The Ancients - Introducing 'Leonardo: The Official Podcast'

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Here on The Ancients, we think that you will love Leonardo, the official podcast accompanying the murder-mystery period drama starring Aidan Turner. Leonardo takes a deep dive behind the scenes with the cast and crew, as well as discovering more about Da Vinci’s art and life from the curators and historians who know him best.This new podcast, hosted by television presenter and Leonardo enthusiast Angellica Bell, can be found here http://smarturl.it/leonardopodcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Hello! Something a bit different for you today. We wanted to give you a taster of a brand new podcast we think you'll love.

It's called Leonardo, and it's the official companion podcast to the murder mystery period drama Leonardo, starring Aidan Turner. Leonardo deep dives behind the scenes with the show's cast and crew, as well as exploring more about da Vinci's art and life from the curators and historians who know him best. We're about to play you a short clip from the first episode, so if you like what you hear and want to find out more, search Leonardo, the official podcast, for the full episode. Gather round. Come quickly now, everybody, please. OK, gather round. Straight in at the back as well, please.

OK, quietly. Tuck in. Maestro. This time, we'll hear from Aidan Turner and Matilda De Angelis as they introduce us to their world of Da Vinci on screen, discussing auditions, accents and Leonardo's sexuality. His sexuality, I didn't know about that. I don't think I was so sure about that either. I felt like in the last even five years it's something I've learned. In the last few years.

They don't tell you at all. And giving us an overview of why da Vinci's artistic vision has mattered for more than 500 years, I'll be speaking to the person responsible for the Leonardo artwork held by the Royal Collection Trust at Windsor Castle. I've got accustomed to handling the drawings, but you never get used to Leonardo. He's always surprising.

But first, how do you fancy a murder mystery or even a woman erased from history? Well, we've got that too, thanks to the creators of the drama. I was asked to do Leonardo and turned down because I thought it was going to be too hard. And then Lux Vidae came back to me and said, we have Steve Thompson on board. Would you reconsider? And I said, oh, all right. I'm Frank Spotnitz. I'm a writer and co-creator of Leonardo. And I'm Steve Thompson and I'm the other writer and co-creator of Leonardo. All right. What about Leonardo da Vinci? What's his story?

Well, the problem is, of course, that you can't just write one drama about Leonardo. You could write ten different ones, more than ten. You know, the guy's not just a famous artist. He's a famous inventor and scientist and astronomer and has led this incredibly fascinating life. So where you even begin to start how you tap into this extraordinarily rich life,

there's almost too much material. Well, there's way too much material. One of the first things we sort of talked about was why does art matter? And we hit upon the idea of a love story fairly early on. The murder mystery came later. We read everything we could get our hands on, and Steve came across in one of the books

this list of people who were important to Leonardo. He was travelling. later. We read everything we could get our hands on. And Steve came across in one of the books, this list of people who are important to Leonardo. He was traveling later on in life. He was traveling around Italy and he wrote a list to his servants saying, these are the people I will be traveling with. And it was basically very personal. It was like a little list of these are the most important people to me in the world. And you need to know that if I'm going anywhere, they will be alongside me. And most of them were names be alongside me and most of them were names that we knew most of them were names who occur in any historical study of Leonardo but one of them was just described as the woman from Cremona that's all he says in the list when I'm traveling I will have the woman from Cremona with me this has become a historical mystery. Nobody quite knows who she is. There is the

suggestion that she was the subject of his very last, or his greatest painting, we believe what was his greatest painting, which has now sadly been destroyed, Leader in the Swan. Well, of course, from a point of view of dramatists, immediately, you know, that sets our antennae pulsing, and we want to fill in the blanks. Tell me about this woman, Caterina da Cremona. What was she to you? She was love. Why has she vanished from history? All the images but one have gone. There's no reference to her in the history books.

There's just one little note he sent to his servants in which she's mentioned. So we've been left with a historical mystery and that kept nagging away at us. And that's how we created this frame or this framing device that she's vanished from history and Stefano Gireldi is quizzing him and saying, why, where has she gone? What's happened to her?

Even though Caterina de Cremona is based on truth, a real person recorded in history, her murder is an entirely made-up device that the creators used to take us deeper into Leonardo's world. Frank explains. So Stefano Giraldi, the Freddie Highmore character, is not particularly a fan of art, not particularly a fan of Leonardo da Vinci, but he's got this urgent need to solve this murder. And in so doing, he interrogates Leonardo literally about his life and career. And so by giving him an urgent reason to do that, we kind of gave our audience an urgent reason to do that. It's an urgent reason to learn about art, which is not, while it's wonderful and beautiful and important, not necessarily something people want to watch, you know, as a TV drama. And so that's a reason why it's a TV drama. So to me, it's the best use of fiction. It's fiction to illuminate something really true and beautiful and valuable. Well, it's a really important point, actually, because if the story of each episode is the creation of a piece of art,

in quite a lot of these cases, we know they were painted. We've seen the Mona Lisa. So it's all very well saying, let's create a drama where we watch this guy struggle to create the Mona Lisa, but everybody knows the ending. And actually, that's quite difficult from a dramatic point of view. What are the stakes? What are the stakes in Leonardo's life? So we put this huge dollop of stakes in the middle of the show, which is, of course, this guy's on trial for murder. If that's true, then why did you kill her? I didn't. I couldn't. There are witnesses. We know you're skilled in alchemy. If you're innocent, where's your proof? Say something to convince me. I can't.

So that was a taster of the brand new podcast, Leonardo. Episodes are released bi-weekly alongside the drama, so search and follow Leonardo, the official podcast, on your favourite podcast platform.