today, turkish authorities have begun arresting people accused of being responsible for the collapse of thousands of buildings in recent asked, quakes by critic say. safety rules are rarely enforced. the death toll now exceeds 33000 as rescue as continue looking for survivors. coming up next, the mystery behind leonardo da vinci's masterpiece. virgin off the rocks that's in doc failed after a short break. i'm monica jones. thanks for watching. ah ah, we're all set to go beyond the obvious citizenship a minute. we're all live as we take on the we're all about the stories that matter to you. whatever it takes believe from i'm following

w. fire made for mines. ah, it is perhaps the most mysterious work ever painted by leonardo da vinci so mysterious, in fact, that he painted not one but 2 versions of the work. and then had his pupils make several copies as well. that is perhaps the greatest leonardo masterpiece and the collection of the louvre and no, it is not the mona lisa. it is the virgin of the rocks. the scene is nowhere described in the gospels, an angel and a christ child, presented to mary and the young john the baptist. what does it mean?

why did leonardo set the scene in the cave? was there another symbolic meaning to this beautiful painting that perhaps we just don't understand today? you can see, i think the impacts of this what is enormous in times all in particular, i think the figure of the virgin within it. and what is the meaning of the mysterious under drawing that curator's discovered in the london version of the painting? perhaps the answer lies in a huge mountain range, just north of milan. using leonardo's notebook that code ex atlantis. we will follow, and leonardo was footsteps in search of the key that could unlock his grade. mr. ah,

today, milan is a bustling city. it is quite literally poise on the cross roads between the european north and south m. but in the 15th century, the melanie's r c was far removed from the exciting innovations of the florentine renaissance. so what prompted lay on ardo in 1482, to leave florence, and come here in the land so different from his native tuscany. he did not want to work for business men for well merchants and for obscure bands of monks who had there are friary, is outside the walls of florence,

or inside walls of florence. he really wanted to work for a prince to reduce he wanted to do a large scale engineering project and those were not going to be available to him in florence. what he was getting in florence is what you would expect from someone who was a young man had been trained up as an artist by one of the finest. goldsmith flush painters and florence of his generation morocco. he was getting all the pieces and things like that. to paint for these obscure bands of monks outside the gates of florence. that altered peace was the result of leonardo is 1st big commission to paint and adoration of the magic key seen from matthew's nativity gospel for the monks of some donato escobedo. such nativity scenes were popular in florence because it created an opportunity to dress the 3 kings in the rich

cloth that had made florence wealthy beyond compare. ah, many other famous florentine artists at painted such nativity scenes and established a basic iconography. but leonardo rejected that convention. instead he chose to place mary and her child at the center of a vortex of human emotions, ranging from wandering delight, to puzzlement and despair. ah, the young man at the far right is even looking the other way. some believe this is leonardo himself the iteration of the majesty is very important for our story because it large leonardo is development of narrative art. what that means is that it's really the 1st of leonardo's literary works. a

painting filled with allegorical and symbolic meaning. to background is equally mysterious. do these ruins depict the palace of king david or is it the basilica of mac census in rome? which, according to him and evil legend collapsed on the night of jesus, his birth anew. are these mounted warriors? are these the military escorts of the 3 kings, or is this a preview of the many wars that would be fought in the name of christ? what it shows is, at leon ardor really wants to establish himself as an artist and an intellectual, who is no less lettered, an educated than his rivals. this was a sore point because leonardo never had any formal education. i am well aware that

people think that since i am not a literary man, i am obviously unable to express my ideas. what they don't understand is that my work is based on observation. the one and true mistress of knowledge rather than mere words. observation, the source of empirical knowledge would become the guiding agency of leonardo its career for the remainder of his life. that explains his desire to imbue the adoration of the magic with allusions to the psychology of a subject. even though that idea was lost on the good friars who had ordered the painting. and so the painting remained unfinished. not because leonardo walked away from it as some believe, but simply because the monks couldn't understand this very revolutionary design. another attempt to create

