Michelangelo

Carved by a 24-year-old. Mary is impossibly young — younger than her son — because, Michelangelo said, virtue preserves her. His only signed work.

Seventeen feet of marble carved from a block others had given up on. David faces Goliath before the stone flies — tense, not triumphant.

Four years, mostly alone, on scaffolding. Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor, not a painter, and complained about the job the whole way through.

Intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II, a project that consumed Michelangelo for forty years and was never finished as planned. The figure is not dying but — perhaps — falling asleep, or surrendering to ecstasy. Michelangelo left the back deliberately rough.