The Bonfire of the Vanities

Within seven days, I’ll be in Rome. Then Florence, Venice, Assis, Madrid! As I prepared for the trip, I came across information on Savonarola. A Dominican priest who was a leader in Florence for 5 years – from 1494 to 1498 – apparently, enough time to make a mess.

He became famous for his opposition to the Medici family and for what was called The Bonfire of the Vanities - in which a huge pile of objects considered to be occasions of sin was formed and then burnt in the Piazza della Signoria. He was not the first to perform such a act, though – a Fransciscan Italian missionary from the 14th century, Bernardine, seems to have set the trend.

They sent boys from door to door collecting items associated with moral laxity: mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures, gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women’s hats, and the works of immoral and ancient poets, and burnt them all in a large pile in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence. Many fine Florentine Renaissance artworks were lost in Savonarola’s notorious bonfires — including paintings by Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo Buonarroti, which are said to have been thrown on the pyres by the artists themselves, though there are some who question this claim.