Although I can draw a mean stick figure, I am not much of an artist. Pictionary is pretty much the extent of my artistic pursuits, unless doodling while on the phone counts. So anyone who can draw, paint, sketch, sculpt is pretty high up on my list, just below those who can sing. On the death anniversary of Irving Stone, I have to pay homage to one of my favourite books -The Agony and The Ecstasy.
To read it, is to love it.
The Agony and The Ecstasy is the ‘biography’ of di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, one of the greatest and best known Renaissance artists. Stone pays tribute to not just one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance period but to Italy itself in his telling descriptions and vivid portrayals of life, land and time in artistically-verdant Italy. On reading the book, I was filled with regret and remorse for not being born an angst-ridden, derided, ‘aspiring’ artist in the turbulent 16th century. Although I do have truckloads of artistic angst. So that must count for something.
Although I am not sure how much Stone has fused fact and fiction, Michelangelo’s journey is a powerful story. As a reader and with centuries of hindsight, we know how it’s going to end and that he’s going to come up aces, but his struggles were real, the competition was politically-edged and his beginnings pitifully humble. It’s not just the ‘rags to riches’ analogy but the absolute fluidity with which Stone tells the story of one of the greatest artists of all time, whose works have made history.