Agony and Ecstasy is a romanticized biography of the author of biographies of many important artists, Irving Stone. The book begins with Michelangelo’s formation as an artist.
It is said that instead of paying for the sculpture school, as sculpture schools were back then, he was paid by the owner of the school because his father did not agree with his son’s choice.
Working there for a few years, in that workshop, he found his style, it was the best. His colleagues there played a prank on him, saying that whoever comes up with the most successful drawing of the workshop will win a prize. Michelangelo came out the winner, but the prize was that he had to pay for everyone’s consumption at an old restaurant.
Little by little Michelangelo began to grow as an artist, he was given more and more important works, all of which he successfully completed.
Michelangelo dissected corpses at night, secretly, to study the human body. He also wanted to know what was inside, not just what was visible on the outside. This being forbidden at that time, it risked severe punishment, being considered a defilement of corpses.
The book tells how he would sneak into a building where there were corpses at night, dissect them and put his hand in them to feel the heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs with his hand.
Being a sculpting maniac, Michelangelo also worked at night, sometimes sleeping only 3 hours a night. He put on his head an object he had built and invented which consisted of a candle and a circle, the circle supporting the candle. That way he had light at night and could work.
Michelangelo considered each stone of marble, his favorite material, to be a pure sculpture, he only had to reveal the remains of the work, to show it to the world.
Michelangelo was not only a sculptor, he was also a painter, he painted at an advanced age, by order of the pope at the time, the Sistine Chapel, which remains to this day, and can be admired.
At first he had a team of people to help him, but they confused him more, so he climbed the scaffolding himself, and within a few years he finished painting the Sistine Chapel, after much agony, because it hurt eyes from the paints that inevitably fell into his eyes, and from the awkward positions of his hands and body.
Michelangelo’s death is described in Agony and Ecstasy as being while he was working. Michelangelo was a titan, a man who sculpted more than he slept and ate, and he left us with many valuable sculptures and works that can still be admired today.
As for the women in his life, he was in love with a woman of noble blood from that time, with whom he had short-lived relationships, each of them then following their own path in life.
He also left poems written in moments of agony, despair, artistic labor, poems written by his own hand. He helped his brothers and family because he was very well paid for his artwork.