These essays, many of which are individually interesting, were first aired at a conference at Rome in 2007. The proceedings are divided into three sections, the first of which – ‘Changing contexts’ – is the weakest. Brenda Schildgen summarises Gabriele Paleotti's Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (1582), a treatise which the editors recognise as ‘fundamental’ but which the other authors pass over in near silence. Karen Buttler writes on Rubens's rejected high altarpiece for Santa Maria in Vallicella, which the artist reworked in the false hope of its being sold to the duke of Mantua. ‘Why did Vincenzo decline to purchase the painting?’, asks Buttler, a crucial but apparently unanswered question. The response – ‘requires further research’ – would be acceptable at a colloquium but is deficient here; for research to precede publication should surely be mandatory. And this problem recurs elsewhere: Dóra Sallay presents only a preliminary sketch of her subject, which she aims to enflesh later. Contributions by Valeska von Rosen and Todd Olson on Caravaggio and his circle are in every sense en suite: overly theoretical, weak on visual observations, excrescent here, truistic there; and Olson especially forces the reader to wade through a mire of inscrutable jargon. A fine paper by Frances Gage on collezionismo in Seicento Rome closes the first section, but this hardly rescues it from excoriation. Part ii, ‘Instruments of faith and passion’, is better focused, the contributions are more compelling, and its overarching argument has greater coherence. Maria Giulia Aurigemma tackles Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg's holy tower at Dillingen, which housed his impressive collection of art and relics. The structure, little heeded today, was lost to fire in 1595 but none the less provided ‘an experimental model for new reliquary architectures’ of the seventeenth century. The best essay in the volume, by Ralph-Miklas Dobler, reconstructs the hang of Palazzo Antamoro in Rome: his is a polished piece that shrewdly discriminates among paintings that were displayed to hubristic and devotional ends. Also commendable is a chapter by Cinzia Sicca on John Talman's museum cartaceum, while Nina Riedler's essay on Decadent literature is enjoyable, if slightly frivolous. My earlier cavil aside, Sallay provides some genuinely interesting remarks on the formation of collections in Italy and Hungary during the nineteenth century. In the final part, ‘Aesthetic devotion’, Raphael assumes the lead. In a detailed account Andreas Henning traces the migration from Piacenza to Dresden of the Sistine Madonna; a number of the issues that he raises are subsequently enlarged upon by Tristan Weddigen, who asks ‘how “Italian” was the Dresden picture gallery?’ His conclusion, that the Gemäldegalerie ‘resembles a panopticon of Catholic iconography’, emerges from a careful study of transalpine cultural and religious transmission. Angela Windholz offers some pertinent aperçus on ‘the sacralized adoration of Raphael’ at the Prussian court in the nineteenth century, though not all of her material seems entirely apposite. Finally, Inge Reist considers the recontextualisation of ‘sacred art in the profane New World’. As the editors note, it should not surprise that the most sought-after ‘quarry’ among American Gilded Age collectors was a Madonna by Raphael – the Colonna Altarpiece, now in New York.