Removal of the dead during a plague

In 1697 Viani was commissioned by the Servite Friars of Imola to paint a large canvas with some fifty figures that would show the Virgin and Saints protecting the city from a plague. As related by Giovanni Nicolò Villa (1794), the painting was first damaged and then irreparably lost by 1897. Both the subject of this drawing and the inscription on its verso confirm that this is the preparatory drawing for the lower section of that painting. Delicately drawn in black chalk, it is a rare graphic record for Viani, a pupil of Carlo Cignani, first trained by his father, Giovanni Maria Viani.