Scipione Pulzone da Gaeta was hailed by his contemporaries as the undisputed leading portraitist in Rome. In his Riposo of 1584, Raffaello Borghini wrote that Scipione was ‘excellent at making portraits from life, so much so they that they appear alive’. Giovanni Baglione also noted that Scipione was particularly gifted in painting portraits, which he described as ‘so lifelike and [painted] with such diligence, that all the hairs could be counted, and especially the draperies […] seemed truer than their originals’. Similarly, Giulio Mancini in his Considerazioni sullapittura (1617–1621) claimed that Scipione's portraits were so perfect that he did not leave out even the smallest aspect of nature. For the discerning Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, one of the artist's sitters, Scipione surpassed all other living portraitists. According to these and other critics, Scipione painted many illustrious sitters in Rome, including members of the nobility, popes, secular rulers, and ‘all of the Cardinal Princes of the Roman Court’. Among these many portraits, a great number represent cardinals, and these exist in multiple versions. Borghini notes that Scipione's portraits are too numerous to list, but he does single out those of cardinals Farnese, Granvelle, and Medici. Scipione's reputation extended beyond the borders of Rome to the courts of Naples and Florence, where he was invited to work, but also to Venice, Sicily, and Spain, where he sent his paintings.