ABSTRACT
There are two main historical contexts to consider: that of sixteenth-century Rome and that of the Council of Trent. These environments, although sometimes interlinked, will first be looked at separately, because they each have very specific requirements when it comes to pictorial propaganda. In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that a Christian sovereign is both a religious and a political ruler whose supremacy is undoubted, provided the rules of the social contract are respected. Because of its role as caput mundi, capital of the world, and of Christianity, Rome was seen as a model city and the place to be for sixteenth-century artists. In the years leading up to a Jubilee and for the entire duration of a Holy Year, artistic commissions increased significantly. During the Renaissance, papal patronage and the patronage by cardinal nephews were the most important artistic commissions in Rome. The Tridentine Reform decree on religious imagery and image veneration touched on a particularly sensitive subject.
