The Last Communion of Mary Magdalene

We are grateful to Marco Riccomini for endorsing the attribution of this small copper to Lucio Massari, a painter who joined the Carracci academy in Bologna in 1592 and worked in the orbit of Ludovico Carracci. Another version of this composition, of much larger dimensions and on canvas (190 x 145 cm), was formerly in the Pallavicini collection in Bologna where it was described by the eighteenth-century historian Marcello Oretti (see A. Brogi, 'Un Lucio Massari ritrovato', Arte a Bologna. Bollettino dei Musei Civici d'Arte Antica, 7-8, 2010-2011, pp. 309-11). As noted by Brogi, the simple monumentality of the composition together with the figure types of the putto and Magdalene recall the work of Domenichino, to whom the ex-Pallavicini painting was traditionally attributed. That work probably served as an altarpiece in a private chapel and it seems likely that Massari was commissioned to produce a reduced replica on copper.