The Private Life of a Masterpiece - Season 8

Six hundred years ago, one painting in Northern Europe was prized above all others. Queens and Kings rivalled to own it. Other and lesser painters endlessly copied it. Anyone who saw it was struck with awe. The 'Descent from the Cross' was huge and overwhelming. The painter was a Flemish master, Rogier Van Der Weyden. He succeeded in this painting in doing something that no one before him and many after him could not do: he painted real human emotion.

Today it is one of the greatest masterpieces in Spain's National Gallery - the Prado - in Madrid. It was taken there by Philip II of Spain and survived great adventures - almost lost at sea and almost destroyed by German bombers in the Spanish Civil War. This Private Life tells the remarkable story of this painting.

Painted over five centuries ago, Filippo Lippi's nativity is like no other: the birth of Christ in a dark, wooded wilderness. Its beauty inspired Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. But it also conceals a deeply personal story. It was painted for a wealthy banker who feared that his money was dragging him straight to hell. The artist's life was equally surprising. The most celebrated painter of his day, Filippo Lippi was also a Carmelite friar. But he was no stranger to the temptations of the flesh,shortly before painting his Adoration, he caused uproar by seducing a twenty year-old nun – and getting her pregnant.

This programme looks at the turbulant history of this masterpiece which with its combination of divine mystery and a very human beauty make it seem to transcend time and creed.