The Examination of Savonarola

François Marius Granet's The Examination of Savonarola (1846) depicts a charged moment from the dramatic trial of Girolamo Savonarola — the Dominican friar who briefly dominated Florence with his austere religious republicanism before being condemned, tortured, and burned in 1498. Granet was deeply interested in episodes from Italian religious and political history, and Savonarola fascinated the nineteenth century as a figure of moral incorruptibility destroyed by institutional power. Granet's characteristic setting — a dimly lit interior, ecclesiastical architecture, concentrated group of figures — suits the subject perfectly. The work is now at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.

Granet builds the composition around the contrast between the prisoner's isolation and the assembled tribunal, using a shallow, dimly lit space that concentrates attention on faces and gestures. The restricted palette — dark stone, black robes, points of candlelight — is characteristic of his interiors and creates the claustrophobic atmosphere appropriate to the subject.