Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius

By 1500 Botticelli was no longer the painter of the Primavera. Florence had lived through the rise and the burning of Girolamo Savonarola, the friar who preached against luxury and was executed in the city's main square in 1498. Botticelli, who had listened to him, turned to stern religious subjects like this one. It is one of a set of long panels made to be set into the woodwork of a room at about shoulder height. Across a pale, almost empty Florentine square, Saint Zenobius, an early bishop of the city, moves from one miracle to the next, raising the dead as he goes. He appears three times in the single panel, hurrying, as if the miracles will not wait for him.