Madonna of Mercy and Saints Sebastian and Bernardino da Siena

Our Lady of Mercy is a figure of protection: she opens her cloak to shelter the faithful beneath it, a common gesture in late fifteenth-century Italian devotional painting. Here she is flanked by two saints: Sebastian, identified in the record as Sebastian of Milan, and Bernardino of Siena, whose presence points to local devotion. The panel dates to around 1490 and is executed in tempera on wood, a technique that allows luminous colours and fine surfaces. It is now held in the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art in Pienza, an example of the religious work Luca Signorelli produced for places of worship. The available sources do not detail the commission or its later history, so the painting is best read through its iconography: the Virgin as refuge, and the saints as intercessors before her.

Painter

Luca Signorelli

Date

1490

Medium

wood, tempera

Museum

Museo diocesano d'Arte Sacra

Genre

religious art

Depicts

Saint Sebastian, Bernardino of Siena, Mary

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