Art That Made Us

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

An alternative history of the British Isles, told through art.

An epic story of creativity. How works of art from Britain's past have shaped us. Some are surprising, others familiar - but all are at the heart of dramatic moments of change.

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Art That Made Us: Series 1: To Kill a King

To Kill A King

To Kill a King

Series 1

BBC Two - Art That Made Us, Series 1, To Kill a King

A splintering of politics and religion under the Stuarts leads to more questioning art.

A splintering of politics and religion in the British Isles under the Stuart kings leads to more questioning art, new science and architecture.

Architect Amanda Levete climbs the Tulip Stairs in the Queen’s House, Greenwich, and reassesses Inigo Jones’ elegant and innovative design, while portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg encounters Van Dyck’s monumental portrait of the Earl of Pembroke’s family and finds signs of the dysfunction and tensions which point to the civil war to come.

This was a war that would be waged across three kingdoms, and artist Rita Duffy explores some of the poisonous propaganda it created in Wenceslas Hollar’s Teares of Ireland woodcuts, while photographer Platon examines the Puritan aesthetic through Samuel Cooper’s ‘warts and all’ miniature of Oliver Cromwell.

The battle between royalist and parliamentary forces brought bloodshed but ultimately the rise of a more questioning culture. Actor Anton Lesser performs excerpts of John Milton’s daring Paradise Lost, which laments the fall of the republic through the figure of a charismatic Satan rebelling against God, the king.

The restoration of the monarchy saw a new creative flourishing in works by playwright Aphra Behn and the intricate baroque carvings of Grinling Gibbons. But it is in the rise of a more scientific mindset that creativity would find greatest expression: artist Angela Palmer marvels at the artistry of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, and sculptor Thomas Heatherwick reveals the brilliant architectural deceptions in Christopher Wren’s dome of St Paul’s.

Art That Made Us: Series 1

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To Kill a King

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