Florence is possibly the city in Italy most associated with the Renaissance. This two part program explores the city's history, as well as the many great artists who orginiated there, including Giotto, Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Dante, and Machiavelli. We also visit several sites around the city that display famous masterpieces, such as the Neptune fountain in the Piazza della Signoria, which was sculpted by Bartolomeo Ammanati and Giambologna, and...

1000 Masterpieces from the Great Museums of the World takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of art and provides a deeper insight into the masterpieces of painting. This film explores Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s “The Family of John the Baptist with the Family of Christ,” completed in 1817 and housed in New Masters Gallery in Dresden.

This work is full of allusions to the interplay between knowledge and mystery, science and religion, the familiar and the unknown, the inward- and the outward-looking. The shaft of light that is Vermeer's hallmark and in which he excelled celebrates the freedom of the age and the growth of humanism.

An art special produced in cooperation with the National Gallery of Art in association with IBM.

Sister Wendy Beckett, a hermit nun with an unorthodox passion for art, visits Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, St Petersburg, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid on a tour of Europe's finest galleries. In “St. Petersburg,” she visits the Hermitage Museum, where she discusses paintings by Rembrandt, Correggio and Wasily Kandinsky. A BBC Production.

Vermeer, Beyond Time explores the life and work of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. In this documentary, Jean-Pierre Cottet focuses on not only his work, but also his family life. In 1675, overwhelmed by poverty, physically weakened, and humiliated, Vermeer dies at the age of 43. His rediscovery some 200 years later has seen his popularity soar, claiming both our hearts and our admiration.

From cave painting to the present day, Giotto and Michaelangelo to Cézanne and Jackson Pollock, art lover Sister Wendy Beckett visits the world's art galleries to tell the history of painting. In “Two Sides of the Alps,” she looks at the Renaissance in Venice and Northern Europe, taking in works by Bellini, Titian, Giorgione, Veronese, Durer, Holbein and Bruegel along the way. A BBC Production.

Art historian and critic Andrew Graham-Dixon opens this series with the dramatic story of French art, a story of the most powerful kings ever to rule in Europe, with their glittering palaces and astoundingart to go in them. He also reveals how art emerged from a struggle between tradition and revolution, between rulers and a people who didn't always want to be ruled. Starting with the first great revolution in art, the invention of Gothic architecture,...

Unveiling the man behind the myth. Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo created three of the art world's greatest icons: the statue of David, the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and the dome of St. Peter's in Rome. This revealing drama documentary traces his development from angry young man to pride of Rome. His prodigious talent has led people to describe him as more divine than human. Modern experts reproduce elements of his...

Chronicles movements in art in the western world from medieval times to the early twentieth century.