The National Gallery in London possesses one of the most fervently religious pictures ever painted. The last picture which Botticelli left to the world, the ‘Nativity’, sums up and expresses the religious sentiments aroused in his soul by the preaching of Savonarola, the visions of Dante's Divina Commedia, and the spiritual quality of Fra Angelico's frescoes at San Marco. It is the only painting executed by him in the last twenty years of his life, his ‘religious’ period, and it embodies the fruit of his contemplations as he contrasted the tragic events of that troubled time in Florence with the peace-bearing message of the Incarnation.