The Temptations of Christ

The title promises the temptations of Christ, and they are here, though small and high up along the top. On the left the devil, in a monk's habit, urges the fasting Christ to turn stones into bread. In the centre the two stand on the pinnacle of the Temple and the devil dares him to jump. On the right Christ refuses the kingdoms of the world, and the devil throws off his disguise and falls away.

Most of the wall is given to something else. In the foreground a man healed of leprosy comes before the high priest for the cleansing laid down in the Law of Moses, and the offerings are brought forward, a basin of water, birds, cedar wood and hyssop. In the Gospels Christ tells the leper he has healed to go and do exactly this, so the scene ties his miracle to the old rites of the Temple.

Botticelli painted the wall in 1481 and 1482, and he gave the Temple a front that Romans of the day would have recognised. It is modelled on a building in the hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, which Sixtus IV, the pope who built this chapel, had recently rebuilt near the Vatican.