Here is a statement attributed to Michelangelo in Vasari‘s Lives of the Artists that I keep thinking about:

I’ve always had only too harassing a wife in this demanding art of mine, and the works I leave behind will be my sons. Even if they are nothing, they will live for a while. It would have been a disaster for Lorenzo Ghiberti if he hadn’t made the doors of San Giovanni, seeing that they are still standing whereas his children and grandchildren sold and squandered all he left.