The Last Communion of Saint Jerome

This small panel was painted in Florence in the mid-1490s, the years when the friar Girolamo Savonarola was preaching penance and burning worldly luxuries in the city's squares. It was made for Francesco del Pugliese, a wool merchant and a committed follower of Savonarola, to pray before at home. Botticelli shows Saint Jerome, the fourth-century scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, at the very end of his life, too weak to stand, held up by fellow monks as he takes his last communion in a rough cell of woven reeds near Bethlehem. Palm fronds are pinned to the walls above him. Everything is pared down to the dying man and the small group around him, on a panel barely larger than a sheet of paper.