Catch up TV
Series 5: 1. Brighton
Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri visit Brighton Museum to investigate who painted two neglected pictures of religious subjects.\n\nBendor believes a grubby image of Mary Magdalene repenting her sins may be by a forgotten master of the Roman baroque, Francesco Trevisani. Emma visits the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to hear how a medieval pope confused the biblical accounts and gave Mary a completely invented personality.\n\nBendor then travels to Rome to search for traces of Trevisani, while Emma investigates how Brighton’s lavishly decorated Royal Pavilion ended up an empty shell, ransacked and sold to the local council. The second picture is a sympathetic portrayal of Balthazar, a prince and one of the wise men from the Christmas story, which Bendor thinks may be by 16th-century Antwerp master Joos van Cleve. Examination reveals that it was once the left-hand door of a folding altarpiece. Bendor goes on to Edinburgh to see a similar altar, the finest work by van Cleve in Britain. Emma meets Rev Richard Coles to find out how, despite the lack of any description in the Bible, it became traditional to portray Balthazar as a black African.\n
Source: BBC 4
Most recent episodes of Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 4: 3. Cardiff
Art detectives Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the National Museum Cardiff to investigate a badly overpainted Madonna, currently attributed to a follower of Botticell ...
06-05-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 4: 2. Birmingham
Could two anonymous landscape paintings, discovered at Birmingham Art Gallery, be by artists whose work profoundly influenced the development of European landscape painting in t ...
16-04-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 4: 1. Oxford
In the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Dr Bendor Grosvenor identifies a portrait of a fellow of Merton College from the 1750s, George Oakley Aldrich. It is not known who painted the ...
09-04-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 2: 4. Arbroath
Hospitalfield House in the fishing town of Arbroath on Scotland's east coast is a Victorian treasure trove. The couple who owned this great house back in the 19th century were o ...
12-02-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 5: 3. Glasgow
Britain’s premier art detectives, Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri, are on the hunt to find and restore one of the nation’s great lost masterpieces. Can a mysterious ...
23-01-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 5: 2. Tatton Park
Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the grand Georgian mansion of Tatton Park in Cheshire, where Bendor has spotted a mysterious portrait of a 16th-century physician in i ...
16-01-2024
BBC 4
Most popular episodes of Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 5: 3. Glasgow
Britain’s premier art detectives, Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri, are on the hunt to find and restore one of the nation’s great lost masterpieces. Can a mysterious ...
23-01-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 3: 3. Petworth
Petworth House in West Sussex is one of the great Baroque treasure houses of England, and Dr Bendor Grosvenor finds two paintings which he feels warrant investigation: a portrai ...
18-01-2023
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 4: 3. Cardiff
Art detectives Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the National Museum Cardiff to investigate a badly overpainted Madonna, currently attributed to a follower of Botticell ...
06-05-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 3: 2. Manchester
At the Manchester Art Gallery, Dr Bendor Grosvenor discovers a painting of a country gentleman from the 1770s which he believes has been misattributed to Nathaniel Dance. He fee ...
11-01-2023
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 5: 2. Tatton Park
Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the grand Georgian mansion of Tatton Park in Cheshire, where Bendor has spotted a mysterious portrait of a 16th-century physician in i ...
16-01-2024
BBC 4
Britain's Lost Masterpieces
Series 4: 1. Oxford
In the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Dr Bendor Grosvenor identifies a portrait of a fellow of Merton College from the 1750s, George Oakley Aldrich. It is not known who painted the ...
09-04-2024
BBC 4