[Bell ringing] [Birds chirping] [Somber music] ♪ Narrator: At 26, Michelangelo is the rising star of Renaissance Italy.

For 5 years, he's been establishing himself as a talented sculptor in Rome.

Now he's heading home.

He's desperate to prove he's the greatest artist Florence has ever produced.

I'd known since I was a child that I was destined for far greater things than those around me.

I had challenged the ancients themselves and conquered Rome with my pietà.

♪ Man: Michelangelo was a driven artist.

He wants to be the best that is possible.

He is competitive.

He wants to do better than anybody else.

Michelangelo: I was the returning hero.

Florence's favorite son.

Or so I thought.

♪ Narrator: Also returning is the superstar artist of the day, Leonardo da Vinci.

He's been away in Milan building a dazzling reputation.

Now he's back in Florence, determined to secure his legacy.

If Michelangelo wants his name to go down in history as the greatest, he must first outshine Leonardo.

Michelangelo: I wanted to make my mark, eclipse Leonardo... and carve my name into Florentine history.

Sarah: Rivalry is profoundly embedded within the Renaissance.

There has to be somebody that you're competing with to make you want to up your game.

And I think that that is one of the things that makes Renaissance art so powerful.

Narrator: Going head to head, these two very different men will use all their creativity, ingenuity and skill, push each other to extraordinary new heights, and create some of the most brilliant art the world has ever seen.

[Dramatic music] ♪ Daphne: The Renaissance is usually regarded as this beautiful period where everything is golden and shiny, but there is another side to it.

[Crowd shouting] Man: It's endlessly bloody and conflicted and violent, and that's what the art responds to.

The art feeds off that.

♪ Sarah: Art is propaganda in the Renaissance.

Images are extraordinarily powerful.

In that respect, it's actually very modern.

Leslie: This is really the age where patrons realize the power of art and once you start to mix art and money, then it's a lethal cocktail.

[Dramatic music swells] ♪ Leslie: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, they are really the first superstar artists.

♪ I am Michelangelo Buonarroti, artist and an old fool.

Antony: He lived for his art, but it was almost like his vocation was a sentence.

Michelangelo: I've had so many paymasters, bankers and princes, cardinals and popes.

But what I did was always in the service of God and in the pursuit of perfection.

Jerry: Two things go hand in hand in the Renaissance, a ruthlessness in politics and a true belief in the power of art.

But to really understand the Renaissance, you have to tell the whole story.

[Dark music] ♪ ♪ [Bell ringing] [Mysterious music] Narrator: Florence is returning to normality after a decade of violent upheaval.

Once the artistic center of the Renaissance, the city has been torn apart by the puritanical preacher Girolamo Savonarola.

Under his rule, Florence has fallen prey to religious extremism.

Art has been burned and artists and patrons forced to flee.

Jerry: It's an absolutely extraordinary shift from all the art and all the luxury to this real ground zero religious zealotry of Savonarola.

But it speaks to a certain populism that people buy into.

Sarah: But what happens is, as you might expect, there are still things like famines, plagues, and pestilence.

He cannot deliver salvation on Earth.

Narrator: After 5 long years, the people of Florence are starving and tired of misery under the puritanical tyrant.

They turn on Savonarola, hang him, burn his body and throw his remains into the river.

Michelangelo: Free from the Savonarola's madness, Florence was reborn.

A new era had dawned and hope was restored to our Florentine soul.

Narrator: Instead of turning to a charismatic leader or a powerful family, the people of Florence look to forge their own destiny as an independent republic.

But Florence is in a perilous position.

Surrounded by warring city states and foreign superpowers, for the republic to survive, Florentines must use every tool at their disposal.

They turn to the great political minds of their time, men like Niccolò Machiavelli.

Sarah: I think he is the first great political scientist.

He looks at the workings of power and tells you what you need to do to hold onto it.

And I tell you, that's an extraordinary quality to have at this moment of history.

Narrator: Machiavelli creates a citizen army, but the people need to be inspired to fight for Florence, and the new republican government knows just how to do that.

