Madonna di Senigallia

Piero della Francesca made this small panel around the mid-1470s, most likely for the court of Urbino, where Duke Federico da Montefeltro was drawing in artists and ideas from across Europe. One of those imports was the Flemish way of painting in oil, and you can watch Piero studying it here. Light falls from a window at the upper left and lands as a clean geometric patch on the back wall, catching the dust in the air, while the same steady glow picks out the pearls in the angels' hair and the coral strung at the Christ Child's neck. The four figures stand close and still in a plain domestic room. Small enough for private prayer, the panel surfaced only in 1822, in a convent outside the town of Senigallia that gave it its name.