ATTRIBUTED TO GIOVANNI DE' VECCHI (1536-1615)
The Mystical Communion of St Catherine
c.1578RCIN 905086
Around 1578 Giovanni de’ Vecchi painted a fresco cycle on the life of St Catherine of Siena in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, where the saint had been buried in 1380. Here, a priest searches an altar for a Eucharist that had miraculously vanished, while Catherine receives this Eucharist from Christ himself. In the distance, supplicants gather around Catherine’s body.