard contained Tutankhamun's throne,
13:50jewellery of every sort,
13:52golden slippers,
13:55golden slippers,
13:56and this huge sarcophagus.
13:59It contains 110 kilograms of solid gold,
14:05and is the largest gold object ever found in Egypt.
14:09But the most astounding treasure made by the ancient Egyptians is this.
14:19The death mask of Tutankhamun.
14:22And, you know, it's in solid gold, of course, 11 kilograms of it.
14:27And this mask would have sat right on top of the dead pharaoh's face.
14:32The craftsmanship is exquisite.
14:37The gold is inlaid with precious stones,
14:40with lapis, felspar, and carnelian.
14:44And the eyes modelled with obsidian and quartz.
14:50It's a surprisingly tender portrait of the man, actually.
14:56Because he's got these big ears,
14:58and these fleshy lips,
15:00and these wide, innocent eyes that are painted pink at the corners
15:03just to bring them to life.
15:07But the question for me is,
15:08why is this mask in gold?
15:11Why were the coffins in gold?
15:12Why were the shrines in gold?
15:14Why was almost everything in Tutankhamun's tomb in gold?
15:20Well, I don't think this is a statement of wealth,
15:23no matter what we think about gold today.
15:26Because the dead Tutankhamun certainly needed to impress no one.
15:31It's in gold because he believed, just like his contemporaries,
15:34that gold had magical powers.
15:38And think about it.
15:39Here is this substance that has the same colour as the all-powerful sun.
15:43It never tarnishes, never corrupts, never rusts.
15:46It shines for eternity.
15:49And I think Tutankhamun was hoping
15:51that some of that might just rub off on him.
15:54It might bring him back to life,
15:56give him a little bit of eternity,
15:58and transform him into an eternal, invincible,
16:01immortal sun god in his own right.
16:04The desire to honour the sun god had pushed the Egyptians
16:15to the greatest heights of craftsmanship.
16:21And the ancient civilisations that followed
16:24continued to use gold to reveal the divine.
16:27This Etruscan brooch depicts a fabled chimera.
16:40The face of a Greek goddess shimmers in gold.
16:46And this mythical serpent coils to form a Roman armlet.
17:02But as twilight fell on the ancient world, new ideas emerged.
17:07They demanded we suppress our reverence for gold.
17:11And they would have profound implications for art.
17:22Rome.
17:24This was the scene of the revolution.
17:26when all pagan gods were banished
17:29and replaced with a single creator.
17:34It was 312 A.D. when the Roman emperor Constantine saw the light.
18:05For a rich and powerful ruler,
18:07his conversion to Christianity was little short of a miracle.
18:14Because his new religion spoke directly to the poor and to the needy.
18:24Christianity was unoriginal in many ways.
18:27But the one really new idea it had was its distaste for wealth,
18:33for extravagance and for ostentatious display.
18:37Indeed, passage after passage in the Bible
18:40condemns those who are seduced by worldly luxuries like gold.
18:46In fact, it even declares that it would be easier for a camel
18:50to pass through the eye of a needle
18:53than for a rich man to get into heaven.
18:56And thus, in the earliest Christian art,
19:03Christ is shown as perhaps the first poor god in history.
19:09A modest and humble shepherd.
19:15But within just a few centuries, something strange started to happen.
19:20Across the Christian world, a new art form emerged that showed how early Christians,
19:29who had once renounced gold, now couldn't resist its allure.
19:34This is a Byzantine icon.
19:40And images like this were produced as early as the 5th century,
19:44so really, really early in the history of Christianity.
19:49But, you know, what really surprises me about this image
19:52is how much gold there is on it.
19:55I mean, Christianity, after all, constantly criticised people
19:58for being seduced by material wealth.
20:03So why would this artist deem it appropriate
20:06to put so much gold on this painting?
20:10Well, I think the reason is that gold here
20:13is representing not material things.
20:18It's actually there to represent immaterial things.
