continuing art education for adults || "michelangelo: the last giant"

National Art Education Association

"Michelangelo: The Last Giant"Author(s): Lou HazamSource: Art Education, Vol. 18, No. 9, Continuing Art Education for Adults (Dec., 1965), pp. 8-11Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190650 .

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michelangclo: the last glant

Detail of "David," Accademia, Florence.



Commercial television, accessible to millions of Americans in all walks of life, has undeniable potential as a vehicle for art education. Another of the recent network ventures into program- ming of this nature will be aired De- cember 22, when NBC presents the first of two one-hour specials on "Michel- angelo: The Last Giant." (The second segment will be shown February 23; both ere scheduled from 9:00-10:00 p.m. EST.)

In this exclusive interview with the associate editor of ART EDUCATION, Mr. Lou Hazam of the National Broad- casting Company, writer-producer of the Michelangelo special, discusses various aspects of the production. Mr. Hazam is the award-winning producer and writer of the NBC television specials "Vincent Van Gogh: A Self Portrait," "Greece: The Golden Age," and "Shakes- peare: Soul of an Age."

Mr. Hazam, your production falls under the broad television category of documentaries. How do you view your documentaries and what are your resources for this production of Michelangelo? We like to think of documentaries as a reflection of truth. We are not concerned with fabricating scenes that might have been. For our information we go back to basic literary sources. In this case the sources for our program are the actual written letters and recollections of Michelangelo Buonarotti. Most of his life, from the time he left Florence as a young man of about eighteen or twenty and reached Rome and began writing to his father, until the time he died, is pretty adequately covered by his letters. He had two contemporary biographers, Vasari and Condivi. Vasari has been translated into English and Condivi has not. These biographers, while romanticiz- ing every aspect of his life, provide a pretty sound source for the events. So the letters which mark his own comments and recollections, what other people have quoted him as saying, plus his biographers, give us ample information about Michelangelo's life.

He was, as you know, born outside of Florence, the son of a podesta or mayor of a village called Caprese, in March 1474 or 1475, depending on what Italian calendar you want to use. In those days the Italians indicated the birth day as the day of conception which leads to the confusion on "birth" dates.

He came to the attention of Lorenzo, the Magnificent, who was the spirit of the Renaissance in Florence, and as a young lad was taken into Lorenzo's school for young sculptors. Lorenzo's school was his attempt to reinspire, to revive the art of sculpture in Florence.

Michelangelo was carving a fawn when Lorenzo saw him. He was so pleased with Michelangelo's work that he took the boy into his own house to live. That is how he got his real beginning and his education because Lorenzo was sur- rounded by the principal intellects of the time and these scholars became Michel- angelo's teachers.

Then you have gone to Caprese and Florence as well as Rome to film his life ?

Yes, concerned with truth, we have sought out the actual places where he carried out his work and, of course, we have photographed the real statues and not mock-ups. (We have been able to avoid any necessity to go to mock-ups with two exceptions.)

Did you have any difficulty locating the statues that you wished to photo- graph? Not really, since all of his works are in Italy with the exception of four pieces.

One problem was the statue called Crouching Boy which was in the hands of the Soviet Union in the Hermitage in Leningrad. Fortunately, we have been able to secure from them perhaps the first motion pictures of this figure.

Is your documentary limited to just one period of his life?

No, we tell the whole story of Michelan- gelo's life from his birth to his death. I believe there is a movie that has just been released called "The Agony and the Ecstasy" which consists largely of the events surrounding the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Since we covered his whole life, it seemed to us impossible to take the wealth of architecture, painting and sculpture and put it all in one one-hour show, so our shows will be two separate one-hour productions which can ultimately be joined into one, showing the continuity of his life.

How did you arrive at the title "Michelangelo: The Last Giant ?" We get our subtitle, The Last Giant, from Berenson, the scholar on the Renaissance who used to live in Florence and referred to Michelangelo as one of the last giants, perhaps the principal one born in the 15th century. That was a great period of giants, particularly in art. However, I would like to make one exception to that. It all depends, of course, on how you want to define "giant." But within a few months of the death of Michelangelo, Shakespeare was born thousands of miles away.

When Michelangelo died, a leading figure of the day made a speech at his bier in which he said, "Who is this who lies here? Is he a painter, architect, sculptor, poet?" He concluded by saying, "This one was four."

