Polyptych of the Misericordia

Piero della Francesca's Polyptych of the Misericordia, begun around 1445 and completed around 1460 for the Confraternity of the Misericordia in his native Sansepolcro, is one of his earliest major commissions. The central panel shows the Madonna della Misericordia sheltering members of the confraternity beneath her outspread cloak — a traditional iconographic type that Piero invested with his characteristic geometric grandeur and luminous, meditative calm.

Piero's monumental, architectonic figure of the Virgin creates a powerful pyramidal composition, with the kneeling supplicants arranged symmetrically beneath her protective mantle in a masterful synthesis of geometry and devotional imagery.