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.