The combination of Michelangelo's varied background as sculptor, painter, poet, architect and engineer, his own personal weaknesses and vanity, and his unremitting drive which enabled him to conquer overwhelming disappointments and find satisfaction in difficult and backbreaking work has made The Agony and the Ecstasy one of Stone's most well-read books. Michelangelo is the artist's everyman as his biographer combines the focus on art and will with insights into human behavior, and provides an excellent account of his struggles and achievements, desires and despairs. The events of the novel, historical in fact and theme, cover the periods of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who first befriended the young artist, through the harshness of Pope Julius II, who literally forced Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, to Pope Pius IV, who finally gave him.....
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