Renaissance men

Fascinating docudrama looks at the politics behind – and the rivalries between – the original superstars of Italian art.

- RUSSELL BROWN

Michaelangelo's David, Leonardo's Mona Lisa: we know the bare images as if we were born with them already in our minds. Less well known are the forces that shaped their creation.

That's the story Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty seeks to tell: one in which art was central to power and the men who made it gained an agency that made them more than mere artisans. But, it makes clear, less than kings - Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci and the upstart Raphael were all obliged to trade their skills, and to take them elsewhere as leaders rose and fell in the warring states of 15th- and 16th-century Italy.