Study for the "Essequie" Conducted in San Lorenzo, Florence, in 1637 in Honour of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II

Cleveland Museum of Art

Study for the "Essequie" Conducted in San Lorenzo, Florence, in 1637 in Honour of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II

Alfonso ParigiLinkedCulture matchlcp-32dda4f42e9f

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

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.

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record

Medium
pen and brown ink and brown wash with graphite and accents of pink, purple-grey and deep blue-black wash
Credit Line
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
Type of artwork
Drawing
Department
Drawings

Also in Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. The museum’s own label for these fields has not been confirmed yet, so each is named by its field in the museum’s data.

creation_date
1637

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

In 1637, the Medici transformed a Florentine church into a world of skulls, skeletons, and black draperies to honor a dead emperor. This pen and wash drawing by Alfonso Parigi, the official Medici court architect, maps out every detail of that spectacle, with skeletal figures slumping alongside cherubs, candelabras, and a bare dead tree. It matters because it shows how completely funerary ritual and theatrical performance had merged at the Medici court, turning grief itself into a grand, grotesque production.

Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.

What the image shows

A detailed architectural drawing featuring ornate facades, columns, and sculptural elements.

Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.

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The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.JOqtoTGwHg7rFzhj.jeC9I9OrX1w9NhrY6xORFK-S5TwWHx5ZDLoTl5x2804hw8bIjR_C-YTyVwsb65eTv8rd_3Ru_Z06ZER75ADelMARydKmvTVSoCIoknTIJKiSGeFLdT4Rc2Tt-_BtFbqxnH2xQ4JOftIpqvT5Rym4StD-IJ8c6jPWsx4yKpXwdZ8Xr8p5NscRRJ-mwkd-HcYqHEG0q6dcOiTRxUp506UTSnyQlgT1KN-6iuP828ZXITeHsD-8uE_YIwDZwWprQMpBM3TQftQatkWEMBupeUYpBigjtMlTjCvyovBdjfRY6JfYXHHZCQSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.9FIMYFIiJnH_eKGk.uu6B0YjQDwdMlfCM7gh24iY0vby2aOHm8j8QgygQsBXR8R8YhCWGVyGnSWwW1pWZxAaFWwt_nIn2h1N-EReUhn0bhTgMMQZCidcyyHt1gDI4v4xJ8FK7FZaQ8rMICHSZds7OtA6YI34SjjoLYKpIlaux0jkYEy5G0KPaApODScuWs3ZIlvYAgJCYZ8cdqiM7fYP9MzkFO5Si3UCNTW6WNIRV4jC2CUtmKyIInIJrvs8FrLUexk3Nabo3jXfIo6PnbHkDSkkKQSqdgPiQFgVQJx02Z2ZPDyQ11kOThB5HBw
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Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Provenance
Sotheby's, London early 1990s; Rick Scorza
How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Cleveland Museum of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
169319
Object Type
Drawing
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Type of artwork” · copied as is
Creator
Alfonso Parigi
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creators (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Artist-role creator's description with life dates removed.
Culture
Italy, Florence
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
pen and brown ink and brown wash with graphite and accents of pink, purple-grey and deep blue-black wash
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Drawings
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Tags
  • male
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field artists_tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
Credit Line
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
Sotheby's, London early 1990s; Rick Scorza
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
1637
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1637
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1637
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_latest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

Study for the "Essequie" Conducted in San Lorenzo, Florence, in 1637 in Honour of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II

Aug 10, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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