The Last Supper
Sebastiano Ricci·1713/1714
Historical Context
Ricci's Last Supper from 1713-14 was commissioned for the Refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the great Benedictine monastery on the island facing the Piazza San Marco, continuing the tradition of refectory Last Suppers that included Veronese's famous painting for the same context. Ricci's version, created for the wall above the monks' dining table where it would be observed during meals, revived the tradition that Tintoretto and Veronese had established in the sixteenth century and demonstrates how consciously Ricci worked within and in relation to Venice's own great pictorial heritage. His compositional grandeur and warm coloring deliberately evoked the Cinquecento masters.
Technical Analysis
The oil on canvas features Ricci's characteristic silvery-warm palette and vigorous brushwork, with dramatically lit figures arranged around the table in a spacious architectural setting that owes much to Veronese's theatrical compositions.
Provenance
Possibly the Manfrin collection, Palazzo Venier, Venice.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence), by 1937; purchased 1939 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1943 to NGA. [1] Fern Rusk Shapley, _Catalogue of Italian Paintings_, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:400, listed only "Palazzo Venier," while Jeffery Daniels, _Sebastiano Ricci_, Hove, 1976: 153, gives "Venice, Palazzo Venier, Manfrin." Neither offers any documentation. The Palazzo Priuli-Venier was purchased in 1787 by Count Girolamo Manfrin [d. 1801], a wealthy tobacco producer, who installed his art collection there. The painting does not appear in the _Catalogo dei quadri esistenti nella Galleria Manfrin in Venezia_, Venice, 1856, or in the subsequent sales of Manfrin's daughter Giovanna Plattis (Sambon, Venice, 24-25 May 1870) or granddaughter Lina Plattis-Sardegna (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 13-14 May 1897). On the collection's history, see the prefaces to the sale catalogues and Giuseppe Tassini, _Alcuni palazzi di venezia storicamente illustrata con annotazioni_, Venice, 1879, 191-192. Neither Tassini nor other nineteenth-century guidebooks mention significant art collections in the other Venier palaces. [2] According to notations in the Kress records, NGA curatorial files. Expert opinions by Roberto Longhi, William Suida, and Giuseppe Fiocco on the back of photographs from the Kress files, evidently prepared for Contini, are dated Florence, 1937. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2222.
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