[Crowd chatter] Jerry: Florence still retains its caché as a center for art.

And the usual way in which the Florentines try and rebuild, try and develop a new regime, they turn to art.

Narrator: The republican government wants to fill the city with rousing images, and this creates an opportunity for its two most ambitious artists: Michelangelo and Leonardo.

Sarah: It is one of the most amazing moments in the history of the Renaissance, because their need to create civic art to bolster the republic coincides with them having the services of the two greatest artists that are alive at that moment.

It must have been the equivalent of having your own army but you have your own army in terms of art.

[Dramatic music peaks] Ilaria: Both artists want to contribute to the new regime, so this is an incredible stage.

They have a sense of the historical moment that they are living.

And of course, both being ambitious, they both want to be interpreters of this moment and possibly the key interpreter of this moment in Florence.

This must have fueled the competition between them, and this really pushed them to show everything that they are capable of.

Michelangelo: It was my chance to return and to create great things for my city.

I wanted to make my mark.

Narrator: The first major commission is to be a public sculpture... showing off Florence's strength in the face of its larger, more aggressive neighbors.

Jerry: The new republican regime work out that what's required here is a David.

Sarah: David is a young man with no power who takes on a giant.

It could not be a greater metaphor for a small little city state punching above its weight in a huge country where there is violence and horror all around.

[Gentle music] Narrator: For 40 years, the city has had an enormous block of Carrara marble sitting idle.

It is legendary in Florence.

It towers over 17 feet tall and is dangerously brittle.

No one has dared to sculpt it.

Now one artist has the chance to take it on and make his name.

Leslie: This giant block of marble-- this gigante as it's called-- this block of marble, in fact, had been around for quite some time.

Many artists were vying for this particular commission 'cause it is quite a prestigious one.

And many, of course, submit proposals for it.

Jerry: Whoever takes this on, it's the most monumental thing that they'll take on in their entire career.

It's gonna define them, or it could lead to them being completely ruined.

I mean, it's that big a task.

It's all or nothing.

Take it on, succeed, Florence is yours.

Fail, you're out.

Michelangelo: There were other contenders, of course-- a few excellent artisans who'd attempted to scale this mountain of marble.

Nobody had the courage to put their hands to the block, nor the experience, nor the engineering know-how to do something worthy.

I had the courage... and I wanted it.

So they chose me.

Of course!

Michelangelo has a reputation for being a difficult person.

Ambitious as hell and willing to take on any project in the world in order to prove that he's the best.

[Birds chirping] Antony: Michelangelo was very aware of Florence's need to reassert and reassure itself of its strength, its beauty, its right to a future.

This is the most cultured city in Europe.

This is the city in which sculpture is shared with every citizen.

Michelangelo is a young man proving himself, not just to himself but to the powers that be in Florence.

Narrator: But Leonardo is not to be outdone.

[Dramatic music] He takes the unprecedented step of opening his workshop to the public.

He knows he can't beat Michelangelo's David for scale.

Instead, he wants to showcase his intellectual and technical brilliance, by inviting people to examine his studies and sketches in meticulous detail.

♪ Walter: There are a lot of great artists during the Renaissance, but nobody quite gets to the orbit of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonard wove together art and engineering and science and everything else.

He was always trying different things to experiment.

And that's the way he tries to integrate his science into his art.

He was the essence of the Renaissance man.

He was probably the person in history who knew the most you could possibly know about everything that was then knowable.

♪ Ilaria: Renaissance art manifests the incredible ambition of human beings to know and command nature, to penetrate its mysteries and to look for a degree of beauty and harmony and understanding.

For Leonardo, he's pushing the boundaries of what art can represent.

Narrator: Center stage in Leonardo's open house is a spectacular and groundbreaking preparatory drawing, known as a cartoon, of the Virgin, Jesus, St. Anne, and John the Baptist.

[Haunting music] ♪ Leslie: Having worked at the National Gallery for over 18 years, I have had the privilege to be in that room, and it is an extraordinary experience every time.

