He’d warned that trees don’t grow to the sky; someday everything must end. Yet he himself couldn’t face the day he would have to draw the line under his career and say: “This is it. I’m done. The Sistine Chapel is finished. No further brushstroke will improve it—any further effort will produce an ordinary result.” He was sixty-nine years old. He couldn’t believe that he was sixty-nine years old; he still felt like a young man.
