And so, at the age of 78,

when one of Matisse's convalescent nurses-turned-nun

came to him with a plan

for a little chapel in the south of France,

Matisse seized on it as the last great task of his life.

Ostensibly a place for nuns to pray,

it would also be a place of peace for all humanity.

Something which would sum up in one space

art's power to heal the wounds of a darkened, fallen world.

The chapel that Matisse built here

for the Dominican nuns is tiny.

And yet, in some sense, it does feel an almost infinite space.

He took pains that there should be no red in this chapel

because red seemed to him too angry, too hot, too violent.

Everything that mattered to him through his whole life was here,

and it was not about obedience or submission,

it was all about the marriage between nature and spirituality.

Human nature and the other kind of nature, too.

The virgin and child, there they are, up above me.

This is a real, live woman with an exposed breast.

But the breast, of course, is Mary's exposed breast,

interceding for the sins of mankind.

But she's a mum, she's carrying baby Jesus,

who's got his arms flung out.

Yes, in the attitude of the crucifixion,

but also in the attitude of an exuberant little boy.

And then there is nature absolutely everywhere.

When he thought about the stone

he would use for this beautiful altar,

he thought, "Well, I need stones with seashells in them."

Because the sea represents the beginning of creation,

the primordial moment when God casts his face

upon the deep and creates life.

And that's what Matisse is doing here.

He's translating all of life, the whole world,

into this one beautiful space.