Полиптих Милосердия

The confraternity of Sansepolcro gave Piero this commission in 1445, in his own home town, with a three-year deadline and a demand that it be done the old way, in precious colours over a solid gold background. Piero took 17 years. He was busy elsewhere, and he was also working through the new science of perspective that would define his art. You can feel the pull between the two. The gold ground is medieval, but under the Virgin's outspread cloak he opens a real, measured space, and the kneeling townspeople who paid for the picture kneel inside it as if in the apse of a church. The finished polyptych stayed in Sansepolcro and is in the town's Museo Civico today.