20:21And it's perhaps the most immaterial thing of them all.
20:28Aidan Hart is an artist who keeps the tradition of icon painting alive.
20:40And he's steeped in the mysteries of gold in Christian art.
20:50I pray, of course, first.
20:52And then, while I'm painting, there's always this sort of inner prayer,
20:55particularly the Jesus prayer, which is very important.
20:59Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.
21:03Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.
21:08I'm aware that I'm praying with colour.
21:11I'm not just praying with words, but I'm praying with colour.
21:14It's a very silent work, but very articulate.
21:17And I will die that the words will carry on.
21:19And I'll be forgotten, but the icon will keep speaking.
21:23Before that soaks in, I now lay the gold.
21:35The background of an icon is generally gold.
21:38It represents the all-pervading presence of God.
21:42It reflects light, it gives light.
21:45It's radiant with God.
21:46They call radiant with light.
21:47They call radiant with gold, if you like.
21:49The light in an icon is dynamic.
21:54The light might be bouncing off the golden background.
21:57So the gold is not just representing God looking at us
22:00and sitting on the throne.
22:02God is mingling with us, transforming us, communing with us.
22:05So through the light, in the moving light of an icon, God is intertwining, as it were, with his creation.
22:15Our life with God is dynamic, not static.
22:18These paintings were supposed to be seen by candlelight.
22:30And when you bring a candle right up to this painting, the colour of the gold is absolutely transformed.
22:37It goes from this murky brown to this absolutely brilliant, shimmering yellowness.
22:45And it seems to be alive, it sort of dances.
22:48And you know, no other colour, no other substance, responded to light, reflected the light quite like gold.
22:56And that is why, for the Christians, gold became the colour of the light of God.
23:07The golden light of icon paintings was intoxicating, and the Christians were desperate for more of it.
23:15They yearned to be fully immersed in the divine light of heaven.
23:25The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna was built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD.
23:37It is a masterpiece of early Christian art.
23:45It is a masterpiece of early Christian art.
23:52Inside, the walls are encrusted with gold.
24:00But this gold is applied with one of the great inventions of the Byzantine age.
24:05This is the gold tessera.
24:16And there are tens of thousands of these all across that wall.
24:22And what they do is amazing.
24:25They trap all of the light in this church.
24:28And then the glass, like a kind of lens, amplifies that light.
24:34But it's not the monotonous, unchanging, blinding light of electricity.
24:41The light sparkles, and it glitters, and it glistens.
24:45And no wonder they love them so much.
24:49Because they must have thought when they looked at that,
24:51that they were looking right into the kingdom of heaven.
25:00The early Christians, who had once renounced all things golden,
25:04had, like the ancients before them, used the colour ingeniously
25:08to bring themselves closer to their god.
25:09And for a millennium, Christian artists continued to use gold to feel his presence.
25:24But in the Renaissance, heaven seemed to lose its monopoly on gold.
25:31And gold would become a potent force in more worldly affairs.
25:35From the 1500s, there was a flowering of wonderful golden jewels.
25:57Flights of fancy made to satisfy the vanity of kings, queens,
26:03and their courts.
26:15Now, this exquisite little thing really typifies the top end of Renaissance gold work.
26:23And it shows on the front the inimitable features of Queen Elizabeth I,
26:28in solid gold, of course.
26:29And these golden cameos would be handed out by the Queen to her most trusted courtiers.
26:35So, while it's gold, it's no longer really about the sacred.
26:39What it's really about is power, politics, and above all, status.
26:43The great kings and queens of the Renaissance scoured Europe, seeking the finest goldsmiths in a bid to outshine their rivals.
27:01And there was one place whose reputation for gold work eclipsed nearly all the others.
27:11So, this is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
27:24And in the Renaissance, it was one of the great centres of gold work.
27:28The finest goldsmiths in Italy would line up along this narrow street, much as they do today, in fact.
27:36And from here, they would sell their wares to the kings and the queens and the rulers and the rich people of Europe.
