Triptych of the Madonna della Misericordia
by JACOBELLO DEL FIORE, Tempera on panel, 86 x 113 cm
The Triptych was painted between 1415 and 1436 with the earlier of the two dates the more probable given the affinity of this work with the style of the ‘Stories of Santa Lucia’ in the Pinacoteca at Fermo. If the appearance of the lateral saints - St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist - is still somewhat forbidding, and if they seem still to be firmly part of the world of the 1300s, the centre is occupied by the Virgin presented as an extremely elegant, divine idol, surrounded by crowds of devotees, the costume and physical attitude of each of which is rendered through an extremely subtle use of light and colour.