Triptych of Our Lady of Mercy

In 1511, the sugar producer and trader Nuno Fernandes Cardoso made a will in which he determined that the chapel of São João de Latrão should be completed within four years. He had ordered this chapel to be built on his land in Gaula, close to Funchal, to house his and his wife’s tomb and wished it to be decorated with an important set of liturgical implements and a good altarpiece, whose themes coincided with those of this triptych, which clearly came from this same chapel. It is the work of Jan Provoost, one of the most sophisticated and erudite painters from Bruges, and it not only displays great quality, but also reveals a complex iconography in which the Virgin Mary is placed above the altar, as a living tabernacle of Christ, and St. Sebastian appears emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.