27:44And when these people arrived here, most hoped to get their hands on the work of one man.
27:56He was called Benvenuto Cellini.
28:01Cellini's father wanted him to become a musician.
28:04But Benvenuto wanted to be an artist.
28:09And at the age of just 13, he forced his way into the goldsmiths' workshops here on the Ponte Vecchio.
28:16And it's no surprise that there's a huge statue of him here, and he's the only goldsmith to get a statue.
28:22And that is because Benvenuto Cellini quickly became the greatest goldsmith of them all.
28:27Cellini was fastidious in recording his many ingenious techniques.
28:36And his writings remain a bible of the goldsmith's art.
28:42Lavorare l'oro, e modellarlo, e creare un'opera unica, e' sempre una grande emozione.
28:49Entrare quasi in unione con questo metallo, l'artista e' la persona che dovrà ricevere questo donno.
29:06Paolo Penco is a Florentine goldsmith, who has been following the teachings of Cellini since he was a boy.
29:13Chissà quante volte anche Benvenuto Cellini avrà fatto questi gesti, avrà mosso questi gesti nella realizzazione di una, dei suoi gioielli, di una delle sue opere.
29:35E questo e' il famoso trattamento ricordato più volte nelle sue memorie.
29:44Però devo dire che come fiorentino ci ha lasciato una grande verità, quella di dover continuare, e con perseveranza, con amore e passione, questa grande tradizione fiorentina dell'artigianato prezioso.
29:57Cellini's legacy lives on at the studio of Paolo Penco.
30:08But of Cellini's gold work, only a single piece has survived the centuries.
30:13Yet it is thought to be the Mona Lisa of sculpture.
30:22The story of its creation is remarkable, if only because Cellini was never as pure as the gold with which he worked.
30:32Cellini was a troublemaker.
30:36He murdered three people and he tried to kill many more.
30:44He was charged for rape.
30:47He was charged for sodomy.
30:49And he was constantly on the run.
30:52Constantly getting into fights and brawls.
30:56And he was even partial to a little bit of theft.
30:58On one occasion he was accused of stealing jewellery from the Pope.
31:11But there was one king who would forgive Cellini everything to have him at his court.
31:17King Francis I of France was one of Europe's most flamboyant and art-loving monarchs.
31:22He wanted to make his kingdom the centre of the Renaissance.
31:29And in 1540 he invited Cellini to Paris.
31:36Now shortly after Cellini arrived in Paris, King Francis invited him in for dinner.
31:43And he said he would pay him 1,000 scudi, which was a vast sum of money at the time.
31:48If Cellini would make him a solid gold salt cellar.
31:54Now when most people think of salt cellars, they think of objects like this.
31:59But Cellini was no ordinary person.
32:02And he instantly set to work on one of the most ambitious projects of his career.
32:09He sweated over the salt cellar for three long years.
32:14But the result of his labours was a masterpiece.
32:20And here it is, the triumph of the Fiorentina art.
32:25And this represents not only a gift, it is not a gift.
32:29It is a small monument to the orifice art, a triumph of the Fiorentina art.
32:34Cesello, incisiones, smeltes.
32:38All this.
32:40And thanks to these techniques,
32:42this is certainly one of the biggest art works that have ever been done.
32:51Cellini's salt cellar is now in Vienna, where it is being carefully restored.
32:55It's a rare opportunity to see Cellini's masterpiece,
32:59just as he saw it in his own workshop.
33:11So this is it, the Saliera.
33:14And I must say, it's incredibly exciting to see it in this way,
33:18as you really get an idea of how Cellini put this masterpiece together,
33:23because it's all in its constituent parts, as he would have seen them.
33:27And the two most recognisable parts are these two magnificent solid gold nudes.
33:34And on the left, we have the god of the sea, Neptune, or Mare,
33:38and you can recognise him from his terrific little trident.
