Mystische Kreuzigung

Around 1500 Florence was still reeling from Savonarola, the Dominican friar who had preached that the city would be scourged for its sins and was burned in its main square in 1498. Botticelli seems to have believed him. Behind the cross he paints Florence itself, and beside it an angel whips a small lion, the marzocco that was the city's own emblem. Firebrands and weapons fall out of a black cloud on one side while clear sky opens on the other, sin and mercy laid out over a real skyline. Mary Magdalene clings to the foot of the cross. It was likely made for Botticelli's own private use rather than a commission, one of the intensely religious pictures that filled his final years.