This richly chromatic composition, a late work by the Venetian painter and draftsman Sebastiano Ricci, illustrates with scenographic grandeur the New Test.mes nt scene of Christ healing a paralytic man. Wearing luminous pink and blue robes, Christ anchors the narrative against a Palladian architecturalscape. A crowd of onlookers wearing shades of carmine, marigold, peach, and vermillion populate the foreground and offset the subdued hues of the background structures. Ricci's lively handling and brilliant palette evoke the spirit of Veronese and convey an exuberance characteristic of Venetian art of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Ricci depicted this subject on at least one other occasion. A large scale version formerly in King George III's collects ion is now at Osterley Park, London, a modello for which is at Knightshayes Court, Devon.¹ Compared with the square Osterley and Devon canvases, the present work's extended horizontal format accommodates a greater narrative sweep with elaborate architectural details and refined pictorial elements. Two eighteenth-century copies, attributed to Francesco Fontebasso (1707-1769) and Nicola Grassi (1682-1748), attest to the work's early popularity among both artists and collects ors alike.²

¹ Osterley Park, inv. no. NT 771215, oil on canvas, 330.2 by 289.6 cm., this painting was badly damaged during World War II; Knightshayes Court, inv. no. NT 541105, oil on canvas, 50.8 by 48.3 cm.

² See M. Magrini, Francesco Fontebasso (1707-1769), Vicenza 1988, p. 228, cat. no. 4A.