Suor Maria de Dominici (6 December 1645 – 18 March 1703) was a Maltese painter, sculptor, and a Carmelite tertiary nun.
[4] During her teens, de Dominici studied under the painter and sculptor Mattia Preti, who was painting and sculpting the interior of St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta at the time.
She is believed to have contributed,[5] and is specifically recorded as assisting Preti on his best known work, a series of paintings depicting the life and martyrdom of St John the Baptist (1661–1666), which decorates the vaults of the co-Cathedral.
[4] Giovannantonio Ciantar's Malta Illustrata (1772) paints a picture of a person who knew what she wanted to do with her life from a young age: "[Maria showed a] repugnance to apply her energies to female duties and was thus often rebuked by her parents ... She would do nothing other than draw figures and other things according to her whim and natural talents.
[3] While in Malta, Maria de Dominici made a number of portable cult figures which were used during local religious festivities and street processions.