Ah, Richard, you've opened the door to the great balancing act of all realism, whether you work from life or exclusively from your imagination.
In the greatest works that have survived to our time (the "old masters") there is always a symphonic balance between "what you see," the realism in front of you that Michele is referring to, and "what you know," meaning, what you know of anatomy, modelling form, schemas the masters used to construct the head, how light falls across the form conception of a sphere or column or cube. In this second category is the most profound concept: invenzione. The charm of the Dutch pub scene will never top the blinding invenzione of Michelangelo.
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That's hard to do, isn't it! That's why a lot of people think it's easier to work from life (aside from being a lot more fun, too). You never have to "make something up". It's all there right in front of you.
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Has anyone claimed it's easier to work from life? More fun? I had a session today where I would have been happy to have cut my wrists afterwards. But as with any other work, there are good days and there are terrible days.
It is also easier to buy a jar of mayonnaise at the grocer than it is to make a weekly batch of aioli. But the difference is extreme and well worth the good focused work it takes to learn the mechanics of the emulsion, even taking into account all the broken sauces, wasted eggs and wasted olive oil.
However, I do not intend to deteriorate this thread into another argument of the virtues of working from life vs. working from photographs. This thread can remain a positive resource of examples of those greats who do use "alternative"
sources, like drawings, color sketches, compositional studies, clay models, drapery studies.