Last Communion originally hung in San Girolamo opposite the 1592 The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist by Agostino's cousin Ludovico, now also in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.

A drawing of the same subject by Ludovico (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) has very similar figures of the saint and the priest administering the sacrament, perhaps meaning Ludovico assisted Agostino in producing Last Communion[1] The work is praised in a lengthy passage of Giovanni Pietro Bellori's Lives of the Artists (1672), calling it Agostino's masterpiece.

Spinola received that post in 1597 meaning that - if Malvasia's story is believed - the work was only completed very shortly after that date, after which Agostino is recorded as following his brother Annibale to Rome.

In 1614 Domenichino finished a painting on the same subject for the church of San Girolamo alla Carità in Rome, with several similarities to Agostino's treatment.

[4] The episode did little damage to Domenichino and Bellori "acquitted" him of plagiarism and called his version of the subject a "praiseworthy imitation" of Agostino's treatment.