Portrait of Cardinal Marcello Cervini degli Spannocchi

In December 1539 Pope Paul III gave Marcello Cervini his red hat, so this portrait of him in cardinal's scarlet was painted no earlier than that, most likely around 1540. He owed his rise to the pope's family, the Farnese. He was the trusted adviser of the pope's young grandson, Alessandro Farnese, and travelled with him on missions to Spain, France and the Netherlands. The panel is attributed to Jacopino del Conte, a Florentine portrait painter working in Rome, who sets his sitter at a table covered with a patterned carpet, both hands resting on an open book. Within a few years Cervini was one of the three presidents of the Council of Trent, the Church assembly that opened in 1545 to respond to the Protestant Reformation. In 1550 he was formally named head of the Vatican Library.