Mater Misericordiae Mother of Mercy emerged as one of the most prolific subjects in central Italian art from the late thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. With iconographic origins in Marian cult relics brought from Palestine to Constantinople in the fifth century, the amalgam of attributes coalesced in Armenian Cilicia then morphed as it spread to Cyprus. An early concept of Mary of Mercy the Virgin standing with outstretched arms and a wide mantle under which kneel or stand devotees entered the Italian peninsula at the ports of Bari and Venice during the Crusades,...