33:42And next to Neptune would have been this magnificent gold and enamelled boat,
33:49a boat that may well have a grumpy self-portrait of Cellini on the front.
33:54And it was in that boat that King Francis would have put his salt.
33:59Now, salt was an incredibly important substance in the 16th century,
34:04and Francis probably got about 10% of his annual revenue from salt tax.
34:09So it was quite important to have it in a great gold dish on the table.
34:12Now, opposite Neptune would have been the goddess of the earth,
34:17known as Terra, or Ceres.
34:19And she is there squeezing her breast,
34:21which may well be a symbol of fecundity and fertility,
34:25or just Cellini having a bit of a joke, we don't know.
34:28But she had next to her this absolutely exquisite triumphal arch,
34:34and inside that Francis would have put his pepper.
34:38Now, these two figures and these two vessels would have then gone on top
34:43of this unbelievably colourful, brilliant surface.
34:48And Neptune would have sat on this side, which is a more nautical side,
34:53and the goddess of the land would have sat on this land section
34:58where we can see rocks and plants and animals.
35:01And then this would have gone on to this ebony base.
35:06And I must say that standing in front of it today,
35:09I'm just bowled over by how brilliant this work of art is.
35:16All the techniques known to 16th century goldsmiths
35:19and all the techniques written about in Cellini's manual,
35:23all of them are applied here and applied with consistent brilliance.
35:28And he's also responded to all these different genres,
35:30so there's a kind of landscape, there are animals,
35:33there are these two great Michelangelesque nudes,
35:36there's architecture, there's even perhaps a self-portrait.
35:40This is a kind of distillation of the whole history of art
35:45into one condiment dish.
35:47When Cellini presented his work to the king,
35:54it is said that Francis squealed with delight.
35:59So perfect was the piece that Francis could barely bring himself to touch it.
36:08But there was one king who would have grabbed the Saliera with both hands.
36:21In the deep, dark forests of Eastern Europe,
36:24there lived a ruler whose lust for gold outshone all others.
36:29But his obsession would turn him from the fine art of the goldsmith
36:35to the dark art of alchemy.
36:40He was Augustus the Strong, and in 1694 he was made Elector of Saxony.
36:47Augustus was something of an outdoorsman.
36:53He was famed for being able to break horseshoes in two with his bare hands.
36:59And his favourite sport was fox tossing,
37:03a grotesque activity in which he catapulted the poor creatures
37:08as high into the air as possible.
37:10And on one particularly gruesome day's contest,
37:13Augustus and his friends tossed 687 foxes, 533 hares,
37:2234 badgers and 21 wild cats to their deaths.
37:40Here in Dresden, the capital of his kingdom,
37:49is an equestrian statue of Augustus himself.
37:54And they call it the Golden Rider.
38:03Here is Augustus the Strong,
38:06looking like some ancient Roman emperor,
38:09gazing out over his great Eastern European kingdom.
38:15And you know, I think it's a rather fitting monument to him
38:17because there was nothing that Augustus wanted more
38:20than to be seen as one of the great rulers of European history.
38:24Up there with Justinian, as great as King Francis,
38:27and he knew that the secret to achieving that ambition was gold.
38:39Among Augustus' baroque palaces that still dominate Dresden today
38:44are more relics of his reign.
38:50And one of them is an extraordinary golden work.
38:54A fantasy vision of the glittering court Augustus aspired to create.
39:00This immodest piece was created by Augustus' favourite goldsmith,
39:14Johann Melchior Dinglinger.
39:16It took him seven years to make,
39:22and it depicts the court of the great Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb.
39:27He was Augustus' contemporary and reputed to be the richest man in the world.
39:33There are 132 exotic courties.
39:42Dinglinger used over 5,000 precious stones
39:47and, of course, lavish quantities of gold.
39:52But this was the closest Augustus could get to such splendour.
39:57And as he gazed on it, how envious he must have been.
40:14But Augustus would hatch a plan.
40:18A dark plot to fill his coffers with unlimited amounts of gold.
