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Study for the "Essequie" Conducted in San Lorenzo, Florence, in 1637 in Honour of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II
About the Artwork
Alfonso Parigi was the official court architect for the Medici, taking over after the death of his father, the great engineer, architect, and designer Giulio Parigi. Testifying to the Medici's interest in cultivating a culture of the macabre, this sheet is an elaborate study for the essequie (funerary rites) for the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. Skulls and skeletons commingle with angels and garlands, and black draperies would have been hung to transform the church into a strange, macabre world. The Medici also commissioned artists and designers to create apparati, theatrical stage settings that were similarly elaborate, hell-like scenes. Designed only three years before the young Rosa would come to the court, this haunting sheet displays the grotesque artistic fantasia that was in vogue in Florence when Salvatore Rosa arrived.
Exhibition history
The Novel and the Bizarre: Salvator Rosa’s Scenes of Witchcraft. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 15-June 14, 2015).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Alfonso Parigi (Italian, 1606–1656)
- Date
- 1637
- Medium
- pen and brown ink and brown wash with graphite and accents of pink, purple-grey and deep blue-black wash
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 48.5 x 65.8 cm (19 1/8 x 25 7/8 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
- Accession no.
- 2011.192
Provenance
Sotheby's, London early 1990s; Rick Scorza
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00011496
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