Leonardo's using this technique that he's now become synonymous with called sfumato.

And this translates to "smoke."

In other words, the actual transition between light and dark is almost imperceptible.

It's as though these people are coming out of the mist towards you.

It is an extraordinary work to look at.

It seems vital.

It seems alive.

Ilaria: Leonardo plays with quite a traditional iconography and transforms it into a study of human emotions, human interactions and a study of the dynamism of the figures.

People flock there to see this composition.

[Dark music] Narrator: Despite himself, even Michelangelo can't stay away.

Walter: Leonardo and Michelangelo are polar opposite.

Leonardo is gregarious.

He has a posse around him.

He likes to perform in public.

Michelangelo's a bit of a recluse.

Leonardo loves painting.

Michelangelo prefers sculpture.

And Leonardo starts making fun of Michelangelo's sculptures.

Michelangelo: There I was listening to the great Leonardo... playing host to his admirers.

[Laughter] [Scoffs] What does he announce?

The gifted painter will produce few works but they will be of a kind to make men stop and contemplate their perfection with admiration.

[Laughs] Sculpture, uh, a manual exercise often accompanied by profuse sweating.

His face is plastered and powdered with the dust of his marble.

So he has the appearance of a baker.

[Laughter] Leslie: Only one person in the room can be the best of the best.

And what Leonardo does, he uses this opportunity to get one over on Michelangelo.

Walter: When Leonardo denigrates sculpture, Michelangelo's furious.

I think in 1501, it definitely feels like he's the underdog.

[Footsteps] [Tense music] ♪ Michelangelo: And now I had the chance to prove him wrong with my David.

I would silence all those who doubted the preeminence of my art.

♪ William: In carving the David, Michelangelo's absolutely making the statement that sculpture is the equal to painting and maybe the superior.

And so Michelangelo's identifying with David.

David, who was able to slay Goliath, conquer all.

Michelangelo is conquering all of art, maybe even conquering Leonardo in showing that he's the best of all.

♪ Alison: I know as an artist myself, you're always striving to do things that maybe people think you can't do.

The way that he looked at a piece of marble, he could already see something in it-- a figure, what he was going to create.

He could already picture that.

Antony: All sculptors of that age drill in from the outside of the block to a series of points that have been predetermined on a model.

The amazing thing about how Michelangelo evolved as a sculptor is that he rejected that entirely.

He recognized that you start with, as it were, a given block of material and you reduce it to find the form that is hidden in the block.

This idea of direct carving, it came completely from Michelangelo.

He wants that challenge of, I suppose, revelation.

William: In the David, Michelangelo is working entirely by himself.

It's hard work.

If you've never tried carving marble, first of all, this hammer weighs more than 5 pounds.

This man must have been unbelievably strong.

And he knows exactly how to hit the chisel precisely.

[Suspenseful music] ♪ Jerry: It's a terrifying thing to take on.

You make one mistake when you attack that block, and it's done.

I mean, every chisel, you're thinking do you screw it up?

And if you do, it's over.

It's terrifying.

I mean, how do you sleep?

How do you carry on that work?

It's breathtakingly brave and dangerous.

It's a real tightrope.

Narrator: Michelangelo starts work on his David early in the morning of September 13, 1501.

He toils for almost 2 1/2 years before finally unveiling his 8 1/2 ton masterpiece.

[Haunting music] ♪ [Choral singing] ♪ Kate: David is so impressive.

It's so realistic.

To have been able to do that out of a lump of rock is incredible.

The moment that Michelangelo chose to depict is not the victorious moment where David can stand on top of Goliath and he's won.

It's the moment just before.

It's the moment where he's not sure if he's gonna win the fight, where he's scared.

And you can see the tension in his body.

You can see the fact that he's just starting to twist and the muscles are bunching up.

Antony: David totally changes the conception of sculpture.

He shows that he is able to make inert matter live and asking it to carry feeling and thought.

David: When David was revealed, you know, people couldn't believe it.

