"Andrew Graham-Dixon sets out to reveal the untold personal stories of three great artists in this new series."
The Madness of Vermeer http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FA...laynext_from=PL
Andrew Graham-Dixon visits Delft in Holland to investigate the private life of 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer and discovers the tranquillity depicted in his luminous canvases belies a background of constant struggle and turbulence. Vermeer's grandparents repeatedly fell foul of the police, while his mother-in-law was a victim of domestic violence. The artist himself died in poverty aged just 43 after a brief period of success came to an end with the French invasion of Holland.
Constable in Love http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4F...laynext_from=PL
His pictures are seen as the embodiment of rural English cosiness, but John Constable's paintings belie a forbidden private passion. He first met Maria Bicknell when he was 24 and she was just 12. Years of family disapproval and on-off courtship ensued before they finally married, but Maria tragically died at just 40. Andrew Graham-Dixon argues that it was his devotion to his love that proved the catalyst for Constable to revolutionise landscape art.
Caravaggio NA
In July 1610, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the most famous painter of his age, died in mysterious circumstances. Andrew Graham-Dixon's investigations, first shown in the Omnibus strand, take him to Rome, Naples and Malta.