a painting in the form of an allegorical poem was more successful. i think when i started painting jeanette banshee, he chose her as his subject in order to explore the idea of how the poetic could be expressed in a portrait how, how somebody so could be visualized and seen. and i think she has this elevated quality is almost remoteness. that when she looks at you and she does that very directly, she, she stands for something more than herself. she becomes a subject which is about poetic beauty. is often argued that the fact that the panel on which to never has painted is caught at the bottom means that we've lost her hands. we try to reconstruct the generic portrait by using one of leonardo's metal point drawings in the windsor collection. and moved at the effect as quite remarkable, the orientation of the torso in the panel and into drawing is virtually identical.

the lady is holding a sprague of some sort in our hands, which may come from the tree behind her. that tree is at juniper tree. janae pro in italian, and a clue that the lady is indeed geneva but in 1480 to lay an ardo turned his back on florence and moved up north to the court of milan, ruled by duke ludovico st. florida. i mean, it's interesting when he went to a land, he had a he went armed with his curriculum vitae or his resume, which like a lot of subsequent resumes. exaggerated the the abilities of the person who had written it. and so he was saying that he could do things like blow up castles,

build bridges, create chariots, do, all of these things, make them mess of canons. none of which he had any experience doing at all. and so, i think, ludovico, who is a very good talent spotter, was probably quite rightly suspicious, suspicious, indeed, if leonardo had expected the duke to hire him on the spot, he was sorely mistaken. but there was another opportunity, an invitation to come to milan, and work on an altered peace with 2 melanie's artists. rojo an evangelist, or the praise ah, quite possibly, the brothers had heard about leonardo work and florence, and believe that his involvement would secure the satisfaction of their client. an

organization called the contra turning of the immaculate conception for several painters to collaborate on, appealing was unusual in florence, but not in lumber city and most milanese artists were still mired in the gothic tradition as witnessed by the mass of cathedral still under construction. number ojo himself still painted in the rather stiff, conventional style of international gothic so clearly these melodies artists were hoping that leonardo could bring some of the magic and innovative spirit of florentine art to this project. and in this, they would not be disappointed in the subject of the painting was the immaculate

conception. at the time it was a relatively new catholic doctrine that stated that mary, the mother of jesus, was conceived without the stain of original sin. ah, pope 6 as the horse had even decreed that those who attended services on its feast day would be granted special indulgences, which reduced one's time in purgatory. ah, the problem was that since the doctrine was so new, no one had ever painted mary. as a woman, untouched by original sin. how do you visualize that? exactly? ah, the answer we believe lies on the road to let out. just north of milan around lake

como and the amazing wonders that leonardo was just about to discover. and the mountains of luxury. ah, the landscape north alone, close to the lower alps was very different from the soft rolling hills of tuscany. ah, me for leonardo, an irresistible opportunity to explore the formation of the earth and the movement of water observations that would soon fail several of us no books. ready ready ah. ready ready ringback because of the soaring mountains in this area,

there are only a few roads, some dating to roman times. that makes it easier for us to reconstruct the path that leonardo would have taken and based on leonardo notes in the kodak atlantic us, we set out to follow in his footsteps. ready leonardo would have had a choice of 2 rats. want to travel along the western flanks of the lower grania along the shore of the lago, electrical, or 2 to turn east towards the upper decamp piano. and into the valley of sestina. we 1st chose the eastwards round to mount mondell. here is a mule path that leonardo must have followed for he rode the largest bare rocks

that can be found in this part of the country or on mount mondell. it has at its base, an opening towards the lake, which goes down to 100 steps. and indeed, after climbing for an hour, we discovered what leonardo was riding about a steep rise of some $200.00 steps that leads to a mine the grotto, fet ada. as he rode. busy having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, i came to the entrance of a great cavern in front of which i stood some time astonished. ah, i rested my left hand on my knee to see whether i could discover anything inside. ah, leonardo must have been amazed by the incredible range of forums and colors in this

