I don't know about stone-carving, Michelangelo seems to have worked things out in stone as he went along. Rodin too.

I think it is hard to generalise about "artists" as a big category. But there is something about the "supreme" artists that does make me think that there is a pretty clear dichotomy between the supremely serene ones (Shakespeare, Goethe, Titian) and the supremely tormented ones (Van Gogh, Caravaggio, Dostoyevsky).   It is as if one group is like God enjoying his work, and the other is like Satan, fighting it all the way down into Hell.

yours,

Peter T.