Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cardinals and their Images
- Part I Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome
- Part II Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome
- Part III Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods
- Part IV Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal
- Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy
- Index
- Plate Section
8 - Portraits as Symbols: Cardinals’ Portraits in the Roman and Local Collections of Some Counter-Reformation Cardinals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cardinals and their Images
- Part I Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome
- Part II Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome
- Part III Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods
- Part IV Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal
- Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
Abstract
Unpublished post-mortem cardinals’ inventories report a myriad of low-value cardinals’ portraits hanging in cardinals’ palaces in the late sixteenth century. Why, and how, did prelates select or acquire cardinals’ portraits? Portraits will be studied as a material trace of devotional affinities of Counter-Reformation cardinals and their socio-political networks. Examination of the role of such portraits sometimes reveals surprising professional and spiritual paragons that cardinals held before them. The values of portraits reported in inventories also pose tantalizing questions regarding a cardinal's persona as a commodity. This essay also examines how such portraits were acquired, considering giftgiving practices of portraits among Vatican circles and the market for images of cardinals.
Keywords: cardinals; collecting; Counter-Reformation
This essay examines the extent to which cardinals owned portraits of other cardinals, and their reasons for investment or non-investment in this genre. Cardinals’ portraits have not been surveyed in the context of their collection and display within a cardinal's home, even if, in this situation, the objects acquired special significance from the relationship between the portrait's subject and its owner. Surrounding cardinals in their private world, these portraits had an emblematic value that could be dynamic, as cardinals laboured, conscious of the careers of colleagues and predecessors, to fulfil their expected princely role, to explore their faith, to get ahead in the Sacred College and advance their family, or to align themselves with theological debate and political division.
Inventories of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cardinals report 1-, 2-, or 3-sc. cardinals’ portraits hanging on the walls of their Roman palaces. This essay examines newly discovered probate inventories alongside those found and published by other scholars. These sources are problematic since, at times, they capture only vestiges of broader collections, divided across several family properties, which were often amassed by successive generations. Nor can lists of possessions alone determine whether portraits were commissioned, gifted, or inherited. Nonetheless, this data enables us to identify patterns regarding whose portraits were collected and how they were grouped, and to explore the motivations for this little-studied consumer behaviour.
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- Information
- Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal , pp. 201 - 230Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021