Rick Steves' 'Art of Europe' takes viewers from cave paintings to Picasso

Rick Steves has taken audiences to Europe for more than 30 years. Now, his new mini-series "Art of Europe" looks at the masterpieces he's experienced over the past three decades. Originally a 12-hour script, he and writing partner Gene Openshaw focused it into six episodes covering the “ Stone Age to Ancient Greece,” “ Ancient Rome,” “ The Middle Ages,” " The Renaissance,” “ Baroque” and “ The Modern Age.” He wanted to give viewers a sense of the story of Europe through its art.

Rick Steves: We had to just be very selective about what we covered and very succinct. I was careful not to clutter the script up with a lot of names and dates. At the end of the show, it says if you want a list of all the art we saw and if you want specifics about seeing them, just go to my website. There's the script [with] all of the dates and the names and the travel ideas and so on. But for the show I just wanted people to sit there and enjoy this beautiful cavalcade of art.

Ideastream Public Media’s Kabir Bhatia: There's a section on Renaissance goddesses, and you're comparing them to ancient works and how they're related. It's fascinating, but I have to ask, since there’s a bit of nudity in the artwork, has that been a problem for viewers?

Steves: We've long had a "problem with nudity" when we show Michelangelo’s David. I mean, there's a penis. It was carved out of marble 500 years ago and some people are offended by that or women who are naked. Artists throughout time have appreciated portraying human beings in the nude because it makes it timeless and it makes it bigger than one mortal. They're talking about big concepts, but, believe it or not, right now in 2022 we still have to have lawyers at the network go through the shows and flag nudity. For most markets it doesn't really matter, but there are markets in the United States that will not show this until after bedtime, so kids don't have to see this. Our team is on a little crusade to help Americans recognize that there's nothing dirty about the human body. If you couldn't show a nude body here and there, you couldn't do a series on art. There's just a lot of nudity in this art, and celebrates -- part of it -- is humanism. You mentioned the Renaissance. To me, the Renaissance is about humanism. And that is not a repudiation of God, it's just a recognition that the best way to glorify God is not to bow down in church all day long, but to recognize the talents and the skills that God gives you. And use that to make the world a better place and to live life more fully. Most of us know what David by Michelangelo looks like: He's a naked shepherd boy with a sling over his shoulder and he's looking out and he's sizing up the giant. That's the Bible story: The shepherd boy kills the giant. When you're looking into the eyes of David, in a very narrow sense, he's sizing up the giant and saying, “I can take this guy.”

Bhatia: I know that your trips to Europe as a young person really inspired you to pursue this, but I understand that art history was not one of your favorite subjects growing up.

Steves: No, actually I vividly remember sitting in the dorm in the cafeteria with my school buddies. We got out the course catalog, as you do every quarter and look through the classes and we played a game called “What's the most boring class in this whole catalog?” For me, it was a slam dunk: European art history. Who would want to take class? Fifty hours learning about this stuff and then I don't know what happened. I probably ended up taking a class with a great professor, or I traveled with some good tour guides. I have spent 30 years taking Americans around Europe. To be able to take an American into Sainte-Chapelle… the King of France, 800 years ago, built it to house what he thought was the [Jesus'] crown of thorns, one of the greatest relics in Europe. And it was built in six years. So it's got this cohesive, harmonious architecture. As a visitor, you climbed this tight, dark spiral staircase and then you step into this chapel and it is a lantern of beautiful stained glass. You're there and you look and you see the lines of Gothic architecture, the slender, pointed arches and the columns, a skeleton of support, freeing up the walls, not to hold up the roof, but to be window holders. And then all around you, you've got solid original medieval 800-year-old stained glass and you've got the light pouring through. And you think our challenge as travelers and our challenges as people who want to appreciate art is not to see it through 21st century eyes. I believe it's to go back and see it as if you lived right then and there and to be wonderstruck by it and to understand that perspective. It's the most glorious Gothic space in Europe. That's the triumph of them, the High Middle Ages. To be able to film it is really a thrill. We were all alone in there, and we got to capture that magic and bring it home. We got to be all alone with the “Mona Lisa,” all alone in Saint-Chapelle, all alone with Leonardo's “Last Supper,” all alone in the Orsay Gallery.

