When Leonardo returned to Tuscany, Florence was no longer ruled by the Medici. On the death of Lorenzo (1492) the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII upset the balance of power among the Italian states. In Florence, after Lorenzo the Magnificent's son had been expelled, a Republic was proclaimed led by the Dominican monk from Ferrara, Girolamo Savonarola, previously invited by Lorenzo at the request of Pico della Mirandola. The ensuing period of social and moral austerity determined new directions in the arts: a new genre of sacred painting took hold, as practised by Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, Mariotto Albertinelli, and Fra Bartolomeo. The late style of Botticelli also reflected the penitential overtones of the "bonfire of the vanities": abandoning his classical manner, the painter turned with growing emotionalism to religious and allegorical subjects, breaking up compositional rhythms and exaggerating figurative gestures. Excommunicated by Alexander VI Borgia in 1497 as "the instrument of the devil and ruin of Florence", Savonarola was burned at the stake the following year in the Piazza della Signoria. The event is commemorated by a pavement inscription.
 

Giovanni delle Corniole, Savonarola,
Museo degli Argenti, Pitti Palace, Florence.

Anonymous 19th-century artist,
from a late 15th-century painting,
The Execution of Savonarola, Galleria Corsini, Florence.
Among Savonarola's writings were the poems
De ruina mundi (1472) and De ruina ecdesiae (1475),
the Trattato divoto e utile delle umilta (1491),
the Trattato dello amore di Cristo (1492),
the Libra delta vita viduale (1495),
and the Triumphus crucis,
published in Latin and in the vernacular (1497).