The Trinity with Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint John the Baptist, the Archangel Raphael and Tobias

Botticelli's Trinity with Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, Raphael and Tobias (c. 1492) is a late work from the period when the painter was coming under the influence of Savonarola's apocalyptic preaching in Florence. The Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — combined with the penitent Magdalene, the prophetic Baptist, and the protective Raphael creates an unusual iconographic gathering that may reflect the millenarian anxieties of the 1490s. Florence in these years was gripped by the approach of 1494 (the French invasion) and Savonarola's warnings, and Botticelli is known to have burned his own secular works under the friar's influence after 1494. This painting predates that crisis but inhabits its atmosphere.

Botticelli's late style shows a deliberate archaism — a retreat from the spatial confidence of his 1480s masterpieces toward flatter, more iconic arrangement. The Trinity is presented frontally and symmetrically, the saints arranged in devotional rather than narrative grouping. Line contours are more emphatic than in his middle period, and facial expressions carry an intensity of devotional urgency. The color scheme is cooler than his earlier work.