The Possessions of a Cardinal

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Preface and Acknowledgments

The essays in this volume derive from a conference held in London in December 2004 to provide a forum for the discussion of individual cardinals, their lifestyles, their possessions, and their patronage of the arts. The conference was part of a research project, “The Court Culture of Early Modern Rome,” funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Michael Bury of the University of Edinburgh. We would like to thank The Open University, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British School at Rome, and the Society for Court Studies for their generous sponsorship of the event. We would also like to thank The Open University, which supported the publication of this book with a generous grant, and the Scouloudi Foundation and the British Academy, which provided picture reproduction costs.

Above all, we are enormously grateful to David Chambers for his support of the conference and for closing the event with an insightful and gracious summary, the spirit of which is captured in his contribution here. His essay sets out the history of scholarship of the subject but also gives some idea of the challenges he faced as a postgraduate student, poised at the start of the important career that has touched so many of us.

We would also like to thank all those involved in the lively debates inspired by many of the papers, and those who contributed to the writing up of these essays, in particular, Jill Burke, Michael Bury, Flora Dennis, Philippa Jackson, Helen Langdon, Susan May, John Law, Clare Robertson, Susan Russell, and Evelyn Welch. None of the papers would have been possible without the patience and expertise of so many librarians and archivists. Many of us have benefited hugely from the supportive and scholarly atmosphere of the British School at Rome. Daphne Joynes and Ekaterina Morozova were an enormous help with the formatting and editing of the manuscript.

The study of cardinals is relatively new. It is burgeoning as scholars grasp the unique challenges and fascinating insights offered by these unique individuals in unique positions. However, because the literature on cardinals tends to be based on case studies, it can be difficult to place individuals in a meaningful context, a problem that is characteristic of our present approach, and one that we hope this volume can challenge simply by bringing so many individuals together in one place. We hope this book will answer some of the often paradoxical questions surrounding the politics, piety, and art patronage of cardinals in the Renaissance and baroque periods, and provide a useful resource for those wishing to embark on the study of one of the many as yet unknown cardinals.

Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson

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