Cardinals’ tomb monuments in Rome form the most ubiquitous group of their portraits. From the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century these architectural memorials customarily include an effigy – a full-scale sculpted representation of the cardinal whose tomb it is – lying in state in full choir dress on his bier, just as his body might have been displayed during the long series of funeral liturgies and orations that marked his transition to the next life. Or, at least, that is what we assume these portraits to be. This essay will explore what cardinals’ tomb effigies represent and ask to what extent they can be considered portraits at all. The unique group of portraits included in memorial art raises important questions about the definition of portraiture in the early modern period, in particular in relation to realism or ‘lifelikeness’, and points more to the significance of cardinals as a political and social group than to their individual appearance.

Effigie

Cardinals – and indeed popes – were subject to conventions and strict controls that dictated every detail of their deaths, from the preparation of the last will and testament to the completion of any permanent monument. An important premise of this group of sculpted ‘portraits’ is the interchangeability of the conventions for the preparation for death and burial of popes and cardinals. Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, for example, points specifically to the fact that the unique ceremonials and funerary customs concerning the death and burial of cardinals were a relatively late development, dating to the end of the Avignon papacy. By the early sixteenth century, specific aspects such as the novena, or nine days of masses, were reserved only for popes and cardinals, setting them apart from all other levels of society, secular or ecclesiastic.