In the summer of 1960 - when I saw for the first time the Sistine Chapel in Rome - I was intrigued to learn something of the working habits of Michelangelo. The four years that it took the great Florentine to paint the vault of the chapel were largely spent in isolation behind locked doors. While very young, Michelangelo had found that for him, work of integrity was impossible without secrecy.
Adventures in Prayer, p. 61, by Catherine Marshall