It's not just this placid, blank face.

There is thought going on.

And to be able to sculpt thought... that's incredible.

To be able to sculpt thought onto someone's face, [Laughs] come on, it's crazy.

[Blows] ♪ Jerry: So, in a sense, it's exceeded its commission.

But there's a classic piece of republican bureaucracy around the David piece because there is a committee which is set up.

And they meet to discuss both the piece and where it should be sited.

And Leonardo da Vinci sits on that committee.

Michelangelo: I wanted it placed outside, so it could be seen in close up and in the round by everybody-- a proud symbol of the city in defiance of the tyrants that surrounded it, hmm.

[Sighs] But not everybody agreed.

♪ Narrator: Leonardo senses an opportunity to keep Michelangelo's sculpture hidden in the shadows.

He declares that David's nudity is an offense to the good people of Florence and should not be publicly displayed.

David caused a bit of a scandal, and can still cause scandal to this very day because he's very lifelike.

David doesn't have to have his clothes off to fight Goliath, but he does here.

[Spirited music] Narrator: The debate goes to a vote.

Leonardo's proposal is narrowly rejected.

Instead, Michelangelo's work will stand proudly outside the seat of government in Florence's main square.

Michelangelo: And then, led by Leonardo, utter nonsense followed.

They hammered nails into my David and attached a copper fig leaf to conceal what they considered was his indecency.

Shame on them.

Kate: It stayed there for hundreds of years until the 19th century, when we finally took him inside and took his fig leaf away.

Michelangelo: Well, at least at last, I'd made something important for my city.

And even if they didn't understand it, [Laughs] they all were talking about it.

[Suspenseful music] Narrator: David is a symbol of Florentine strength and intellectual superiority.

It's such a powerful political message, the republican government wants more.

What better way than to exploit the intensifying rivalry between their two leading artists?

Leslie: What they decide to do is deliberately commission Michelangelo and Leonardo to produce frescos in the grand council chamber.

This is the first time that they're in the same place at the same time doing works of art.

Jerry: They're both given substantial spaces to create paintings of two key battles in Florentine history.

Leonardo is given the task of depicting the Battle of Anghiari.

Michelangelo is then given the task of depicting another battle called the Battle of Cascina.

It's a battle of battles to mythologize Florentine history and to see what they come up with.

William: Michelangelo wants to take on Leonardo in his own field of expertise in making a painting.

This is the very, very competitive Michelangelo coming to the fore.

Jerry: It is a remarkable moment that just by chance you have the Florentine republic with the two great artists Leonardo and Michelangelo.

It's almost like a boxing match.

Michelangelo: Now I had the chance to best Leonardo in front of his eyes.

[chuckles] I knew what I was up against.

Narrator: Michelangelo and Leonardo devise very personal and radically different compositions.

Michelangelo: Leonardo is a painter at heart-- always adding, building up, experimenting.

His was to be a teeming mass of soldiers and horses.

Leslie: Leonardo chooses to depict a huge scrummage of men on horseback, lances going everywhere and people caught in the middle of an actual pitch battle itself.

Walter: It's one of the defining things about Leonardo's life, is he just wants to understand everything possible about nature.

And you can just see all the emotions, both on the faces of the warriors and the horses at this climatic moment of battle.

[Dramatic music] ♪ William: And then Michelangelo realizes, I'm gonna take him on but I'm gonna take him on on my own grounds.

And my own grounds is the grounds of the human figure.

Michelangelo: Sculptors see what painters do not, how to portray the true beauty of the human form.

William: His battle picture is not a battle picture at all.

It's a bunch of nudes coming out of the river, getting dressed because they're about to go into battle.

And we would see which way would achieve the best results.

[Brooding music] Narrator: With Michelangelo and Leonardo fixated on fighting each other, neither notices the arrival of a new disruptive threat to their reputations.

Woman: In the early 1500s, Florence is an extremely exciting place.

These artists are reinventing art, pushing it further, getting better at it.

There is no way that Raphael is gonna miss that.