grotto ah, man. and the same tins would later return in the version of the rocks. ah, from here, leonardo continued to climb up towards the untidy come piano. eventually, leonardo must have reached a monastery known as sunk, tomatti, a sopa, old jew, but offered where he travellers a meal and a bed for the night built in 1000 a day. it was recently restored. from here he may have sketched this famous drawing of alpine peaks now and the collection of the british royal trust me there. i saw above me, the dark sky and the sun message fell on the mountain was far brighter than in the

plains below. because there was less atmosphere between the summit of the mountain and the sun. mm. this is the moment that inspired leonardo, to develop his theory of optical perspective. the idea that distance should not be measured in purely geometrical terms, as most renaissance artists did. but as subtle changes in the color of distant objects, when you paint mountains, you'll see that from hill to hill the base is are paler than the summits as they receive beyond each other. ah. from here leonardo descended into the valley. sus siena, or the viola de sassy, the valley of rocks, ah,

nearby is an impressive waterfall that leonardo described in detail invalid, sassy. now, as you travel the road from reco, you'll find on the right hand side, the toilet river, which falls from a very tall rock. and where it falls, it goes under ground and the river and there ah ah, you not ost keane. i also noted the unique flora of the region here among great rock falls and waterfalls my pillow grows abundantly. now, this is clear evidence that leonardo used his travels through this region in

preparation for painting the virginal de rocks because it is this native plant. the my palo that would reappear into painting. ah, leonardo then set out to explore the western part of the grania mountains along lake lecoq. he would have had a stunning view of the town of mondell. what made this hill so interesting is that even today, it is permeated with a number of caves. one of these even served as a church and leonardo time we now from the current excellent against that leonardo da vinci found case, very interesting is because of their darkness in their forbidding capabilities,

in addition to finding them as a very interesting place to explore for fossils and rock formations in what sequence could possibly be hidden in a case ah, in one of his drawings, you can actually see that he has sketched a cave in one of these mountains. so we decided to go and see if we could identify it. once again, we follow a narrow path of steps until we suddenly come face to face with the mouth of a cave that until now has been completely hidden from view. ah, it is called the girl,

said the loud gus. after we enter the cave and turned back towards the opening, we see a stunning view. view that layer and art oh must have used as the setting for the virgin of the rocks. ah, not from a pictorial point of view, it makes perfect sense. the cave gives the painting and sense of scale and depths as the middle ground between the figures in the foreground and the lake shimmering in the distance in the background. but the question is, how could leonardo defend the use of a cave for a painting of mary's immaculate conception? ah, in an off itself, the motif of a case is not unusual in the art of the quater agenda or the 15th century. had actually served as an important attribute for several figures and sacred art. one

of these was john the baptist, who was known to preach in the desert. the gospel of matthew also refers to jesus fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and nights. ah. and saint jerome lived and worked near a cave in bethlehem, where according to the tradition jesus was born. that is why renaissance artists usually depicted saint jerome at the mouth of a cave, including leonardo himself. the problem was that there were no craggy rocks and cliffs in tuscany. so what the local artist did, but simply use their imagination and stack stones in a large pile. thinking that this is what a mountain in the desert would look like. of course,

leonardo would never be satisfied with such a solution. that's why he was so keen to explore the mountain region, north of milan, and observe the geological formations up close. the result was a series of amazing drawings that are now in the royal collection. at windsor. these drawings reveal lunar dos, careful observation of soaring mountains, star walk formations and mysterious caves. and in the process, leonardo discovered something else. horizon, tuscany, everything is bains and light. here in the mountains, the light is much more subtle, filled with the contrast of bright and darker toes. artists, dorians refer to this as sky out of school. the contrast between light and dark passages which up to this point had been missing entirely from quatro gentle art.

