Rome, 10 December 1696, a symbolic funeral: decorations placed in the Polish church of St Stanislaus to commemorate the death of John III Sobieski

Abstract

The Church of St Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr in Rome is the national church of Poland, where the funeral ceremonies of Polish rulers were celebrated. After the death of King John III Sobieski, ceremonial symbolic obsequies were held. Carlo Barberini, as cardinal protector of Poland, organized public and expensive ceremonies to properly honour the king’s death. The course of the funeral service and the funeral decoration are known in detail through three contemporary printed reports and an engraving describing every aspect of the ceremony and the decoration of the church in honour of the Polish king. The church was decorated with six painted medallions celebrating important events in the life of King John III Sobieski. The surviving four of the six medallions are now kept at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. In 2018, researcher Giovan Battista Fidanza found documents in the Barberini family archives regarding the cost of the ceremony. According to sources, the artist who made the six funerary oval paintings was Giacomo Wernele, which indicates an Italianization of the name Philip Jakob Wörndle. Currently, the state of preservation of the oval funerary canvases is poor. It is imperative to preserve the paintings in order to save them from destruction and make them available for museum display.