This astonishing docu-drama delves into the blazing rivalry between Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo – and Dance somehow resists the urge to ham it up to the max. Whatever you do, just don’t make a Ninja Turtles joke
There is a growing fashion in historical documentary-making for blending factual accounts with dramatised versions thereof. Royal Kill List (about the Restoration) and Royal Bastards: The Rise of the Tudors used actors to deliver both, but others prefer to use sensible people for at least the factual stuff, and the latter is the path Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty has chosen to follow.
Here are gathered contemporary artists including Antony Gormley, Alison Lapper, biographers of the artistic colossi under discussion and art historians aplenty, along with pertinent others, such as Sarah Dunant – author of several novels about Renaissance Italy. Their role is to impart the vital facts about the careers, creations and increasingly intense rivalries of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael (the first person to make a Ninja turtles joke can see me after class) in 15th- ’n’ a little bit of 16th-century Florence – and Milan, Rome, Tuscany and Umbria. But mostly Florence, at least when it wasn’t being steamrollered by Savonarola.
Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty aired on BBC One and is available on iPlayer.
