One of the masterpieces of Florentine neo-classicism, a subtle allegory of marital despair, it depicts a grief-stricken personification of Poetry seated by a column with the urn of the deceased.

Skotnicki studied painting in Dresden with Josef Grassi, settled in Naples around 1802, then in Florence, where he treated himself. The painting oeuvre of the Polish aristocrat is almost unknown, he considered himself an art lover rather than a professional painter. A well-known portrait of him by François-Xavier Fabre was painted in Florence in 1806. The painter died prematurely of tuberculosis in Florence on 25 April 1808, aged 33.

The tombstone was funded by his widow, Elisabeth of Laskiewicz, as stated in the dedicatory inscription on the pedestal. Through a Florentine family friend, Tommaso Puccini, she approached the renowned Tuscan sculptor, Stefano Ricci, with the commission, on her return to Kraków. Skotnicki's tombstone opened his subsequently illustrious career, although it was already made by a sculptor of mature age. A few years later, Ricci's fame was cemented by the realisation of a statue of Dante in the same church. According to a legend told in the 19th century, Skotnicki's tombstone was said to have been so popular with Antonio Canova that he secretly placed his signature on its pedestal. Skotnicki's monument was originally intended for the church of San Domenico in Fiesole, where the corpse of the young nobleman was originally deposited. The site in the great Florentine church, granted thanks to the intercession of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts (to which Skotnicki was admitted shortly before his death), was to be chosen by the sculptor himself. Skotnicki's tombstone became the first to commemorate a foreigner in the basilica. It was one of the most admired in the 19th century. Visiting Florence in 1816, Stanisław Dunin Borkowski praised the 'excellent execution of this statue', recalling an anecdote about Canova.

A marble replica of the sarcophagus, made in Ricci's workshop, was set up in Wawel Cathedral in the Skotnicki chapel, also thanks to the widow's efforts, so that - as the historian Józef Kremer commented on the idea in 1861 - "the soul of the pantheon is transferred to the Skotnicki family. - to transfer 'the soul from the pantheon of Florence to our own pantheon, on the banks of this Vistula river of ours'.