40:27It was 1701 when, in one of his many castles,
40:35Augustus got wind of an extraordinary rumour.
40:41Somewhere deep in Prussia,
40:44a teenager had gone and achieved something
40:47that no-one had ever achieved before.
40:50Something that many people thought was actually completely impossible.
40:53And something that finally seemed to bring within reach
40:58Augustus' dream of unlimited gold.
41:05Frederick Butker was a 19-year-old alchemist.
41:10And he had apparently performed the miracle of transmutation.
41:16Turning leather metals into glittering gold.
41:22At one of these demonstrations, he's supposed to have transmuted
41:29a number of silver coins into an ingot of pure gold.
41:34Now, that kind of news cannot be kept secret.
41:37Augustus wasn't sure whether to believe it or not.
41:43So, just to be on the safe side, he had Butker kidnapped
41:48and thrown deep into the dungeons beneath his castle.
41:51History is scattered with examples of alchemists who ended upon the gallows
41:58being executed because they seem to have really thought
42:02they could attain transmutation.
42:04And then, of course, they couldn't actually live up to that.
42:08It was here in this network of subterranean chambers,
42:19underneath Augustus' castle, that Butker was sent.
42:23The doors were bolted, all the windows were bricked up.
42:27And inside, Butker laboured day and night
42:31to manufacture the gold that Augustus wanted so badly.
42:36Butker finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
42:41He's being watched all the time.
42:44At some point, he's going to have to produce something
42:47that will satisfy his captor.
42:50So, really, this must have been a desperate time for Butker.
42:53He had to think about how to escape with his life.
42:58To keep the noose from his neck, Butker would have used every trick
43:03in the alchemists' recipe book.
43:04Take all of the aforesaid black faeces, or black dragon,
43:14and spread them on a marble or other fit stone.
43:19And put into the one side thereof a burning coal.
43:25And the fire will glide through the faeces,
43:29and consign them into a colour very glorious to behold.
43:33But this colour was as close as Augustus would ever come to the alchemists' dream.
43:47After twelve years of imprisonment, Butker, of course, had failed to conjure up a single speck of gold.
44:02Only some sycophantic poetry saved him from the gallows.
44:03But Augustus had one golden object that perfectly captures the failure of his grand ambitions.
44:20It's a sun mask that he rather liked wearing at his many balls and pageants.
44:32Now, one of the most remarkable things about the mask is Dinglinger modelled it precisely on Augustus' features.
44:44So by looking at the mask, we can kind of see what Augustus the Strong actually looked like.
44:49One thing I'm particularly surprised by is how small and chubby his face was.
44:56But for me, this isn't really about reality. It's a fantasy.
45:00And that's why that mask becomes so powerful and so revealing.
45:05It embodies that desperate desire of Augustus to enter the pantheon of the great gods and the great kings.
45:13But the truth is, underneath that glowing mask, he wasn't rich enough and wasn't powerful enough to be one of them.
45:22And that's why this mask is made of copper, with a little bit of gold put on the top of it.
45:31Augustus' vision of unlimited gold had failed to materialise.
45:36But in a little over a hundred years, the alchemist's dream would come true.
45:45And this miraculous discovery took place...
45:51..in Birmingham.
45:56Now, in the 19th century, Birmingham was far and away the most inventive place on the planet.
46:04Now, let me just give you one example.
46:07In that period, this city registered three times as many patents as any other city in the world.
46:16Indeed, it seemed that hardly a day would pass here without someone inventing something.
46:22But for me, one of those inventions was more remarkable than all the others.
46:27Because for the first time, it promised to bring gold within the reach of everyone.
46:38That remarkable invention was the brainchild of one George Richards Elkington.
46:45George Elkington was a typical product of industrial Birmingham.
46:53He was inventive, he was industrious, and he was obsessed with taking out patents.
46:59He patented virtually everything he ever produced, the bifocal, for instance.
