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Botticelli turned his mind back to religious themes on his return to Florence, but his Medicean patronage dried up with the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492. Surprisingly, it was Savonarola from whom Lorenzo sought absolution in his final hours. Two years after Lorenzo’s death, the Medici family was expelled from Florence in 1494. The Medici palace was sacked and countless valuable items and works of fine art were stolen.
Savonarola was summoned in 1495 to Rome to defend his religious preaching, but he unwisely declined the pope’s invitation. Times were hard for Botticelli at this time, but caught up in his religious fervor, he followed the lead of Savonarola who organized what has come to be known as “The Bonfire of the Vanities”. Prior to the festival at the Lenten season in 1497, Savonarola ordered his followers to gather up “vanities” going from house to house.
These vanities were objects Savonarola deemed immoral, such as costumes, masks, wigs, amorous songs, festival paraphernalia, musical instruments, cosmetics, and many others things. On the last day of Carnival, he ordered the “vanities” to be stacked on top of a great pile of incendiary material and set afire. Tossed on the bonfire were also precious manuscripts and various works of art. Botticelli willingly participated in the bonfire, sacrificing many of his own paintings to the flames.
A year later in 1498, Savonarola suffered a similar fate when he was officially excommunicated, arrested, tortured, hanged, then burned at the stake for heresy, having offended the Florentines and the pope one too many times. Devastated by the loss of his spiritual leader, Botticelli ceased to paint after 1500 and lived in poverty until his death in 1510. Botticelli was sustained in his final years by the charity of the Medici who were then back in Florence waiting to resume the reins of power.
Botticelli’s final work of 1500 is The Nativity, now in The National Gallery in London. Much to the delight of the art world, an interest in the life and work of Sandro Botticelli was resurrected in the 19th century by the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. If not for their efforts, the works of Botticelli might have forever remained obscure. And so, it seems that Botticelli and his Venus have once again risen from the deep to the prominent place they so richly deserve in the world of art.
Brenda Harness, Art Historian
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