Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark

In this first episode Clark - travelling from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides, from the Norway of the Vikings to Charlemagne's chapel at Aache - tells the story of the Dark Ages, the six centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire, and “how European thought and art were saved by 'the skin of our teeth'”.

Sections:
1 - Expressions of an Ideal
2 - The Fall of Rome
3 - Skellig Michael
4 - Iona
5 - The Norsemen
6 - The Baptistry at Poitiers
7 - Charlemagne
8 - The Cross of Lothar.

Clark tells of the sudden reawakening of European civilisation in the 12th century. He traces it from its first manifestations in Cluny Abbey to the Basilica of St Denis and finally to its high point, the building of Chartres Cathedral in the early 13th century.

Sections:
1 - The Triumph of the Church
2 - the Abbeys of Cluny and Moissac
3 - St Bernard of Clairvaux
4 - St Foy
5 - The Abbey of Vézelay
6 - Gislebertus
7 - The Abbey of St Denis
8 - Abbot Suger
9 - Chartres.

Beginning at a castle in the Loire and then travelling through the hills of Tuscany and Umbria to the cathedral baptistry at Pisa, Clark examines the aspirations and achievements of the later Middle Ages in 14th century France and Italy.

Sections:
1 - The Gothic Spirit
2 - Courtly Love
3 - The Siege of the Castle of Love
4 - The Duke of Berry
5 - St Francis of Assisi
6 - Civic Life
7 - Giotto
8 - Dante and Pisano.

Visiting Florence, Clark argues that European thought gained a new impetus from its rediscovery of its classical past in the 15th century. He visits the palaces at Urbino and Mantua and other centres of (Renaissance) civilisation.

Sections:
1 - Early Renaissance
2 - Leonardo Bruni
3 - David (Donatello)
4 - Perspective
5 - Leon Battista Alberti
6 - Jan van Eyck
7 - Botticelli
8 - The Palace of Urbino
9 - The Court of Mantua
10 - A Civilised Countryside.

Here Clark takes the viewer back to 16th century Papal Rome—noting the convergence of Christianity and antiquity. He discusses Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci; the courtyards of the Vatican; the rooms decorated for the Pope by Raphael; and the Sistine Chapel.

Sections:
1 - Giants and Heroes
2 - The Decadence of the Popes
3 - Michelangelo
4 - Bound Captives
5 - The Sistine Chapel
6 - Raphael
7 - Leonardo da Vinci
8 - Man as a Mechanism.

Clark discusses the Reformation—the Germany of Albrecht Dürer and Martin Luther and the world of the humanists Erasmus, Montaigne, and Shakespeare.

Sections:
1 - Riemenschneider
2 - Erasmus
3 - Holbein
4 - Albrecht Dürer
5 - Melancholia
6 - Luther
7 - The Destruction of Images
8 - Michel de Montaigne
9 - William Shakespeare.

In the Rome of Michelangelo and Bernini, Clark tells of the Catholic Church's fight - the Counter-Reformation - against the Protestant north and the Church's new splendour symbolised by the glory of St Peter's.

Sections:
1 - The Church of Rome
2 - The Rome of the Popes
3 - St Peter's
4 - The Catholic Church
5 - The Art of Baroque
6 - Bernini
7 - Baldacchino
8 - The Ecstasy of Teresa.

Clark tells of new worlds in space and in a drop of water—worlds that the telescope and microscope revealed—and the new realism in the Dutch paintings of Rembrandt and other artists that took the observation of human character to a new stage of development in the 17th century.

Sections:
1 - The Light of Holland
2 - Frans Hals
3 - Rembrandt
4 - Descartes
5 - Vermeer
6 - The Royal Society
7 - Sir Christopher Wren
8 - St Paul's Cathedral.

Clark talks of the harmonious flow and complex symmetries of the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart and the reflection of their music in the architecture of the Rococo churches and palaces of Bavaria.

Sections:
1 - French Classicism
2 - Johann Sebastian Bach
3 - Balthasar Neumann
4 - Handel
5 - Watteau
6 - Haydn
7 - Rococo Buildings
8 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Clark discusses the Age of Enlightenment, tracing it from the polite conversations of the elegant Parisian salons of the 18th century to subsequent revolutionary politics, the great European palaces of Blenheim and Versailles, and finally Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

Sections:
1 - The Enlightenment
2 - England
3 - The Parisian Salon
4 - Chardin
5 - Scotland
6 - Voltaire
7 - Thomas Jefferson
8 - George Washington.

Belief in the divinity of nature, Clark argues, usurped Christianity's position as the chief creative force in Western civilisation and ushered in the Romantic movement. Clark visits Tintern Abbey and the Alps and discusses the landscape paintings of Turner and Constable.

Sections:
1 - The Ruins of Religion
2 - Rousseau
3 - The Cult of Sensibility
4 - Wordsworth
5 - Constable
6 - Turner
7 - The Sky
8 - Impressionism.

Clark argues that the French Revolution led to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the dreary bureaucracies of the 19th century, and he traces the disillusionment of the artists of Romanticism - from Beethoven's music to Byron's poetry, Delacroix's paintings, and Rodin's sculpture.

Sections:
1 - An Escape from Reason
2 - The French Revolution
3 - Napoleon Bonaparte
4 - Beethoven
5 - Byron
6 - Turner and Gericault
7 - Delacroix
8 - Rodin.

Clark concludes the series with a discussion of the materialism and humanitarianism of the 19th and 20th centuries. He visits the industrial landscape of 19th century England and the skyscrapers of 20th century New York City. He argues that the achievements of the engineers and scientists - such as Brunel and Rutherford - have been matched by those of the great reformers like Wilberforce and Shaftesbury.

Sections:
1 - The Abolition of Slavery
2 - The Industrial Revolution
3 - Humanitarianism
4 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel
5 - Courbet and Millet
6 - Tolstoy
7 - Our Urge to Destruction
8 - God-given Genius.