Figurative Arts (Documentaries)

A 2022 Documentary by Margarete Kreuzer. Audio in French with subtitles in: English, Italian and Spanish (click on CC for subtitles). The Venetian painter Canaletto is the undisputed master of veduta painting. His views of European cities became famous as early as the 18th century. On the occasion of his 300th birthday, the film embarks on a journey in the footsteps of the artist. It leads to Venice, Dresden and Warsaw as well as into the artist's illusionistic bag of tricks. Canaletto's vedutas are supposedly photographically accurate depictions of residences, streets and squares. The artist acts as director, lighting technician and stage builder all in one and stages lively panoramas as if the city were a big stage. In doing so, Canaletto uses many perspectival tricks that he learned from his uncle, an accomplished veduta and stage painter, in the world capital of opera: Venice. Filled with characters and stories, Canaletto's large-scale cityscapes paint a fascinating picture of old, historical Europe that is burned deep into our collective consciousness. To this day, the artist's works fill us with a longing for the ideal city. But are Canaletto's vedutas of Venice, Dresden and Warsaw accurate representations of the European city, or are they fiction themselves? The documentation explores the biographical and artistic life of the painter and travels in his footsteps from Venice via Florence to Dresden and finally to Warsaw, whose old town, which was destroyed in World War II, was rebuilt based on paintings by Canaletto.

A 2022 Documentary by Margarete Kreuzer. Audio in French with subtitles in: English, Italian, Spanish and German (click on CC for subtitles). Portrait of the Italian sculptor Donatello (1386-1466), a precursor of the High Renaissance who considerably influenced sculptural art with his innovative way of conceiving space. Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), known mononymously as Donatello was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work, it was commissioned by the Medici family. He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco, and wax, and used glass in inventive ways. Although his best-known works are mostly statues executed in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was architectural reliefs for pulpits, altars and tombs, as well as Madonna and Childs for homes. Donatello's output was so varied and individual that his influence can be seen in all Florentine sculpture in the 15th century, and well beyond Florence. But he shared important elements of his style, in particular his revival of classical forms and styles, with the other outstanding sculptors of his generation, Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, Luca della Robbia and others. Most of Donatello's major works for churches remain in situ, or moved inside to the church museum. The Bargello in Florence has the main museum collection, including his most famous portable pieces. Hardly any large pieces are outside Italy, but there are many Madonnas and other smaller pieces, often with uncertain attributions. The Victoria and Albert Museum has important shallow reliefs, and the Louvre and Berlin State Museums have other pieces; generally, the American museums arrived too late on the scene to make many major acquisitions, though they have many pieces with workshop attributions. In keeping with the archetype of an artist's life, it is said that Donatello spent his last days alone, abandoned by artistic fortune and worn out by old age and illness. Vasari reports that Donatello was unable to work in the last years of his life and remained confined to his bed. At his death, he had 34 florins of rent left to pay, which has prompted speculation about his true state of poverty. However, the issue seems more likely to be related to his total disinterest in financial matters, to which he devoted himself throughout his life only to the bare minimum. Many anecdotes bear witness to this attitude, such as the one about how, during the time of his thriving workshop, he would hang a basket full of money from which his assistants could freely draw as they needed. The fees he received for his works suggest that he must have earned a substantial income during his lifetime, and it also seems that Cosimo de' Medici granted him a weekly annuity at the end of his life. He died in Florence in 1466. He was buried in the basement of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, near Cosimo the Elder, in the singular and prestigious location beneath the altar. Among the pallbearers was Andrea della Robbia.

Un documentario del 2021 per celebrare una figura centrale della cultura e dell'arte italiana ed europea del '700, sia dal punto di vista stilistico che culturale. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, detto anche Giambattista (Mogliano Veneto, 4 ottobre 1720 – Roma, 9 novembre 1778), è stato un incisore, architetto e teorico dell'architettura italiano. Le sue tavole incise, segnate da un'intonazione e una grafica drammatiche, appaiono improntate ad un'idea di dignità e magnificenza tutta romana, espressa attraverso la grandiosità e l'isolamento degli elementi architettonici, in modo da pervenire a un sublime sentimento di grandezza del passato antico, pur segnato da inesorabile abbandono. Prendendo spunto da rovine Romane e fondendo lo spirito barocco con il gusto neoclassico, Piranesi inventò anche carceri oscure e inquietanti, piene di anfratti e strumenti di tortura. Originale, onirico, dettagliatissimo e contorto: Piranesi è tutto questo e molto altro ancora. Le sue opere fecero scuola al suo tempo e continuano a farla anche oggi. Fonte d’ispirazione per molti, suscitano un senso di mistero e fascino irresistibile.Le sue acqueforti e le minuziose tavole che lo resero un archeologo ante litteram lo hanno reso celebre nel mondo facendolo divenire una figura centrale di tutta la cultura europea settecentesca. Note: This is a re-upload because of a better video quality.

