Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels

Piero della Francesca was as much a mathematician as a painter. He wrote treatises on perspective and on the geometry of solid shapes, and you can feel that mind at work here in the calm, exact space around the throne. This is the only intact altarpiece by him anywhere in America, part of why the Clark rarely lets it travel. He built the picture in a compressed upright rectangle, unusual for its moment, fitting the enthroned Virgin and four tall angels into a shallow, ordered box of space. The Christ child reaches toward a rose, a flower long read as a quiet sign of the suffering ahead of him. Piero worked slowly and left relatively few paintings, so each surviving panel carries weight. Look at the angels' faces, almost identical, still, lit as evenly as if by plain daylight.