Beweinung Christi mit Heiligen

The man who painted the Primavera and its floating, weightless goddesses ended his career making pictures like this one. In 1492 Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence’s ruler and Botticelli’s great patron, died, and the city fell under the fierce preaching of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who called for repentance and the burning of worldly art. Something of that severity is here. Botticelli packs the figures tight around the dead Christ, drains the sweetness from their faces, and lets the grief bend their bodies into hard, jagged shapes. The colours narrow to blunt reds, blues and yellows. Mary holds her son with his body shrunken small across her lap, and the saints press in behind her, each turned inward on the loss.