Friday, February 13
Cardinal Consalvi's Laying-in-State, 1824
From John Martin Robinson's Cardinal Consalvi, p. 185:
"The population of Rome poured out for the last sad ceremonies and the traditional homage. Consalvi lay in state for a week in the Caracci Gallery of the Palazzo Farnese, the most beautiful room in the world. Arrayed in his scarlet cardinal's robes, of which he had been deprived by Napoleon, his many-tasselled hat, the first to have been bestowed by Pius VII, at his feet, he lay on a catafaque surrounded by sixty-six candles, one for each year of his mortal life. His body was embalmed in accordance with the rites of the Sacred College; his face covered by a wax max modelled by Thorwaldsen, the greatest living sculptor in Europe, who could scarcely do his work for the tears. 'The crowd pressed by to contemplate and to pray beside the spectical of the Christian apothesosis of this great man of the world.' "
"The population of Rome poured out for the last sad ceremonies and the traditional homage. Consalvi lay in state for a week in the Caracci Gallery of the Palazzo Farnese, the most beautiful room in the world. Arrayed in his scarlet cardinal's robes, of which he had been deprived by Napoleon, his many-tasselled hat, the first to have been bestowed by Pius VII, at his feet, he lay on a catafaque surrounded by sixty-six candles, one for each year of his mortal life. His body was embalmed in accordance with the rites of the Sacred College; his face covered by a wax max modelled by Thorwaldsen, the greatest living sculptor in Europe, who could scarcely do his work for the tears. 'The crowd pressed by to contemplate and to pray beside the spectical of the Christian apothesosis of this great man of the world.' "
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
