Last Communion of St Francis by Carracci
The Last Communion of Saint Francis, traditionally attributed to Agostino Carracci and dated around 1596, depicts the deeply devotional moment in which Saint Francis of Assisi receives the Eucharist at the end of his life. The composition is built around Francis, frail and kneeling, supported by his brothers as a priest administers Holy Communion. The surrounding figures display tender gestures of grief, reverence, and quiet awe, emphasizing the saint’s humility and unwavering faith in his final moments. The careful interplay of gazes and gestures draws the viewer into the sacred intimacy of the event.
The composition of this work is known to derive from a design by Camillo Procaccini (c.1555–1629), documented in an engraving by Anton Wierix. That engraving is believed to reflect one of Procaccini’s frescoes once located in the second cloister of Sant’Angelo in Milan, now destroyed. A related drawing, likely by Procaccini himself, survives in the collection of the University of Missouri, Columbia. The popularity of this composition is further shown in another version preserved at the Accademia Albertina in Turin, attributed to Denys Calvaert.
Although the painting has long been associated with Agostino Carracci, its authorship has been the subject of scholarly revision. The work was catalogued as Carracci in 1880, but this attribution has since been questioned. Art historian Stephen Pepper has proposed instead an attribution to Filippo Bellini, pointing to stylistic traits more closely aligned with Bellini’s devotional works produced in the late 16th century. Nevertheless, the painting remains a significant testimony to the spiritual intensity and artistic exchange surrounding Franciscan imagery at the end of the Renaissance.
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