Narrator: 21-year-old Raphael Santi is a boy wonder.

He's already built a reputation as a brilliant, gifted artist in his home town of Urbino.

And now he arrives in Florence, determined to prove himself against the very best.

Bette: He knows how to behave.

He is lovely.

He is charming.

He is handsome.

But he is also driven.

He makes his name very, very quickly.

Narrator: Raphael wastes no time.

He charms Leonardo, who is captivated by the young artist.

Leonardo introduces him to several prominent patrons, but it's a strategic mistake.

Raphael wins work from the benefactors Leonardo and Michelangelo depend on.

Now both must compete, not just with each other, but with Raphael, too.

Michelangelo: Ah, Raphael.

Talented youth.

I had my doubts.

[Dark music] Leslie: Michelangelo sees him as an immediate rival.

Raphael is a prodigy.

He's able to absorb styles and reproduce them in his own inimitable fashion.

Narrator: Raphael spends weeks studying Michelangelo and Leonardo's sketches for their battle paintings, learning all he can from the two masters.

He was sneaking my ideas and then roughing up the edges and making them look like his own.

♪ The three of us there in Florence.

The young man, the old and me.

Narrator: Leonardo realizes that by introducing Raphael to Florence's wealthy elite, he has undermined his own position.

It's now more important than ever that his battle scene is a triumph to maintain his reputation.

So, he takes a risk and tries a daring new technique.

He wants to make color more brilliant and dazzling than has ever been seen before.

Rather than painting on wet plaster in the fresco method, he paints oils directly onto the wall surface.

ILARIA: Leonardo is constantly looking for... a better way to do things, constantly experimenting to achieve this complex result.

He feels that he has to explore different ways of painting on the wall.

Sarah: Leonardo has a passion for innovation, he has a passion for experimentation.

He wants to do it better.

And of course, there are reasons why people have been doing things in the same way sometimes when it comes to art.

And so you mess with those at your peril.

Leonardo was experimenting again.

And as always, too much.

♪ Leonardo failed.

Narrator: Leonardo's secret blend of oil and pigment fails to dry.

The paint smears and his work is ruined.

With his technical skill failing him, his confidence evaporates.

Leonardo packs up his studio and flees Florence, humiliated.

Sarah: I cannot imagine what must have been the kind of sense of frustration and disappointment for him at this moment.

He's come back to his home town in order to be a great artistic hero and he's failed.

His new technique hasn't worked.

There must have been a sense in which he knew that he'd blown it.

Narrator: Michelangelo is left as the leading artist.

But without his old rival, the fire in his belly dissipates.

Whole scheme fell apart, as did his painting.

I finished my cartoon, which was of such consummate art that it was admired by everyone who saw it but.... the battle was over.

Narrator: With Leonardo gone, Michelangelo loses his main competition.

Rather than embrace a new rivalry with an upstart like Raphael, he looks elsewhere for the struggle he needs to spur him on.

Sarah: I think something extraordinary happens to Michelangelo.

He decides that he's in rivalry with artists that just go back way into the past.

The burden doesn't come any heavier than that.

But I think in this moment of time, he thinks he's up for it.

Narrator: Michelangelo wants to prove he can go further than any artist has before, but it becomes clear he can't do this in Florence.

[Street noise] After 6 years, the republican experiment is a catastrophic failure.

The city's trade and banking have been taken over by rival states.

There is no money, and opportunities for artists are becoming vanishingly rare.

Jerry: That moment of the republic.

There's a certain romance about it and the brief flowering of works, the David, the battle of the battles.

But I think it's always a mirage.

It can't sustain itself.

And the tiny Florentine Republic, it's just shrunk down to almost nothing.

Michelangelo realizes that he's got to look elsewhere, to bigger and wealthier patrons.

It's just not gonna work anymore in Florence.

Narrator: Luckily for Michelangelo, as Florence declines, the fortunes of Rome are on the rise.

[Bell tolling] [Dark, brooding music] Jerry: Around the turn of the century, the Papacy is resurgent, and central to this is the rise of Pope Julius II.