ah, for example, in this nativity painting by bought the charlie. everything is cast in the same intensity of light, luminance, and color. but later are discovered that the subtle interplay of light and shadow using oil paint could make a human being much more lifelike. the quality of colors is determined by means of light. you'll see that whenever there is more light, it will better illuminate the colors true quality. so, by casting his figures in a mysterious interplay of light and dark passages, devotional paintings could provoke a deeper emotional engagement in the fatal vices. leonardo intends iif even mits to form dad optician van the mom. i was in a no gazette such as

a death type. i no guns, no farm, a dad, dad, least chapman gable means i'm did thing against lawyer farm of human fab. up stooped. you're not in busy, fun least could talk from east human utmost fearless phenomena dashed it. in fact, leonardo had begun to experiment with such effects in his early paintings of the madame while still in the workshop of his master. fred. okay. as it is t, mom, madonna. oh, isn't it to live in this is i put the flemish kite inside the marine from his guided side. this is thus beauty, my influences thought which end to finding ben's not h. m does private to and thus bit a gate up as soon heights, giles east, he shoots the fall as steam would have gotten. i was in the now does soon heights it yod busby. lock your from will yet hot. that process of showing the madonna

is a real woman rather than a stylized object of veneration, culminated in the figure of mary of the virgin of the rocks. here is a convincing portrait of a young mother filled with love for her newborn son. it was so revolutionary that it took the city of milan by star. the impact of this work is enormous in times of in particular, i think the figure of the virgin within it, her face and that particular attitude that she has become repeated in just almost countless of these domestic devotional wives in particular. but you can see there is a real demand for the feature this incredibly beautiful, very idealized presentation of the virgin. i think the religious impact of the work in that sense is undeniable. but why did he put divergent in a cave? and why did he at the figure of the young john the baptist and the angel uriel?

what does it have to do with the story of mary's immaculate conception? the answer may lie an mysterious 2nd century text known as the gospel of james me. according to this gospel, mary and her newborn son, jesus were forced to flee after king herod decided to massacre all of the infants born in and around bethlehem. during their journey, they met with the infant john, who was already living as a hermit in the wilderness, protected by the angel uriel in the middle ages, even into the renaissance. such apocryphal documents like the gospel of james had the same authority as the gospels in the bible. what makes this gospel

so important is that is the 1st document we know of that advances the idea that mary remained a virgin all her life for leonardo, that's good of implied a direct link to the doctrine of her immaculate conception. ah, throughout his life, leonardo was fascinated with the mystery of human conception. in 15 o 6, he actually began to dissect female cadavers in the hope of understanding how life begins in the womb of a woman. ah, i want to understand the conception of man. i shall begin with the

formation of the child in the womb and how the child lives in it and to what stage resides in it. ah ah. in death context, the cave is really an allegory of a womb, with its moist walls and running water. yet full of life, as shown by the flowers. these flowers, including the my pedal, were used in the middle ages as symbols of purity. thus illustrating the idea that mary was conceived in her mother's womb without detained of original sin.

but that's not where the mystery of this beautiful painting ends. it became so famous that leonardo and the depraved brothers wanted more money for it got a huge, it'll show you so that the blue oval does require. now he's going to can mitigate the pool on it in english. you know, it, as i said it on the behalf can cannot. if you look him on these and yet good now be, she can keep from ashley w le, sleeping with any puppies down from when the con fraternity objected. it was sold to an anonymous buyer, who some believe is none other than juke motor vehicles for himself. not to be out of one little bit in a total solution. and this is jenny. salty, nobody guess you did this thing that's showing the dish and they'll get it back on me. many years later, the artist agreed to paint a 2nd version. that is the painting of the version of the rocks that is currently

in the national gallery in london. but actually that is where the problem really begins in, ah, for a long time this painting was a belief to be the work of one of leonardo students, such as well try feel in his workshop. leonardo often tasked his pupils to make copies of his paintings. ah, in 2019, the national gallery used in advanced imaging technique, x ray fluorescence to reveal and dramatically different under drawing underneath the paint layer. it shows the virgin,

