This is a most impressive book on every level, the result of a highly fruitful collaboration between two scholars who have long devoted themselves to one of early modern Rome's most significant institutions, the Confraternity of the Gonfalone. Barbara Wisch, an art historian, is well known for her work on its oratory frescoes and devotional programme, while Nerida Newbiggin, an expert in Italian literature, has chronicled early Italian drama, including the passion play which the Gonfalone, uniquely among Roman confraternities, mounted at the Colosseum between 1490 and 1539. This was a sacra rapprasentatione performed with music and elaborate staging. The Gonfalone was probably Rome's oldest, and certainly one of its grandest, confraternities; it was responsible for a number of churches and its oratory, decorated by a series of artists between 1556 and 1576, is still in use as a small concert hall. It looked after some of the city's most revered early images of the Virgin and undertook numerous processions. A considerable archive survives from the late 1400s onwards, currently housed in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano. This has allowed the authors to trace its origins and development, and to place its numerous public celebrations in the context of lay piety in Rome during the decades before and after the Council of Trent. Its complex history is dealt with here in a most lucid and enlightening manner. As well as their own disciplines the authors cover the broader context, though there is little room for cross-references to other Roman confraternities, of which there were many. The comprehensive footnotes and bibliography give scholarly backing to, and the opportunity of following up, the work described here. This large-format book is lavishly illustrated with comprehensive reproductions of paintings, engravings, maps and modern street scenes which help readers to contextualise the confraternity's activities, as well as getting a real sense of the period. This is especially true of the oratory where fold-out illustrations show the complete fresco cycle. This study is a model of what can be done, and might in the future be carried out for other Roman confraternities – SS Crocifisso in S. Marcello for instance. The Venetian scuole grandi have long enjoyed a substantial reputation for their charitable work, support for art, architecture and music. Their Roman equivalents have not until now enjoyed such prominence due to a relative lack of studies of the calibre of this one. The authors and the publisher are to be congratulated on providing such an inspiring account to set the ball rolling.