Narrator: Julius is on a mission to make the Papacy the most powerful force in the known world.

He wants to capitalize on his position as the spiritual leader of Christianity and also shore up his secular power as ruler of the Papal States, a vast territory stretching across the Italian peninsula.

For centuries, rivals had been encroaching on the Pope's lands, undermining his influence.

Julius is determined to get it back.

Woman: Julius wants to do nothing less than make the Papacy stronger than it ever has been.

He's determined, he's resolute, and his ambition is sweeping.

Jerry: Pope Julius II is a warrior Pope.

He takes the name Julius from Julius Caesar.

Now, that's quite significant because he's very much seeing himself as a campaigning military ruler.

Julius II is a bit of a thug, really.

When people talk about him, they say, "Tread carefully.

The man is irascibility incarnate, and you don't want to get on the wrong side of him."

Narrator: Julius does not just want to assert himself on the battlefield.

He has also learned from Florence the power of images and intends to use them as part of his arsenal.

Jessica: Julius loves art.

And when he becomes Pope, he's deeply aware of the power of art to convey messages as a means of propaganda.

The architecture of Rome, the art of Rome is an opportunity to reflect the power and authority of his Papacy.

[Poignant music] ♪ Pope called me to Rome.

I was to sculpt his funerary tomb.

My task was to carve another mountain of marble into the most glorious monument, the like of which had never been seen.

And with the gifts that God himself had granted me, there was no one else who could take on such a task.

This was an offer I could not refuse.

♪ [Poignant music swells] ♪ Woman: Julius II envisions a tomb for himself that not only will rival the tombs and mausoleums of the past but that will surpass everyone and become a wonder of the world.

He devotes something like 10,000 ducats for this project, and this is a tremendous amount of money.

My idea was truly monumental... and Julius is greatly pleased with these plans.

William: Nothing on this scale had been built before, since Roman times, in maybe a thousand years.

It was unbelievably large.

It was at least 3 stories, with some 40 life-size marble figures.

♪ Michelangelo: I would build a Christian monument to rival the ancient wonders of the world.

It was also a chance for me to outshine every artist in Rome.

I would write my name into history.

Maria: Michelangelo spends almost a year just sourcing marble and preparing the design for the eventual tomb.

William: And he literally quarries a mountain of marble and moves it to Rome.

And Michelangelo, of course, is immediately excited and he starts sculpting right away.

♪ But suddenly, he now needs money to pay the transport for all this marble.

He has to pay the marble quarrying.

He has to get paid himself.

But he keeps going to the Pope and asking for payment and the Pope keeps putting him off and putting him off, because at this point, the Pope has gone to war.

Narrator: Determined to reclaim lands previous popes have lost, Julius aggressively expands his campaigns.

He triggers a peninsula-wide war and is forced to channel more and more money away from art and into military conquest.

[Solemn music] ♪ When I tried to appeal to the Pope, I realized I'd been sold a lie.

Rome was not a place of devotion and art in the service of the glory of God.

It was an ignorant, backstabbing... wilderness of tigers.

When I looked at Rome anew, I had to accept a harsh truth that every road to virtue here was closed.

♪ Narrator: Indignant at his treatment, Michelangelo takes decisive and reckless action.

I'd never been treated with such disrespect.

I told him, if he wanted me, he must look for me elsewhere.

So I took my horse and I rode away from him and from Rome.

[Horse neighs] ♪ William: Michelangelo is really declaring himself to be not just some craftsman for hire, that he is someone who deserves the respect of an equal.

And up to that moment, he felt that he had a kind of mutual respect with the Pope that was all of a sudden shattered.

[Dramatic music] Jessica: This is a huge risk for Michelangelo.

People talk of quaking, of being in the very presence of Julius II.

Julius must have been absolutely outraged.

This man is in his employ, this man is his servant.

So, he sends out horsemen to just bring him back.

But my talent was also a curse.

The Pope sent his lackeys after me.

I'd been treated like a slave.

