ZED Documentaries

The Queen’s Hamlet is a palace disguised as a peasant’s cottage hidden in the Versailles gardens. A romantic hideaway, Marie-Antoinette conceived it as a reminder of her carefree youth in Vienna. The Revolution left it for a ruin. Now, two centuries later its renovation finally begins.

Leonardo da Vinci is not just the most famous and most admired of all painters - he is an icon, a superstar. Yet, the man himself remains elusive. Accounts during his lifetime describe a man too handsome, too strong, too perfect to be accurate. But in 2009, the chance discovery in the South of Italy of an ancient portrait with strangely familiar features takes the art world by storm. Could this be an unknown self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci? Controversy erupts among the experts. The implications of such a discovery have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the work of this great Renaissance master. Like a CSI of art, Leonardo, The Man Behind the Portrait brings us to the heart of an extensive investigation involving world-renowned experts, art historians, scientists and even police detectives. The newest, most innovative scientific techniques plunge us back 600 years into the life of the greatest master of Italian Renaissance. Like a passing through the mirror, we will recreate the probable events surrounding the creation of his portrait, in the brilliant and decadent Florence of the Quattrocento, living its last moments of artistic glory.