In De cardinalatu (1510), Paolo Cortesi repeatedly exhorted cardinals to avoid the stain of avarice by means of conspicuous magnificence (magnificentia). Yet these princes of the Church, for the most part obscenely wealthy, also purported to be humble disciples of Christ. The extent to which individual cardinals reconciled that dialectic, and the bearing that this had on their lifestyles, possessions and patronage, is the subject of this new collection of essays. David Chambers, who offers some introductory thoughts on this ‘splendid paradox’, provides a pithy summary of Cortesi's treatise and outlines the current state of research. There follow sixteen case studies, each of which focuses on an individual member of the cardinalate from the long sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But these papers, originally read at a conference and therefore heterogeneous, have suffered during the transition from lectern to print. Loose editorial control and minimal diegesis result in a string of discrete, disconnected contributions; several – it would be pusillanimous not to mention it – are dull and repetitious. Others, however, are commendable and help to rescue the volume from incohesion. From Diana Norman's concise but informative essay Cardinal Oliviero Carafa emerges as a munificent patron both in the metropolis and in his native Naples. If the decoration by Filippino Lippi of the Cappella Carafa is Oliviero's best-known Roman commission, Norman reminds the reader that the Cappella del Succorpo in Naples outreaches it in substance and grandeur – ‘a fact that is not sufficiently recognized in current literature’. Sheryl Reiss offers a well-researched account of the acute rivalry among those artists – Raphael, Michelangelo, Sebastiano – who sought to ingratiate themselves with Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. Her material has been rehashed from published sources, but Reiss's angle is novel and emphasises ‘the inseparability of cardinalatial and familial identities in Renaissance Rome’. The complex issue of cardinals’ domestic arrangements arises in several chapters. Especially revealing is the case of Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, a palatine cardinal who ex officio occupied apartments in the Vatican; Angelica Pediconi's essay tackles the inherent problem in discriminating between personal and papal expenditure. At the opposite extreme Carlo Borromeo, ascetic and unassuming, espoused what Pamela Jones calls a ‘court of humility’; one senses that Paolo Cortesi would not have approved. Musical patronage is touched on by Karin Wolfe but overlooked by the other contributors – a missed opportunity given the significant role of cardinals in promoting Renaissance and Baroque music. Attention to cardinals’ vestments also demands further consideration: Mary Hollingsworth's essay on the wardrobe of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este – hardly limited, of course, to his clothing – amounts to little more than a list and wants analysis. But perhaps these desiderata exceed the range of a book that, all things considered, provides intriguing glimpses both of current and future work. Apparently one topic yet to be studied in detail is the cardinalate's menagerie of exotic pets. From a list that includes peacocks, meerkats and Syrian goats should not be omitted Cardinal Ascanio Sforza's parrot, whose party piece it was to recite the Credo.