ABSTRACT
In today's world, the people are well aware of the power of images, especially when it comes to personal branding or self-marketing. The Catholic Church, and in particular the papacy, provides perhaps one of the best examples in history of the mechanics of image-building and why it sometimes fails to work. In the decades before the Council of Trent, papal self-representation emphasizes the role of the individual pope and the papacy as an institution as champions for religion, who could count on heavenly support at all times—most poignantly in the fresco-series of Raphael's stanzas in the Vatican. The short-duration pontificates of Urban VII, Gregory XIV and Innocent IX—largely unresearched under the previously established parametersIX—complete the core investigation period, with Clement VIII forming the epilogue and the definite waning of Reform.
