Life after 45
British historian Paul Johnson examines achievement after age 45:
"In painting and sculpture, manual dexterity almost inevitably declines at a certain age. But Michelangelo was born in 1475 and worked practically to his death in 1564. When he began ‘the Last Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel he was 61, and he was 66 before he finished it. All of his best architecture was done in middle age or later: he did not begin to work on St Peter’s until he was 71. Tintoretto’s best work in the Scuola di San Rocco dates from his fifties and sixties, and some from his seventies. When Titian painted ‘Diana and Actaeon’ he was in his seventies. Painters often produce their finest work in their fifties. This was true of Rubens and Rembrandt, Velazquez and Claude, Goya and Fragonard. The fifties, for painters, seems to be the stage when skills peak, before age erodes the ability to use the brush."
I feel so much better.
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