Michelangelo was certainly a genius of his time, when Western society demanded the highest ideals of beauty carved into stone and painted onto ceilings. He met the society's vision with relentless intensity, transforming the human body into a site of power, struggle, and transcendence.
He held impossibly high standards and was never satisfied, often destroying his own work or leaving pieces unfinished when they failed to match the vision in his Genius mind. Working obsessively for years at a time, he pushed himself into exhaustion and isolation in pursuit of Perfection.