The statue was completed circa 1875 by Enrico Pazzi, a native of Ravenna, at a time, when anti-papal feelings ran high in Italy.

In 1870, another committee, chaired by Prince Ferdinando Strozzi, selected to commission Pazzi's more grandiose and more anti-papal statue, and obtained the Commune's permission to site the sculpture in the first cloister of the Florentine convent.

It remained in studio till 1882, when it was installed, to much criticism, into the niche of the southern end of the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Even in this niche, Savonarola's provincial and other-worldly causes did not fit the Italian nationalism that was in demand after the recent world war.

Savonarola is depicted with his right hand while raising a Cross, recalling his declaration during a public sermon in 1495, that Christ was the new King of Florence.