Michelangelo suffered terribly alone in the Sistine Chapel. There were about eleven thousand square feet of ceiling to paint and he was not a painter but had to obey an order given by the Pope. He sat on the wooden plank of the scaffolding up in the air with his legs dangling and worked looking up. All the time he rubbed his neck, it ached so.
Working on wiggly boards sixty feet in the air is a tricky business. You have to organize what little space there is to make room for everything: your baskets of sand and lime, your bucket of clean water, your colors and your brushes. Somewhere at hand, maybe hanging over the wooden railing, is your cloth cartoon. When you finish with each instrument, mind where you put it down. Did you leave the darn trowel in the bucket with the lime or is it somewhere under your foot or behind you? If it falls down through the planks, that means interrupting the work for ten minutes or more while you climb down after it. Or is it in one of your pockets?
Michelangelo is definitely one of (if not) the greatest artist of all time. Everything he did in his career was phenominal and of highest genius.