Calumny of Apelles

This is Botticelli near the end, around 1495, in a Florence that had turned against the very kind of pagan beauty he was famous for. The friar Savonarola was preaching against luxury and vanity, and the Medici had been driven out. The picture itself reaches much further back. It reconstructs a lost painting by the ancient Greek master Apelles, known only from a written description, in which a wronged man is dragged before a foolish king by figures called Slander, Envy and Deceit. Botticelli sets it all in a cold marble hall crowded with statues. It is small, and it was his last mythological work. At the far left a lone naked figure, Truth, points a hand at the sky.