Now, I was being hunted like a rogue for my defiance.

[Horse neighs] William: Michelangelo's probably riding the fastest he's ever ridden in his life, in order to get across the border into Florentine territory.

And the soldiers catch up to him and he says, "I'm sorry, I'm under the jurisdiction now of the Florentines and you have no jurisdiction over me."

Michelangelo: I should have been afraid... [Laughs] But I wasn't.

I told them if they tried anything, I'd have them murdered.

They begged me to return.

I refused.

♪ [Thump] Jessica: Julius brings in an even bigger show of power.

He goes to the government of Florence and tells them to stop harboring Michelangelo, like he's a fugitive.

Julius threatens to raise an army.

Narrator: Everything now hangs in the balance for Michelangelo.

The Pope could have him executed for his defiance.

He could even declare war on Florence.

I could not go on.

I realized my friends in Florence could only protect me for so long.

I went into a deep melancholy, thought of all I could lose.

Humph!

I had no choice.

♪ I was forced to go... with a rope around my neck to beg his pardon.

Narrator: As Michelangelo waits anxiously for the Pope's judgment, a wily bishop tries to curry favor with Julius by belittling the artist, calling him an ignorant workman.

Michelangelo: But to the Pontiff's credit, he wouldn't stand for that kind of insult against me.

Only the Pope could command me, not his cardinal, nor his soldiers, nor anyone.

That meant something.

Showed how greatly he valued me.

This is really a pivotal moment in the relationship between an artist and a patron.

The Pope is, in a way, in front of all of his entourage showing there was a mutual respect between these two individuals.

This is just utterly unprecedented.

It's the result of hundreds of years, really, of the rivalry between artists and also artists and patrons that's been going on in Italy, where increasingly the artist gets more and more authority, more and more leeway to do what they want.

The patron suddenly realizes they can push this person, take their money away, maybe even kill them but they do need them.

Art is a way in which you represent what's happening and how politics is being played out.

Is it propaganda?

To some extent, yes.

They need the art.

Art is central to how messages are disseminated.

[Splashing] ♪ Narrator: With the Pope's forgiveness, Michelangelo hopes he can resume work on the tomb, but Julius has other ideas.

William: The Pope instead has thought, "Maybe a mausoleum is not such a good idea.

"It is frivolous, unnecessary, expensive.

"So, rather than build a mausoleum to myself, I am going to build a church for God."

Narrator: With his wars going badly, Julius needs to reaffirm his position as God's representative on Earth.

He sets about rebuilding Rome as the religious center of Christianity.

Michelangelo is given an extraordinary task, one that will push him to the limits of his ability and his sanity.

The artist is to repaint the ceiling of the most important church in Rome, the Sistine Chapel.

This is the site of Papal election, this is the site of the most prominent Papal masses.

This is the most important venue for the Pope in Rome.

William: The ceiling was already painted in the traditional manner that many chapels are, painted as a sky with stars.

But Pope Julius imagines that maybe it lacks the kind of appropriate decoration for the center of Christendom.

Jessica: It's therefore of huge importance for Julius II.

He recognizes Michelangelo's ability and genius and trusts that he's going to be able to execute something huge.

William: But Michelangelo, in his mind, is just absolutely distraught.

He says, "Painting is not my art."

[Ethereal music] ♪ Maria: The Sistine ceiling is approximately 600 square meters.

So that's, roughly speaking, 3 tennis courts' worth of paint.

For anyone who's ever had to paint a ceiling, that is just a tremendous amount of physical labor.

Leslie: But Michelangelo takes this opportunity.

He's up for the challenge.

This was his chance to prove that he was better than anyone else.

By attempting this and succeeding, he would effectively prove that he was far superior to any other artist.

Maria: We know from Michelangelo's poetry that struggle is something that drives him, whether he's struggling with his spiritual side or whether he's struggling in his art.

Michelangelo was always trying to push himself beyond what others expected of him.

David: I think everything he did was, like, beyond brave.

Michelangelo was striving to somehow perfect perfection.