But of the four, you consider him to be primarily a sculptor? Yes. Even Michelangelo never considered himself to be a painter. He studied painting at fourteen with Ghirlandaio for ap- proximately a year, as near as we can find out, before he went to Lorenzo's garden to study sculpture under Bertoldo. But after studying with Ghirlandaio, he never painted again until after Lorenzo died. Then he did a painting of a Mother and Child which is the only easel painting, so far as we know, that remains by Michelangelo. He didn't touch painting again until he was asked to paint the Sistine Ceiling years later (1508-1512). It is hard to believe that anyone would take a fellow on the basis of these few paintings and make him the painter of the Sistine Chapel. Of course one thing that occurred to enhance his reputation as a painter, you may remember, was the only time he was in direct competition with Leonardo da Vinci. Both were commis- sioned to decorate the Palazzo Vecchio where the city council wished the walls painted. They gave one wall to Michel- angelo, the other to Leonardo. Michel- angelo's cartoon, which was the outline of the fresco he was about to paint, was a masterpiece. But that was as far as his work progressed before he was called away to Rome. Leonardo, who was always experimenting, mixed his paints in some strange way which caused them to melt. So neither of these two works re- main in any significant portion. From that time to the Sistine Chapel, we know of no painting by Michelangelo.

Then why would he undertake the commission?

Well, in those days you didn't "take" a commission; you were ordered by the Pope to do so. It wasn't a matter of choice. When he got to Rome he started out as a sculptor called by the Pope to do his tomb. Pope Julius, a very militant Pope, wanted a large, impressive tomb and he sent Michelangelo off to the quarries of Carrara looking for the stone for it. After spending some eight months in the mountains picking out the marble, Michelangelo had no sooner started carving on it when the Pope changed his mind. And so in anger Michelangelo left Rome without permission of the Pope. The Pope sent messengers after him urging him to come back but he refused. However, at that time the Pope was leading an army on Bologna, where he was picking off the nobles who opposed him, which placed him more than half way to Florence. Fearful that the Pope would continue on into Florence if only to get Michelangelo, the city council called Michelangelo in and gave him the status of an ambassador and sent him to Bologna to make peace with the Pope. And the tomb is really the thing that he wanted to do all of his life?

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Yes, the tomb became his crown of thorns for the rest of his life. When he got to Julius in Bologna, the Pope after forgiving him, ordered Michelangelo to do a statue in bronze of the Pope for the church in Bologna. Again this was frustrating to Michelangelo because he had never cast in bronze. But the Pope insisted. So Michelangelo spent a year and a half in Bologna casting a bronze figure of Julius to put on the church of San Petronio, only to have the nobles of Bologna return, tumble it down and melt it into a cannon which they named after the Pope. So no record of this remains, not even a drawing.

Of course, Michelangelo hoped the Pope would let him go back to work on the tomb when he had finished the bronze. But the Pope would not. Instead he ordered Michelangelo to do the Sistine Chapel. And so in spite of Michelangelo's insistence that he was not a painter, the work was begun.

After all of your research, what sort of personality would you ascribe to Michelangelo? He was cantankerous, often offensive, but greatly affectionate toward his co- workers and his friends, famous long before he died, and wealthy. He reached his end with the carving of three Pietas in succession. Think of a man anywhere between eighty and ninety carving stone. He was so old, however, that he often didn't figure his stone properly. Some- times, too, he would hit a very bad fault in the stone which meant that he never had a place for the leg of Christ or for an arm or an elbow that he expected to have room for. When he was younger, he could attack a piece of marble and the whole thing would come out with just barely a sketch to guide him. One of these Pietas which he did in his very old age is called the Nicodemus Pieta. I think it is one of his finest works. It shows Nicodemus, actually a self portrait, sup- porting the figure of Christ as it is re- moved from the cross. It is very incom- plete and it is obvious that he was going to have trouble with the legs. This upset him so that he smashed it. His "boy," Urbino, begged for the remnants of this statue, put them all back together again and sold it for enough to make a dowry for his daughter. The statue is in the very church in Florence, the Duomo, which houses Michelangelo's body. now in a very poor pathetic tomb. Where- as, off in a dark corner of the church poorly lighted, is this magnificent sculpture, the Nicodemus Pieta which he had originally intended for his own tomb. This is the one we use in the end, with a poem of his that starts, now hath my life across a stormy sea . ..

Were you able to get inside the Sistine Chapel to shoot films of the ceiling? Yes and no, to give you an ambiguous

answer to that. It is very difficult to get in to shoot the Sistine chapel on film. Almost impossible. Large and tremen- dous scaffoldings are required and they are very fussy about lights, which they have every reason to be. So we were able to answer this problem by an arrange- ment with Scala, which makes many of the film transparencies for art books in Italy. They had, for a long time, a bid in to shoot large Ektachrome stills of the ceiling. Since we had a similar bid in to shoot similar films, we were able to work out an agreement. Then we ani- mated these Ektachromes by putting them before a large machine, which moves across the slide being filmed to give the impression that the camera is panning the ceiling. In that way we made film of each still.

You mentioned earlier that you had to use two mock-ups. When are these used ?

Perhaps one of the most dramatic se- quences is the moving of the David from the place where it was carved, next to the cathedral in Florence, over to the Square before the Palazzo Vecchio. In order to film the sequence we had to have a large reproduction of the head of the David made which we moved as though they were moving the statue to the Square. Also, we had to have a mock-up of the fawn, which I referred to earlier. This was made from a painting done in the 17th century, showing him presenting the fawn to Lorenzo. Since this fawn no longer exists, a mock-up was necessary. Of course, we show you the real David, which is no longer outside in the Square, but in the museum.

