The Stuarts had long been a source of curiosity for British visitors to Rome. The Scottish artist Allan spent several years living in the city and had ample opportunity to see the Cardinal Duke of York. Another visitor, the architect Robert Adam, wrote home to his mother describing how he had seen the cardinal in his coach coming from St Peter’s, where he said Mass every day in ‘a small chapel where you may both see and hear him’. Allan’s inscription on the drawing gives the location as St Peter’s, but it may be San Lorenzo in Damaso, the church within the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Henry’s official residence in Rome after 1763. In comparison with the generalised features of the other worshippers, Allan has recorded an accurate and sensitive profile of Cardinal York.