religious art

At the least-visited museum in Rome, a marble cross caught my attention. It depicts the Madonna and Child and the warm tangle of their intimacy.

Reviewers of the Piero della Francesca exhibit seem to want to hold the Renaissance painter's genius close but his religion at arm's length.

Theologically, what does this piece of art evoke and why? To me, it suggests
the religious aesthetics of a self-satisfied people.