West Virginia Public Television will broadcast two programs about Michelangelos art on Easter Sunday, April 12.


Produced by West Virginia University Professor Emeritus Rumy Hilloowala,Michelangelos Madonna and Son: The Human Formwill air at 11:30 a.m., followed byMichelangelos Apollo and Pathos: The Human Format noon.


Madonna and Sonis set against a background of Renaissance Florence. Artistic, anatomical, social, psychological and religious threads are interwoven throughout the program, creating a multidisciplinary perspective of Michelangelo, the man and the artist.


The show looks at his works from an anatomists perspective.Madonna and Sonexplores how the artist used the medium of the human body to express certain ideas and emotions arising primarily from the mother-son relationship.


The program views Michelangelos works in the light of his childhood experiencesmore specifically his relationship to his mother, whom he hardly knew.


Meanwhile, the prevalent theme inApollo and Pathosis the idea of Apollo grandeur and pathos expressed through the vehicle of human form.


Michelangelos knowledge of the human body was extensive, and he manipulated its normal proportions while still keeping the whole figure in harmony. The Adam of the Sistine ceiling is one manifestation of Apollo.


Much later in his artistic career, Michelangelo revives the idea of Apollo in its most primitive aspect, the creator and destroyer, avenging God in the Christ of the Last Judgment. The proportion of the body to the head is altered to give the figure of Christ a crushing authoritative appearance.


Hilloowala is professor emeritus in WVU s Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy. He has chaired the history committee of the American Association of Anatomists. He was also one of the organizers of the WVU School of Medicines History of Medicine Society and has served as vice president.


Combining his love of art and history with his profession, he has concentrated much of his research on the relationship of anatomy to art, particularly that expressed by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. In 1977, Hilloowala spent most of a sabbatical leave in Florence at the Kunsthistorisches Institut. He traveled to London, Paris, Rome, Naples and Milan to study and photograph relevant artworks. He returned to Europe in 1979 to photograph additional art to illustrate his published studies.


Hilloowala is the author of three publications on Michelangelo that incorporate little known information about the anatomical models, as well as an anatomical interpretation of the Madonna and Son. He has also written on anatomical sleuthing in the arts, the 17th-century wax models at La Specola and the Florentine wax models at Tulane.


In addition, he has presented nearly a dozen seminars or lectures on Renaissance and 18th-century anatomists.