Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola
If burning books is bad consider this control freak…
Florence, Feb 7-1497
Girolamo Savonarola was the mastermind (I use the term loosely) behind the burning of several of Sandro Botticelli’s paintings, and other works of a pagan theme. Only religious icons were permitted to survive his public ‘Bonfire of the Vanities.’ Fortunately some of Botticelli’s famous works like the ‘Birth of Venus’ and the ‘Primavera’ were painted furniture panels for a private residence in the country too far from the eyes of Savonarola’s personal army of boy spies.
SAVED: The ‘Birth of Venus’ – Sandro Botticelli
Savonarola stirred the Florentines into a holier than art frenzy, and burned books, silk dresses, game boards, mirrors, jewelry, statues, perfumes, cosmetics, wigs, and anything labeled as items celebrating the sins of decadence and vanity.
He was born the same year as Leonardo da Vinci, and martyred in 1498
But the Dominican priest went a fire too far and was arrested as a heretic, and subsequently sacrificed as a martyr on his own pyre.
The execution of Savonarola 1498
Veronica Knox 