47:06But Elkington's most profitable licence was issued on 25th March 1840,
47:13when he patented a way to make gold objects out of almost nothing.
47:17Years before Edison had even invented the electric light bulb, Elkington was harnessing electricity to make gold objects.
47:37He called the process electroplating.
47:40And it was a marvel of the industrial age.
47:48Now, at the centre of Elkington's factory stood a huge machine that rotated 500 times a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
48:01And around that machine were these vast troughs of bubbling brown liquid.
48:06And those troughs transformed ordinary objects into gold.
48:12Now, contemporaries were astounded by the process.
48:17Some of them thought it was magic.
48:19Some of them thought it was alchemy.
48:21Some thought it was some technology from a distant future.
48:25But nearly all of them thought it was a miracle.
48:28One day, in 1844, Elkington was graced with a visit from Prince Albert, who had come to see the miracle for himself.
48:43And for this special occasion, Elkington had prepared a most wondrous spectacle.
48:54Elkington plucked a small rose from his lapel.
48:59He then delicately lowered it into one of his troughs of liquid.
49:08He waited. The crowd waited.
49:12And when the time was just right, he withdrew it.
49:17The crowd was amazed. A round of applause broke out.
49:23Because Elkington's rose had been turned to gold.
49:29And as they looked closer, they grew even more amazed.
49:32Because by chance, a small cobweb had been on Elkington's rose.
49:38And the cobweb, too, had been turned into the finest threads of gold.
49:51Albert was captivated.
49:54So captivated that he became an electroplating addict.
49:59On his return to London, it is said that he had his very own electroplating suite installed at Buckingham Palace.
50:11Finally fulfilling every ruler's dream of unlimited gold.
50:23With the royal seal of approval, Elkington's factory went into overdrive.
50:30Within a few years, he was employing 10,000 people.
50:39And his gold was sent across the world.
50:42To India, to Uruguay, and even to Egypt.
50:48Elkington was churning out gold objects on a scale never seen before.
50:54Why do you think people like electroplating so much?
51:02The dream.
51:03That's exactly what they like it.
51:05Because if everything was made out of solid metal, it would cost a fortune.
51:08Where this would look like it's made out of solid gold.
51:13But it's really not.
51:14That there is gold.
51:15That's what the actual gold looks like.
51:16Yeah, that's actually gold.
51:17I don't know how they make it like that.
51:18I'm not going to pretend to know.
51:19But that there would do hundreds of hundreds of items of work.
51:20Just that small amount.
51:21And then it comes out that it's gold.
51:25It's a really thin amount.
51:26You wouldn't be able to buy perhaps a pack of cigarettes with the amount of gold that's
51:27on there.
51:28Because that's just a colour.
51:29It's a gold colour.
51:30So people vote for the one that's on there.
51:31I don't know how they make it like that.
51:32I'm not going to pretend to know.
51:33But that there would do hundreds of hundreds of items of work.
51:35Just that small amount.
51:36And then it comes out that it's gold.
51:37It's a really thin amount.
51:38You wouldn't be able to buy perhaps a pack of cigarettes with the amount of gold that's
51:51on there.
51:53Because that's just a colour.
51:55It's a gold colour.
51:56So people vote for what it looks like more than what the value of the actual gold is.
52:07People think it is real gold.
52:10Yeah.
52:11I think a lot of people would be fooled.
52:13Yeah.
52:14A lot of people would.
52:16Fool's gold.
52:23Elkington's Falls gold had the Victorian public enchanted.
52:32They peered into Elkington's glittering showrooms from Newcastle to London's fashionable Regent Street.
52:43But the public didn't just look.
52:46They could now own a little bit of gold for the very first time.
52:55This was the most revolutionary technology.
52:59And what it did was democratise gold.
53:01It brought gold into ordinary people's homes.
53:05And Elkington's ingenious new technology allowed him to make perfect copies of the most priceless and exquisite treasures ever to have been found.
53:20And these are based on a really extraordinary original.