Un film documentario del 2019 diretto da Erminio Perocco. Tintoretto, il grande artefice del Rinascimento italiano, ha segnato in maniera profonda il volto artistico di Venezia. Pittore irrequieto, era capace di sbalordire i suoi committenti con trovate sorprendenti, anche grazie alla gran velocità con cui eseguiva le sue opere. Il filmato ripercorre la biografia dell’artista e descrive le innovazioni tecniche della sua pittura che hanno esercitato un’influenza profonda e costante sulla storia dell’arte, e lasciato tracce tangibili nelle opere di artisti come Peter Paul Rubens, El Greco, Max Beckmann e Jackson Pollock. Paul Cezanne, a nome di tutti, lo ha definito l’idolo della pittura: “La sua opera è immensa, include ogni cosa dalla natura morta fino a Dio. È un enorme arca di Noè; io mi sarei trasferito a Venezia soltanto per lui!”. Il documentario non lascia dubbi sulla modernità̀ del Tintoretto, sulla audacia delle sue pennellate, sulla complessità delle storie narrate nei suoi quadri giganteschi, sulle sue strategie che oggi definiremmo da marketing.

A 2018 Arte Documentary Film directed by Margarete Kreuzer. Audio in German with English subtitles. Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) and his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini (1425-1516) were possibly the greatest painters of 15th century renaissance Italy. A documentary on their art, their influence on each other, and their rivalry.

A 2013 Sky Italia Documentary created by Donato Dallavalle and directed by Marco Pianigiani. Audio in English. An extraordinary journey to discover the most evocative works of art collected in two millennia of history inside the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, revealing its masterpieces as they have never been seen before. A mega-production made by a troupe of 40 professionals who have explored the length and breadth of the Vatican Museums: evocative shots taken at night through the rooms where some of the rarest and most precious works in the world are kept, ranging across all cultures and all the eras. Viewers will be able to immerse themselves in the great masterpieces of art history: Caravaggio's paintings, the Laocoon and the Belvedere Torso, feeling enveloped by the never so real frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. From the masterpieces of classical statuary to Michelangelo's Pietà, up to Fontana's modern sculptures; from the paintings of Giotto, Leonardo Da Vinci and Caravaggio to those of Van Gogh, Chagall and Dalì; from the extraordinary frescoes of Raphael's Rooms, such as "The School of Athens", to the spectacular Michelangelo's masterpieces in the Sistine Chapel such as the "Creation of Adam" and the majestic "Last Judgment". These are the stages of a unique and exciting journey, conducted with the authoritative guide of the Director of the Vatican Museums, Professor Antonio Paolucci. Through past, present and future.

Una Produzione Sky Italia e Direzione dei Musei Vaticani del 2013. Antonio Paoloucci, direttore dei Musei Vaticani, fa da guida alla visita delle opere più importanti raccolte in due millenni di storia: oltre 40 affreschi e dipinti, dalla Cappella Sistina di Michelangelo alla Trasfigurazione e alla Scuola di Atene di Raffaello, per arrivare al Torso del Belvedere dello scultore greco Apollonio, al celebre Gruppo del Laocoonte di Agesandro, Atanodoro e Polidoro e alla deposizione dalla croce di Caravaggio. Non mancano poi le opere di Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh e Dalì conservate nei Musei Vaticani.

Caravaggio - L'anima e il sangue è un film d'arte del 2018 prodotto da Sky e Magnitudo Film, diretto da Jesus Garces Lambert. Emanuele Marigliano presta il suo corpo e le sue movenze ai moti dell’animo di Caravaggio, mentre la voce dell'io interiore di Merisi è quella del cantante Manuel Agnelli. l film racconta la storia del geniale e controverso pittore italiano Michelangelo Merisi, in arte Caravaggio, avvalendosi della consulenza scientifica di Claudio Strinati e degli interventi di Mina Gregori, Presidente della Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte, Roberto Longhi e Rossella Vodret, curatrice della mostra “Dentro Caravaggio,” a Palazzo Reale a Milano fino al 28 gennaio 2018. Il film è un vero e proprio excursus emozionale e investigativo che ci guida nella vita di Caravaggio, nelle opere e nei suoi tormenti attraverso i luoghi che ancora oggi custodiscono i suoi capolavori: Milano, Firenze, Roma, Napoli e Malta. In questo excursus la vita tormentata di Caravaggio è ricostruita attraverso una ricerca documentale approfondita che ha inizio all’Archivio Storico Diocesano di Milano (dove oggi è conservato l’atto di battesimo datato 29 settembre 1571), spostandosi poi all’Archivio di Stato di Roma (dove troviamo testimonianze della vita di Caravaggio quale personaggio tenebroso, spavaldo, sanguigno). Il film è un progetto sviluppato dai creatori di “Raffaello – il Principe delle Arti – in 3D” e “Firenze e gli Uffizi in 3D”. Una produzione originale Sky con Magnitudo Film, con il riconoscimento della Direzione Generale Cinema del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo, con il Patrocinio del Comune di Milano realizzato in collaborazione con Palazzo Reale e Vatican Media (già Centro Televisivo Vaticano) e con il sostegno di Malta. Le riprese si sono svolte a Milano, Firenze, Roma, Napoli e Malta.

A 2016 Arts Documentary directed by Marco Pianigiani. Audio in English narrated by James Cosmo. A rich and stimulating study into the themes, historical context and far-reaching influence of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first part of his 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. With the participation of: Franco Cardini (Italian historian and essayist, specialized in Medieval Studies), Kate Bryan ( British art historian, curator and arts broadcaster), Martin Mclaughlin (Professor of Italian and Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian Studies in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford), and Simon Njami (Writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.)