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Description
Byzantium: spanning eleven centuries and a major portion of the Old World's landscape, its name stands for power and affluence. In this program, noted journalist Paul Solman discusses a magnificent display of Byzantine art garnered from 117 collections with Harvard professor and art expert Loli Kalavrezou. Paintings, mosaics, carvings, and ceramics facilitate an exploration of Byzantine iconography as it evolved from Hellenistic and Roman themes to...
Description
The National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris is the home of The Lady and the Unicorn, the exotic set of six medieval tapestries that illustrates the five senses-and the Lady's deepest desire. This program seeks to unravel the mysteries woven into these enchanting wall hangings as it explores their history and symbolism.
Description
This program looks at the British Museum's extraordinary collection of Near Eastern antiquities from Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria, from 5000 BC to the 7th century AD. The Assyrian friezes, reliefs, and statuary provide a stark portrait of a brutal, efficient war machine on which depended the land of Nineveh and Nimrud. The camera also moves to the sites in Iraq where these and other excavations were made. The sculpted and chiseled military history...
Description
The details of the ancient Egyptian Paneb's life-how he carried out his duties as foreman of a gang of superb stone carvers and how he eventually came to grief-lead us to the oldest map in the world. The program discusses the gods who controlled all life; how death is reborn in the king's burial chamber; the relationship between day and night, life and death, flood and drought; the remains of the village: the house of Caha, maker of scarabs, and of...
Description
Writers write so that the future may learn, a 5th-century French monk once inscribed in a diligent hand. This program is a concise history of the illuminated manuscript and book production. The everyday lives of the writers, scribes, and illustrators are revealed, and honor is paid to the best known: Einhard, biographer of Charlemagne; Gerald of Wales; the Abbot of Wearmouth Jarrow; the poor miscreant scribe, Raulinus; and Jean Mielot, scribe of the...
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The illuminated psalm book of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell is a priceless treasure, containing beautiful calligraphy and extremely fine illustrations. Packed with scenes from the Bible and from everyday life-plus all manner of creatures, including bizarre monsters called babewyns-the book provides a mysterious glimpse of life during the Middle Ages. Section one of this charming program discusses how the psalter was made and decorated, focusing on what the...
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The origins of the Book of Kells are uncertain; it was written and illustrated around the year 800, but the monastery where it originated has not been identified. It contains the Latin text of the four Gospels, with some pages in elaborate color; almost every page has brightly-colored birds and animals, and there are portraits of the four evangelists. This program not only shows but identifies the faces and figures and explains the flamboyant decoration...
Description
Standing in the Jordanian desert is a singular archaeological treasure: the bath complex at Qusair Amra. Inside, the walls display lively frescoes depicting hundreds of characters engaged in a wide variety of activities. Using a computer-generated reconstruction of the least well preserved paintings, this program restores the faded images to their original vibrant colors in order to unravel the fascinating visual narrative. These frescoes are a splendid...
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Once the Berber town of Volubilis, in modern-day Morocco, was absorbed into the Roman Empire, subsequent construction aimed at Romanizing it. The result was a blend of European and African, imperial and tribal, that brought out some of the best of both worlds. This program tours the ruins of the town to point out key landmarks and explain their primary political purpose: to tightly bind this important defensive outpost to the interests of Rome. Monuments,...
Description
Discovered by chance in the early 1930s, the ancient city of Mari provides insights into Mesopotamian culture and humankind's first steps toward urbanization. In this program, archaeologists Jean-Claude Margueron and Beatrice Muller-Margueron lead a team in the excavation of Mari's urban center as they work to uncover the successive layers of the third, second, and first towns. Geographic and historical background on Mesopotamia is provided, archaeological...
Description
What led the great powers of antiquity to install themselves on the minuscule island of Delos? And how did Delos, one of the most important religious centers in Greece, come to be an international trading hub, as well? To answer these questions, this program traces the island's history between the 9th and 1st centuries BC: Delos' renown as the mythological birthplace of Apollo; the subsequent struggles among the Greek city-states to possess Delos;...
Description
This program covers the founding of Constantinople as a second Rome, its flowering when the Roman Empire in the West was shattered, its gradual decline under the impact of Normans, Turks, Venetians, and the Crusades, and finally, its fall in 1453. The program describes the history, art, and religious significance of Byzantium, its attempts to restore the Roman Empire, its influence in the West, and its heritage.
Description
This program explores the many similarities among tribal nations, including a profound respect for nature, myth, and tradition; matriarchal governance; a communal lifestyle; a belief in an afterlife; and the use of pictographs, symbols, and patterns rather than an alphabet-based language. Also featured are brief scenes of re-created warfare: the French and Iroquois vs. the British as a part of the Seven Years' War and the Sioux and Cheyenne vs. the...
Description
Beginning about 500 BC, Greek artists and architects began working at an unprecedented level of sophistication, paralleling the rise of Athens as a Mediterranean power. This program illustrates the awakening of that classical Greek vision, from which emerged the most influential sculptures and buildings of Western culture. With detailed visual analysis of the Parthenon, its frieze in the British Museum, the theater at Epidavros, and other exemplary...
Description
Far from disappearing after the Hellenistic age, Greek art flourished with the rise of Christianity and the Orthodox church. This program explores the development of icon painting, the influence of Greek artists on later European movements, and the advent of neoclassical architecture as a manifestation of an age-old cultural legacy. With historical context from the conversion of Constantine through Greece's post-WWII development period, Beyond the...
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Over seven centuries of Islamic rule, Spain became the cultural jewel of Europe. This program illustrates that flowering of art and science, placing the rebirth of classical learning in Andalusian rather than Italian cities. Writer Bettany Hughes speaks with Antonia Almagro of the Spanish National Research Council about the intellectual and aesthetic revelations a visitor from Florence or Venice might have experienced in Muslim Granada or Toledo....
Description
With the grandeur and geometric sophistication of the Alhambra as a powerful opening example, this program looks at Islamic culture in southern Spain following the Berber invasion of 711. Scholar Bettany Hughes talks with Professor Antonio Fernandez-Puertas of the University of Granada, who has studied Nasrid art and architecture for 40 years; with Professor Lauro Olmo Encisco of Alcala University in Madrid, an expert on the Visigothic site of Recopolis;...
Description
Before there was writing, people remembered-the history of the tribe, how to make tools or placate the gods, who owned what. The growth of commerce required written records. This program traces the development of writing, from the earliest Sumerian cuneiform examples and the almost parallel development of hieroglyphics in Egypt, through the evolution of different concepts and shapes to the development of a workable alphabet, explains how the mysteries...
Description
Under Muslim rule, Spain became the most advanced, wealthy, and populous country in Europe, with great leaps forward in art, architecture, and many other fields. In this program, art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon travels from Cordoba to Seville and on to Granada as he tells the story of art in Islamic and medieval Spain. Richly designed and decorated buildings such as the Great Mosque in Cordoba, the Alcazar in Seville, and the Alhambra in Granada...
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