53:26An object discovered in Afghanistan.
53:30And Elkington made numerous, numerous reproductions of them.
53:35And what's amazing is that this probably served some incredibly important religious function thousands of years ago.
53:40But now it was simply for display.
53:43Perhaps you could even use it as a toothbrush holder.
53:50As his electroplating empire expanded, one city was hooked on Elkington's golden wares.
53:57The dawn of the 20th century was Vienna's gilded age.
54:11Even as the Austrian empire crumbled, their lust for gold remained.
54:16But here there lived an artist who was determined to make gold sacred once again.
54:33Gustav Klimt produced a series of glittering paintings.
54:39But one of them shines brighter than all the rest.
54:46The kiss.
54:49Known as the last word on love.
54:54But I think it tells us just as much about gold.
54:59Klimt has thrown almost every single kind of golden substance he can find onto this one canvas.
55:07In fact, there are eight different kinds of gold leaf alone on this picture.
55:12And there are many more different kinds of gold paint.
55:14And every single thing has been applied in a different way.
55:18So he has put some gold leaf down flat.
55:21Other times, he's put gold on top of bits of plaster and shellac to create these wonderful jewel-like textures.
55:28So the whole thing becomes incredibly opulent.
55:31It's almost like you're opening a bag of jewels and you're looking inside to see all these fantastic treasures within.
55:36He's looked back to the great Egyptian sun gods.
55:42The great Byzantine mosaics.
55:46He had been to Ravenna.
55:48He had seen those fantastic mosaics.
55:49He's drawing on decorative gold work of the Renaissance like Cellini.
55:58So why is Klimt doing it?
56:01Why so much gold in so many ways with so many references and meanings?
56:05Well, I think it's part of his desperate attempt to bring back gold from the brink.
56:12Because he has lived through a period when gold has become debased.
56:15It has become cheap. It's become tacky.
56:17And he's trying to say, no, gold is the most precious thing we have.
56:21It's the most numinous, spiritual, otherworldly thing we have.
56:24And therefore, we have to devote it to the most important things in the world.
56:27And for Klimt, the most important thing was love.
56:39It was a beautiful idea.
56:41But today, Klimt's grand ambition has been undone by the popularity of his work.
56:48Endlessly reproduced, the kiss has become just another golden idol of our consumer century.
56:54Now most of us can have a little bit of gold in our lives.
57:00And our obsession with it remains undimmed.
57:07You know, I think the reason that we're so obsessed with gold is that gold reflects the things that every society holds most sacred.
57:17So for the ancient Egyptians, it was the sun and the afterlife.
57:20For the Christians, it was the light of God.
57:25And for the Renaissance kings, it was power and status.
57:28And for Gustav Klimt, it was love and sex.
57:32But this gold here underneath the Bank of England suggests that for us, perhaps the most sacred thing is money.
57:40And you know, when this beautiful substance is locked away, seen only as a number, as a price, as a statistic on a spreadsheet, I can't help feeling that maybe something is lost.
57:54And maybe somehow, gold has lost its shine.
57:59In the next episode, a colour from across the seas, from Giotto's heavenly visions to Titian's sensual delights.
58:18This is an utter barnstorm.
58:26From Picasso's melancholy yearning to Eve Klein's dreams of escape.
58:33It's the colour of the great beyond, of the forever unattainable.
58:38We were going to show those dirty commies that we were better.
58:44It's the story of Blue.
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59:09To me because patles the north and the west e easier can get,
59:11because of theDI that I'm dying of creativity was an important thing to say,
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59:13It's the story of Blue wearing the birthday.
59:14You had they nggaked.
59:15A July 3rd.
59:16A July 24th.
59:18So 25th.
59:19And this was the speculative science,
59:20you're gonna see a viven who JOE інfe Señal Hall of during theора term of the 2018,
59:22which we talked about as a writer.
59:24And this is a Gotcha.
59:26It's the right place to be called on the Way средs for our heroes.
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