whether hand outstretched similar to an earlier study for the iteration of the match i. as well as layer in argo's unfinished painting of saint jerome. very small or not for working. according to larry keith, from the national galleries, head of conservation and keeper, the use of drawings to explore different ideas, is very typical of leonardo. and he use for different ends depending on the sort of artistic problem he was interested in the sort of things he was working on use a lot of dark wash when he's trying to work out the fall of light and modeling through on light and shade to block out sort of the masses of where things were set and how they would said, you can imagine something like metal point would be, lends itself very naturally to working out curls in hair or red chalk, or even black chocolate, mostly red chocolate. i was soft, kind of crumbling texture and sharp hard lines,

very useful for thinking about at this fact perspective and things fading away into the distance which became for incident later on his pain and career me, ah, in the end, they decided not to pursue this revolutionary design and fall back on the same cartoons that he had used for the 1st version of the rocks, except for a few changes. but one of leonardo had developed this concept further. what would the painting have look like? to answer the question, we reached out to good are there a leading artist previously produced? a faithful copy of michelangelo assisting chapel of fresco for the phil angels and demons. could he create a copy of the london version of the rocks? and then we construct the painting as layer nato originally envisioned it. you

created a live eyes copy of the virtual, the rocks in the london national gallery. what did you discover in the process about layer nar, those technique? often my, i do classical paintings. i start out with what's called the get a side, which is monochromatic established values instead of being too concerned about the colors. but in this case, i thought it went straight to the colors. it was important to understand about the timeline as it did in see oil painting was new and florence, although to access the file for 52 elements or 100 years earlier and flanders. so you had like yon ike and these guys i did to nominate oil painting. the problem with oil painting at the time was that nobody really taught how to do it. so people or different schools are different at least figure that out on their own. and there was so secretive about the techniques that i've heard stories that they would hi,

the finish paintings for 2 or 3 years. so they're the cent or whatever the varnish painting would be gone. that's how it was. and prior to oil painting, like i said, people with asthma who totally know how to paint it. well, nobody probably because as we know, he studied with or he didn't, he work and broke the studio. and they did start dabbling in oil prior to that they're primarily painted in what's called tempera. what you have mixed with pigment, an egg. and you can do phenomenal work with that, but you cannot do what is great for oil paint. and that is the transitions that you can achieve in oil painting, and it's impossible to do a temper. so what that means is that what we noticed in the process called flu marked or our school and that is oil painting is perfect for that because the transitions from dr. light can almost be imperceptible and it's only with oil you

can do me. and here we can see clearly, i mean, this almost looks monochromatic, but there is such an incredible range of colors and values just in this phase. it goes from warm colors to cold colors, to colors like grows better to, you know, i mean, just about everything is going on in here and that was something you couldn't be able to do before. i mean painting some of this. you can certainly understand. he would paint with his fingers well, i would love to see some of the brushes that he had because some of the thin lions like in the here i, i can't possibly do what he did and he had something up asleep that i would like to know what he did, i think it's exciting. now the original of course was painted on panel. yeah. we decided to use canvas more a variety of reasons. what was the difference of painting on with oils on panel versus canvas at the time you think canvas and lynn and was sort of new at the time

. so they still have to sort of figure out how to do it. the obvious advantage for campuses, you can roll it up, it does need to be straight, so it's easy to transport anywhere these. this is a considerably more than 6 feet tall. so this big size, but these paint this is painted on, i think ocho poplar, wood, poplar papa. what? yes. and the advantage with painting on a wooden surface provided it's treated lies with the rabbits, can glue the lighting and adjust the state they use. they could send it down. you can have a super super smooth surface. i think we're canvas depending on how prepared you always fight the tooth of the canvas. that is sort of monotonous and repetitive. that's why many painters prefer linen. belinda is difficult, has this other disadvantage deflect stretching and so forth. and yes, so to have a separate prepared, right, makes a huge difference for the painting. how it here is, how it moves that so key to oil, painting versus other things is how the paint moves on the surface right. now,

