Bacchus

Michelangelo's "Bacchus," the Greek god of wine

"Because [Michelangelo] would take no time off for friends, rest or social life, Balducci accused him of trying to escape the world by fleeing into marble. Michelangelo admitted to his friend that he was half right -- the sculptor carries into the marble the vision of a more luminous world than the one that surrounds him. But the artist was not in flight; he was in pursuit. He was trying with all his might to overtake a vision. Did God really rest on the seventh day? In the cool of that long afternoon when He was refreshed, might He not have asked himself, "whom have I on earth to speak for me? I had best create another species, one apart. I will call him artist. His will be the task to bring meaning and beauty to the world." 

- Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy