Signed lower right. Provenance: Private collection, Monza.

The painting is an autograph variant of the same subject that Pio Joris presented at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900 ("Le jeudi Saint a Rome", n.052, p.454, together with "Octave de la Fete-Dieu, a Rome ", n.053, p.454) and who was awarded on that occasion. The Parisian painting is today preserved at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome (inv. 704) and, although the composition is the same, some details distinguish it from ours: the position and cloak of the altar boy in the foreground, some of the faithful that populate the nave, the different intensity of the light that comes from outside the church. But what Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli stated in his vivid description of the painting during his visit to the Accademia di San Luca (1925) is valid for both works: "Every color is studied in relation to the light around it; every object crackles in the reverberation of the candles".