of course, in copying this work, you gain an incredible insight into the way leonardo works. didn't do. could you tell us a little bit about that? yes, i made it in time to see where you had a loses interest area. so i left very, very unfinished to very strange, you know, and he has that ran bronte quality. well, if you look at these colors and this landscape with mountain states, it's truly psychedelic. i mean it's so exhausted. well, who this kind of a landscape? again, this is really from li are not as dreams, and it's such an incredible check to the position to this brown and dark and sort of ominous cavernous theed roll type setting. and you see this i did like landscape. we wouldn't have a swim in that thing here. i mean, whereas if you look, what is the genius behind?

some of those paintings is the fact that the subject matter is not necessarily. everything is not translated for you. so you can engage your own imagination, much like reading a book versus seeing the movie. if you read a book, you fill in the characters and the last get on the story. but your own experience has been something like that can be said above this too. and i think he offers enormous restraint because it's tempting to put these fantastic highlights up here in the toilet up here. if he doesn't do any of that. this is really sort of a background thing and they only focus apart on this very brilliant landscape. back here, i really the figure that here that he has is a lie. that whether or not you mentioned something about the fact that this passage right here is not done with the typical virtuosity that you would expect leonardo to display when doing drapery. no, i mean if one of the out a lot of strength was a drapery. i mean,

he was obsess for drapery with different sources of a light on the drapery. and we know how on believable some of this straight between our so instead of surprising this is, this is ryan fairly accurately to do the copy. so this is fairly accurate to the original. you see here when he doesn't want to paint the hand, he just put it in to shadow like this here, right? so he just, i don't want to be bothered with it. now we also asked you to reconstruct what leonardo originally envisioned for this painting based on the other drawing that was discovered by the national gallery just last year. let's go to that painting here. so this is the painting that you created simply based on this one outlined drawing. what was that experience like? if i look at what's so humbling william noted at inches, when you look at his sketches that he does, he does the lines just perfectly, you know, he, he can do perfectly like that all along. so the,

and this gets that they found on the panel, which again, it seems odd to me that he would go on and do a sketch like this. and also if, if you get, as i've grown quite fond of this composition myself, i, you needed the, the figures to have that space and what the landscape being of the cathedral around it. you needed that space around it. and to me, it seems like the pink figure had been as big as it is for the site where the hand with nowhere to go. obviously i don't know what's up with his hand. so it must have a meeting that i'm not aware of and. and then it just seems like something is missing. apart from the execution. when you look at this is by far as superior piece, i feel this half is sacred quality too. it's really, it's a masterpiece sunday. you don't get tired of looking at this just as daunting sub.

so you to, for me, ah, not is melanie's period was about a balancing act between the perfect observation of the natural world on finding a route through to something that was more elevated, more beautiful than something that we would see around us. something essential, a quintessential, if you like. ah, you finds a painting that occupies the space between all world and between something more, more. perfect. ah! for many months, leonardo searched for a way to capture the mystery of divergence immaculate conception.

ah he found it here in the mountains of la grange ah ah ah i don't mind and filing a pig to 6 square feet hooting li, cutting off a turkeys b. it's all illegal yet. it's done again and again. you must, i,

how do we treat animals and why don't we change over with the status quo? or one of our documentary series, the great meet debate in 30 minutes on w o. i was just rescuing data from a farm this one this body globe with i found it like this and i couldn't just leave it there. i should meet her. this is such a great burden with it was so dirty that cleaning your turn the entire bathroom into a mess. this is the water birds 1st. well, one of the most beautiful moments i've ever experienced. that a trip with a donkey series about our complex relationship with animals logo. i think i will

live long enough to witness the factory farming the great debate this week on d. w or ah ah ah, this is dw news live from berlin, after the devastation on taki arrests are being made. officials detained, those allegedly involved in full to construction of buildings that have crossed thousands to desk. we have the latest updates for you from our correspondence.