Antony: There's a level of masochism in Michelangelo.

He lived for his art.

I think Michelangelo thought of himself as a continuation of God's work.

Part of his greatness is that he wasn't sure that he was fulfilling that command, that internal need, that internal drive.

♪ [Sighs] To fail would have been the end, yet I was no painter.

Yet here was a chance for my work to adorn the inner sanctum of God's house.

William: Even though he's not a painter, once he starts drawing, he knows how to draw.

But very quickly, this is an artist whose projects, once they begin, tend to grow and aggrandize.

And Michelangelo begins to think on a much larger and more ambitious scale.

Maria: Michelangelo's initially asked to paint the 12 apostles.

He, however, approaches the Pope and says, "Perhaps we could do something more grand."

It really becomes about the origin of the world down to the Pope himself.

William: He has the ambition now to not make just 12 apostles but how about hundreds of figures.

♪ It's totally insane, and he does raise the stakes for himself.

He makes life evermore difficult.

[Solemn music] Narrator: In 1509, while Michelangelo labors away on the punishing task of the Sistine ceiling, Julius invites a host of additional artists to Rome to work on his vision for rebuilding the city.

Every one of them is a threat to Michelangelo's status as the Pope's favorite.

Among them, the young pretender, Raphael.

Michelangelo: Raphael wangled himself a smaller commission, painting the walls of the Pope's apartments.

Bette: Raphael originally would have been one among the many.

There was so much competition.

He seemed to thrive on that.

He singles himself out.

He puts himself forward as the leading artist in this group and essentially takes over the commission and ends up painting the room as the leading artist.

Narrator: Raphael makes a play to become the Pope's favorite by painting a fresco in his most prized state room, the Stanza della Segnatura.

This is where Julius holds his most important meetings with foreign dignitaries.

[Eerie music] ♪ Bette: In the Disputation, you have the absolute fundamental basis of Christianity.

It's shown in this strong, amazing way.

Maria: We have the celestial zone at the top and the earthly zone at the bottom.

And this is very important for a Pope like Julius II because it is about the authority that comes from on high to the earthly sphere.

He is, of course, God's representative on Earth.

Bette: Raphael was a brilliant colorist.

His art seduces the viewer.

And one of the things that makes the Disputation come alive is the idea of including recognizable figures.

Raphael paints Julius into the Disputation, emphasizing this warrior Pope's devotion and faith.

Bette: Raphael is always eager to think about great ways of making those thoughts, desires of his patrons come alive.

Maria: For the young Raphael, he obviously wants to please the Pope.

Of course, as an artist, he also wants to demonstrate his own abilities in painting.

This is his big come-out piece.

He's only just arrived in Rome.

Sarah: What's taking place in the Vatican during those years is two very profound elements needed for great art.

You need the great artists who have been trained within an inch of their life, who really wanted to get better and be better than the other person they were painting with, and then you need the great patrons-- men who have vision, possibly even for quite megalomaniac reasons to do something that hasn't been done before.

That is a pressure cooker of great work being produced at this moment.

Michelangelo: The applause for Raphael flattery irked me.

He was talented, all right, but only I could see through his shallow charm!

No doubt he would produce something graceful.

It would be no match for my plans, though.

[Dramatic music] Leslie: The presence of Raphael in the near proximity to Michelangelo absolutely affects how Michelangelo thinks about his work.

He believes that Raphael is going to steal his legacy and steal his ideas.

Michelangelo realizes that he needs to do his bit.

He absolutely needs to be better.

You have two of the greatest artists-- one already absolutely renowned and another one earning his spurs so fast, and it obviously must have created an atmosphere of creative intensity.

Everybody knows Michelangelo's a sculptor but not a fresco painter.

He has almost no training in fresco whatsoever.

He knows that this is the moment he has to do something in order to prove himself, to create the greatest fresco of all time.

And so the potential for him to fail is very, very high.

[Dramatic music swells] I thought I was creating a masterpiece.

Perhaps that chapel was going to be my ruin.

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