Sandro Botticelli is renowned for the 'Birth of Venus' and 'Primavera,' works that celebrated neo-Platonic beauty and Roman mythology. However, late in his life, he became a follower of the radical friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached against the 'corruption' of secular art. In 1497, during the 'Bonfire of the Vanities,' Savonarola’s followers burned thousands of objects deemed sinful, including cosmetics, books, and paintings. It is believed that Botticelli himself threw some of his own mythological paintings into the flames in a fit of religious fervor. His later works became much more somber and strictly religious, lacking the ethereal glow of his earlier masterpieces. This tragic shift highlights the intense tension between the humanism of the Renaissance and the religious fundamentalism that occasionally rose to challenge it.