Rick Steves' Europe

Culture Series / 11 Seasons

Catch Rick Steves' latest one-hour special on Iceland. Explore Reykjavík, with endearing sights and thermal pools, plus a side-trip to the Golden Circle's gorges, geysers, and waterfalls.

25m / TV-G

Art Bites 176: Caravaggio

1m 53s

Caravaggio lived fast, died young, and had a big influence on those who followed. His gritty realism, stark lighting, and dramatic canvases featuring dirty Davids and plain-Jane Madonnas gave his art an emotional punch.

Art Bites 175: Bernini and Baroque Sculpture

5m 37s

Bernini was nicknamed the “Michelangelo of Baroque.” (But comparing “David” by both sculptors, you’ll see there’s a big difference.) Rome was Bernini’s gallery where you can see his squares, fountains, and finest statues (like “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” “Apollo and Daphne,” and “The Rape of Persephone”).

Art Bites 174: Baroque Art as Propaganda

3m 29s

Baroque art was propaganda — for the state or for the Church. It inspired the masses to believe that the authority of the prince and the bishop was legit. In Würzburg the prince-bishop was the same man, and his palace was a fine example. The art decorating St. Charles church in Vienna is another good example.

Art Bites 173: Baroque Art, the Catholic Church, and the Virgin Mary

3m 42s

After a century of religious wars, pro-Vatican Baroque art featured big canvases, dramatic statues, exuberant architecture, and immaculately conceived Virgin Marys. It reminded all of the glorious Heaven that awaited the properly faithful.

Art Bites 172: The Reformation and the Baroque Age

5m 6s

The roots of Baroque go back to the 1500s and the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation. Art was the media and the advertising of the day. It told the story of the religious wars — the way each side wanted it told.

Art Bites 171: Neoclassical Art, the Age of Revolution, and Napoleon

5m 6s

The French Revolution was the bloody birth of modern democracy, and it came with art that celebrated liberty, equality, and brotherhood. Jacques-Louis David painted the Revolution and the reign of Napoleon with the necessary political correctness.

Art Bites 170: Neoclassical Art and Architecture, the Age of Enlightenment

5m 49s

Baroque excesses were countered by the Revolution, the Enlightenment, and a stern, no-frills art that celebrated a new age of science and reason. Neoclassical art and architecture (called Georgian in Britain) spread from France to Denmark, Finland, and beyond.

Art Bites 169: Rococo Art and Architecture, Baroque Gone Wild

2m 7s

Across Europe, eye-popping Rococo art featured aristocrats playing in their palaces and picnicking in their bucolic backyards: pleasure gardens that stretched to the horizon…as if their divine-right world would go on forever.

Art Bites 168: Royal Palaces of the Baroque Age and Versailles

5m 36s

Across Europe, royals used fabulous palaces and Baroque art to demonstrate how their power was divinely ordained. And Louis XIV’s Versailles — with its hall of mirrors, heavenly painted ceilings, and forever gardens — was the ultimate.

Art Bites 167: Royal Portraits and Velázquez

3m 33s

Royal portraits were like the Tinder of 1st-century court life in Europe. Painters were paid to make royals look more capable and more divine than they were. Velázquez painted the royals capably in his “Las Meninas,” but he clearly had an affinity for the common man, too.

Art Bites 166: Rembrandt, The Great Dutch Master

3m 51s

Rembrandt earned a living painting portraits and group portraits, like his “Night Watch.” He told Bible stories with a subtle brilliance and mastery of drama. And with candid self-portraits, he captured the hard lessons of his own life on canvas.

Art Bites 165: Sandro Botticelli

2m 24s

Botticelli painted big colorful celebrations of Renaissance themes like a fertile springtime or “Primavera.” His “Birth of Venus,” the first large-scale depiction of a naked women in a thousand years, symbolized the optimism of the age.

Art Bites 164: The Medici Family, Patrons of the Florentine Renaissance

3m 27s

Florence’s leading banking family was the great patron of the Renaissance. They nurtured and employed the great artists of their time while funding lavish chapels, churches, and the grand city hall in a way that bolstered their political power.

Art Bites 163: Fra Angelico

2m 6s

A humble monk as well as a great painter, Fra Angelico frescoed exquisite sacred scenes for his monastery. It’s said for him painting was a form of prayer and he couldn’t paint a crucifix without crying.

Art Bites 162: Early Renaissance Painting: Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico

5m 26s

The painters Giotto (a century before the others), Masaccio (who mastered the illusion of depth), and Fra Angelico (for whom painting was a form of prayer) brought art from medieval two-dimensional to more life-like 3-D.

Art Bites 161: Donatello and Early Renaissance Statues

3m 12s

The sculptor Donatello gave his subjects unprecedented realism and emotion from Mary Magdalene carved in wood to his bronze “David,” a free-standing male nude decorating not a church but a rich patron’s courtyard.

Art Bites 160: Renaissance Artists: Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello

4m 58s

Florence, home of the Renaissance, was also home to three early artistic heroes: Brunelleschi (with his beloved cathedral dome), Donatello (with his proud statues), and Ghiberti (with his math-based 3-D baptistry panels).

Art Bites 159: The Renaissance Defined

3m 30s

The Renaissance, a reawakening to the enlightened ways of ancient Greece and Rome, was, for two centuries, an explosion of secular learning, art, and culture. Artists, inspired by the ancients, celebrated a new confidence or humanism.

Art Bites 158: Hieronymus Bosch and "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

2m 7s

Bosch’s three-paneled masterpiece takes you on a wild ride from a tranquil Garden of Eden creation scene to a hedonistic central panel to a nightmarish Hell where those earthly delights are swapped for an eternity of appropriate punishments.

Art Bites 157: Van der Weyden

2m 6s

Northern artists gave the traditional medieval altarpiece a new level of sophistication. Van der Weyden’s exquisitely detailed Last Judgment is filled with symbolism, while others brought Heaven home to the 1400s here-and-now world of Bruges.

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