The challenge for us was the 20th century. There was so much to talk about, and it's a little tougher to get your brain around with all the “-isms” and so on. But it was fun to be able to introduce people to the great art of our lifetime, too.

Bhatia: In the 30 years that you've been doing your programs, did you find that there were certain things that you could not be alone with [for this series], maybe for security or because it's no longer accessible? I'm even thinking something Notre Dame, which parts of it don't exist anymore, unfortunately.

Steves: Well, I'm thankful we were able to film Notre Dame before the tragedy and they're building it back. So, in a few years we'll be able to go back into it. But security is kind of a strange thing. The very last shoot we did, just a couple months ago, was in Bruges, Madrid, and Vienna. The Museo Nacional del Prado is my favorite collection of paintings. We've been there before and thankfully we've shot a lot in there, so we had a lot of good high-definition footage. But we had to go back and there's some work I wanted to do in the Prado and they gave us one hour: 60 minutes and five paintings. We didn't have to pay for it, but we had to go early in the morning before they opened up the public, but it was crazy. You can imagine with your camera, your tripod, your local guide, your attendant from the museum and then the clock ticking away, and then at 9:00 o'clock -- boom, you're done, the door opens, the public's there. That was frustrating, but I was thankful to be there because we got five gorgeous pieces of art. Later we're in Vienna and at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, another great gallery, and it occurred to me the greatest painting galleries in Europe today are a reflection of who were the most powerful kings 300 years ago.

But to continue my little story, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, we had all day long. The public was there; it didn't matter. We could shoot whatever we wanted, and they were just happy we were there. And I got to stand in front of a Rubens painting. He's the master of the Baroque in the Catholic part of Europe, where you still had the Pope and you still had kings. Whereas in the northern part of the Baroque age you, you didn't have the Pope because they were Protestants and you didn't have kings; you had more nobility and you had merchant art. But Rubens was in the Catholic part of Europe during the Baroque age, and Rubens has these massive canvases, and they're all over the place. How could one man paint all of these? Well, he didn't. He had a factory for masterpieces, and Rubens would paint what's called a cartoon -- a little sketch about 2 feet by 2 feet -- and then his studio, his assistants, his students, they would paint the big canvas according to the sketch. And then Rubens would come in with what they called the “fury of the brush.” And he would just give it a little twinkle there and a little sparkle there and a little glint in the eye here, and then go, “Yep, that's a Rubens painting.” And they would then ship it out to their rich patrons. But in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, they had the little cartoon right next to the canvas. And I got to stand in front of both and explain… and be able to put all that together for the camera. That's the kind of little insights I want to share in this.

Bhatia: Were there any notable pieces that you saw, and this may be more archaeological, that clearly had been brought over by one of these kings to Europe? But they originated somewhere else in the world?

Steves: Yeah, that's a very important issue, basically, the plunder dimension of this. I was in Iran, and I went to the great museum in Tehran expecting to see all sorts of wonders from the Persian Empire. And it was, frankly, pathetic what they had there: just some broken shards. And I said, “Well, where's all your great stuff from Perseus and so on?” [They said] “Oh, it's in the great museums of Europe.” And that's sort of the story. Europe was the colonial ruler of the world, and a lot of the great patrimony of other civilizations is in London and in Paris and any place that had a colony. Our big controversy [in Europe] is the Elgin Marbles, the beautiful marbles from the Parthenon in Athens. The best pieces are in London in the British Museum. They're sensitive about that and everybody knows it would be right to turn it back, but other people make the case that, “We paid for it.” But that's kind of bogus, and they've changed the name of the Elgin Marbles now to just call them the Parthenon marbles. But you do have the plundered dimension of this.

The one case that makes a little sense to me is had a lot of that art stayed in its original homes, it would have been melted down or destroyed. I mean the greatest art of the Byzantine Empire, a lot of it is in Venice and had it stayed in Constantinople – present-day Istanbul – it wouldn't exist today. So, it is locked up in the church in Venice, and we can pay to see it today. But it's an interesting issue.

Rick Steves’ “Art of Europe” airs Saturdays at 2 p.m. on WVIZ and is also available on demand via the PBS app.

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