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A woman kneeling on the ground and leaning toward a wafer held out by a man in a brown robe is surrounded by three winged angels in this vertical painting. The scene is dramatically lit from the upper left, and the people all have light skin. The woman, Saint Mary of Egypt, takes up most of the lower right quadrant of the painting, and she faces our left in profile. Her skin is tinged with gray, and a tear rolls down her gaunt cheek. Her lips are parted as she leans toward the quarter-sized wafer. Her wavy, chestnut-brown hair cascades down her back. She is naked from the waist up except for a white cloth she loosely holds to her chest with her left hand, closer to us. Her other hand is lifted, palm up, and her lower body is wrapped in voluminous, cobalt-blue fabric. The man stands opposite her, to our left, and he leans toward her to offer the wafer with his right hand. He holds a gold plate with his other hand. He is balding with a thick beard and deeply creased face. He wears a patched brown robe and a string of thick beads around his neck. Below him, in the lower left, an angel kneels facing away from us, looking toward Saint Mary. Light shines on the angel’s blond ringlets and along the edges of long, white and dove-gray wings. The angel wears a saffron-yellow tunic. An orange sash flutters at the waist, and a white cloth wraps around the lower body but reveals bare shins and feet. A burning torch is held in one hand, to our right. Another angel with widespread wings hovers in mid-air behind Saint Mary and looks down at her. This second angel’s glowing white wings nearly span the width of the painting. One arm reaches for or braces Saint Mary and the other holds the other end of the cloth Saint Mary clutches to her chest. Dark blond ringlets lift away from the angel’s shadowed face, and folds of the coral-orange garment flutter around the body. A third angel looks on from under one lifted wing, along the right edge of the painting. That angel is seen from the shoulders up with fingertips touching, and has tousled copper-red hair. Two winged baby heads float above the scene and are set against the cream-white and ginger-brown clouds that billow in from the upper right and fill much of the sky. A sliver of royal-blue sky is visible in the upper left.

Sebastiano Ricci

The Last Communion of Saint Mary of Egypt, c. 1695

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 30

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 209 x 142 cm (82 5/16 x 55 7/8 in.)

framed: 236.2 x 170.8 cm (93 x 67 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Patrons' Permanent Fund

Accession Number

2003.85.1

Artists / Makers

Sebastiano Ricci (painter) Venetian, 1659 - 1734

Image Use

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Provenance

Probably Marchese Giorgio Clerici [d. 1736], Milan;[1] by descent in his family until at least 1770. Josef Cremer, Dortmund, by 1914;[2] by descent in his family;[3] (sale, Sotheby's, London, 6 July 1988, no. 62). (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 24 May 1991, no. 69). (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 10 December 1993, no. 97, bought in). private collection, Japan; purchased 6 June 2003 through (Hall & Knight Ltd., New York and London) by NGA.

[1] Archivio di Stato di Milano, Fondo Notarile n. 38321 (notaio Cignani), Inventario de stabili, censi, redditi, capitali, crediti, mobile, Argenti, Gioia, denari, ed altro ritrovato, e lasciato al tempo della sua morte dal fú Ill[ustrissi]mo, ed Ecc[ellentissi]mo sig.re Marchese Presidente Don Giorgio Clerici..., fol. 4: 'Altro Quadro rapresentante Sta Maria Egiziaca communicata da un'Eremita. . . Originale di Sebastiano Rizzi, alt[ez]za B[racci]a 4, Larg[hez]za B[racci]a 2 1/2 con cornice soglia adorata'... The inventory was drawn up in 1738 following the Marchese's death two years earlier.

[2] Collection Geh. Kommerzienrat Cremer, Dortmund, 3 vols., Parchim, n.d. [1914]: 1(text):43, as Kommunion der hl. Magdalena; 2(plates):n. 946, as Kommunion der hl. Maria von Egypten. Born in 1845, Josef Cremer was a brewery owner and prominent citizen of Dortmund, where he was made an honorary citizen in 1922. The catalogue of his collection was compiled in 1914 in advance of his 70th birthday; it identifies him as a 'Geheimer Kommerzienrat', a high-ranking honorary title (abolished in 1919) conferred by the German state to magnates of commerce and high finance. In the preface, Cremer reminisced that his collection was the result of his numerous trips to Holland, Belgium, France, England, and Italy. He displayed a particular interest in early Netherlandish and Northern Baroque paintings, as well as in Italian works of the 18th century, and the collection also held works from the British, Spanish, and Portuguese schools. The catalogue does not appear to be systematic: the first volume contains texts on the different schools represented in his collection (by Hermann Voss, with contributions by Friedrich Winkler and Karl Lilienfeld), while two volumes of plates illustrate over 200 works.

[3] The painting does not appear in the 1929 sale of the Cremer collection, and manuscript annotations in the Frick Art Reference Library copy of Cremer's 1914 collection catalogue confirm this. Thieme and Becker 1934, 250 record the work (albeit erroneously as Kommunion der hl. Magdalena) as still in the Dortmund collection. Jeffery Daniels, Sebastiano Ricci, Hove, 1976: 24, declares it "formerly" in the Cremer collection. There is no reason, however, to doubt the mention in the 1988 Sotheby's sales catalogue stating that the painting was put up for auction by descendants of Josef Cremer.

Associated Names

Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Clerici, Giorgio, Marchese
Cremer, Josef
Hall & Knight
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)
Sotheby's, London

Bibliography

1907: Goering, M. "Ricci, Sebastiano." In Thieme-Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 28(1934):253, as Kommunion d. hl. Magdalena.

1914: Cremer, Josef and Hermann Voss. Collection Geh. Kommerzienrat Cremer, Dortmund, 3 vols. [Dortmund?], n.d. [1914]: 1:pl. 44; 2[?]:43.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci, Milan, 1976: no. 13, repro.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. Sebastiano Ricci. Hove, 1976: 24, 139, no. 81.

2006: Scarpa, Annalisa. Sebastiano Ricci. Milan, 2006: 25, 341.

2012: Coppa, Simonetta. "Precisazioni sull'opera di Sebastiano Ricci a Monza e a Milano." In Sebastiano Ricci, 1659-1734: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, 14-15 dicembre 2009, Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Edited by Giuseppe Pavanello. Venice, 2012: 240 fig. 15, 243, 244.