We have talked about the visual aspects of your production, now what about the sound?

Well, first we have Peter Ustinov who plays the voice of Michelangelo and who will cover his entire professional life from a young man of about 22 to an old man of 90. And secondly, we have Jose Ferrer who will do the narration. Music for the program will be provided by Laurence Rosenthal, the young man who did the scores for the motion pictures "Becket," and "The Miracle Worker."

How long has it taken you to put these two shows together? We started last August so it will be over a year by the time we finish.

When you begin a production of this sort, what are your first steps? Considerable outside research is required in addition to what we do ourselves. We had a research consultant, Giovanni Carandente, who is a Renaissance scholar in Italy and very familiar with our subject. He is also Superintendent of the museums in Rome. So that his ability to get us into some of these museums was

very useful to us. He prepared his own research for us based on a long conver- sation here in this country with me about what I wanted to do. He was able to tell us where the things were that demon- strated each aspect of Michelangelo's life . . . the visual items, which he called iconography. He was a great help to us, but in addition, we had to read every- thing we could lay our hands on ourselves, and find our own way.

Then after your research, your next step was. .. ? To make a very basic, thorough, outline which is called a script treatment. We couldn't wait, according to our schedule for a finished script to be written. So we prepared a script treatment of each show stating precisely where we were going, what we were going to be doing, and how we would get to the next scene. This was turned over to a director, Thomas Priestley, who also functioned as photog- rapher on the show. He went over to Italy to do the shooting from this script treatment. I went over only to survey each of these places and to discuss with him how we were to do what we were to do. After he got started, then I began to write the script. When we had both scripts which indicated what we were lacking in film, Tom went back to Italy for two weeks and shot the remainder of the things we needed.

Then actually he shot considerably more footage than you needed.

Yes, but not as much as we normally do. We usually are far over. Sometimes the proportion is as high as 15 or 20 feet to one used. But in this case we were in much better control.

Your problem, then, is to combine sight and sound for the television screen. Do you feel that you are being successfully creative in this new medium? I don't know. We try hard. We have certain unique things we are doing with this show that we have never done with any other. We always try to use television in a creative and constructive way. We don't always succeed, but we try. I think that with Van Gogh we established, or helped to establish, the process by which you could take inanimate subject matter and turn it into a lively program. With Shakespeare we went off into the abstract to illustrate some of the Shakespearean speeches. With this one, we have also gone into certain novel devices. For in- stance, when Michelangelo finally reaches Julius in Bologna, we resort to hot colors for his angry words: red, orange and yellow flash on and off with each word and in between these flashes you might barely get the image of his face. When he cools down, then the colors for his words cool down into blues and greens. Things like that we have done which

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Above: Presumed self-portrait, Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Below: study of a hand.

have never been done on TV and which may or may not work in this case. We don't like to stay in the same groove.

When you are developing your shows do you, as others do in making up their weekly shows, consider your audience ... do you direct the mate- rial to a certain level?

No, we do not. We believe that if you tell a story clearly in a method that is understandable the show will find its own level, which I think is much broader than people think. This idea of a 13-year-old audience is ridiculous. You and I aren't 13 and we watch these kinds of shows. We have another great strength in this area; we believe we are very ignorant, and that if we ourselves can be made to understand the subject and enjoy our un- derstanding of it, then others will auto- matically be made to understand it. So we seek only that which pleases ourselves and does not confuse us. Sometimes ignorance brought to a subject is better than a lot of knowledge. Our ignorance is sometimes our strength.

Isn't it ironic that in those days, five hundred years ago, when travel and communication was so difficult, and life so much slower than today, a man could become famous for many things. Yet today when he could accomplish so much more in his life- time an artist is labeled an abstract expressionist or a pop artist. He is not an architect and a sculptor and a painter; not "all four?" That's true. That's why I like to think of Michelangelo as truly a giant. You are right about what the times will do to you, and in many ways you will discover that by today's standards some of the unfinished works of Michelangelo im- press you more than his finished polished work. That is because you are more closely attuned to the kind of sculpture you see today. . . . Some of his work has a marvelous rough-hewn surface where the face remains unfinished. You didn't see hardly any of this in Michel- angelo's day and I am not sure how much of this is a happy accident and how much he preferred to keep that way.

And you wonder, too, what he would be like living in today's world. Would he still be a "giant"?

Well, we think today's world is rough but his world was also rough. It is hard to say; I don't know what he would be like. He had the Popes of the church as his sponsors and they were difficult and very powerful people to deal with. But I think that artists today often have just as hard a time with the rich old lady who lives on the hill. I think that perhaps he was a man of his own time, and yet a giant for all times.

Thank you, Mr. Hazam.

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