A squared study for Giovanni de’ Vecchi's fresco on the right wall of the Capranica chapel of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. To the right Fra Raimondo delle Vigne (Catherine’s confessor, who related this episode in his biography of the saint) searches an altar for a Eucharist that had vanished, while Catherine receives this Eucharist from Christ himself. In the distance, the sick gather around Catherine’s body on its bier in the chapel of St Dominic in the Minerva, where she was laid before her burial. At upper left Fra Giovanni Tantucci, a follower of Catherine, descends from a pulpit, having abandoned preaching a panegyric when he could not make himself heard above the crowd.

The fresco is one of a series of episodes from the life of St Catherine of Siena painted by the artist in the chapel. St Catherine had been buried in that chapel on her death in 1380 (her remains were transferred to the high altar of the church in 1855). Angelo Capranica allowed the Confraternità del Rosario use of the chapel in 1573, though the Capranica family retained their hereditary rights there, and thereafter the chapel was dedicated both to the Madonna del Santissimo Rosario and to St Catherine.

The decoration of the chapel was financed with funds raised during the Jubilee of 1575. The vault would have been worked on first, a rich stucco framework containing fifteen oil paintings of the Mysteries of the Rosary, all but one by Marcello Venusti. Giovanni de’ Vecchi seems to have begun the frescoes of scenes from the life of St Catherine on the side-walls in February 1578, with the young Sienese painter Francesco Vanni as his assistant. In July of that year de’ Vecchi signed a contract to paint scenes from the Legend of the True Cross in the Oratorio del Santissimo Crocifisso, and the first of those frescoes occupied de’ Vecchi until the spring of 1579, when he resumed (or commenced) work in the Minerva. The St Catherine cycle was largely complete by October of the same year. Although the drawing is closely squared for transfer and most of the details agree with the fresco, the proportions of the painting are considerably taller than those of the drawing. 

Popham had catalogued the drawing to Passignano (in P&W), partly on account of the pink wash (cf. 905979-81), but subsequently recognised de' Vecchi's authorship; Philip Pouncey connected the drawing as a study for the Minerva fresco (recorded in Blunt (Misc)).

See The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque, London 2007, no. 27.