Sebastiano Ricci

Sebastiano Ricci was born on 1 August 1659 in Belluno, then part of the Republic of Venice. Around 1671 he was apprenticed in Venice, most sources say to the painter Federico Cervelli, though some scholars instead identify Sebastiano Mazzoni as his first master. No formal academy education is documented for him, only workshop training typical of the period.

In 1681 Ricci moved to Bologna, where he worked and developed his style for roughly fifteen years, absorbing the influence of Correggio, Pietro da Cortona, Paolo Veronese, and Alessandro Magnasco. From this base he traveled and worked across Italy, taking commissions in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Turin. His international reputation grew further with commissions abroad, including a period working in England around 1711 to 1712, as well as work associated with Paris and Vienna. The National Gallery in London describes him as a leading decorative painter of his period, and other sources record his admission to the Academie de France in Paris following his return from England, though the exact year of that admission is not confirmed in available research.

Ricci's early career was also marked by a serious personal and legal crisis. Sources including the Royal Academy of Arts and Art UK record that he was imprisoned after allegedly attempting to poison a woman he had made pregnant, and was released through the intervention of a noble supporter; Art UK describes the episode as one that almost resulted in his execution. The exact date of this episode is not confirmed in available sources, though it is described as occurring earlier in his career, before his more settled later years in Venice.

Ricci returned to Venice for his later career, producing large altarpieces and decorative cycles until his death there on 15 May 1734.

Institutional assessment of Ricci is consistent: he is treated as a central link between the grandeur of the Baroque and the lighter, more decorative style that Venetian painting took in the eighteenth century. The National Gallery in London describes him as a leading decorative painter of his period, and multiple standard art-historical sources situate him as a bridge between the Baroque and the lighter Rococo style that followed in Venetian painting, reflecting his standing among contemporaries through international commissions and his admission to the Academie de France in Paris. The research available for this profile did not surface a dependable, dated list of major monographic exhibitions, so that history is left open here rather than asserted.

Ricci's market is that of a historically significant but thinly traded Old Master. Market trackers such as MutualArt report an auction high of approximately USD 2,448,000 for a Ricci painting, though available sources do not confirm the work's title, the auction house, or the exact sale date. No later sale in the available research is reported to exceed that figure.

Separate from the painting record, MutualArt reports a work-on-paper high of approximately USD 137,646, again without a confirmed title, auction house, or sale date in available sources; this is a distinct category record, not a new all-time high for the artist overall. Market activity continues at more modest levels as well: in 2026, Sotheby's London offered The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with an estimate of GBP 80,000 to 120,000, illustrating the more typical price range for his secondary works.

Ricci has no gallery or estate representation in the modern sense. His paintings and drawings move through major auction houses, including Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Ricci, so attribution rests on connoisseurship, provenance research, and comparison with the many documented works held in institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. His auction record is thin relative to the size of his body of work, and results vary meaningfully by category: the headline painting record of approximately USD 2,448,000 (exact date and venue unconfirmed) stands well above the more typical range seen in recent drawing and secondary-market sales. Because so much of his best material already sits in museum collections, museum-quality paintings appear on the market infrequently, and collectors should weigh any single result against that scarcity rather than against a smooth price trend.