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The display of paintings in seventeenth-century Roman palaces was integral to the social virtue of splendor intended to convey the owner's social, political, and, in the case of cardinals, ecclesiastical importance. Recent research has shed additional light on the careful consideration given to the rooms in which paintings were to be hung and viewed based on the rank and status of guests who were admitted into those spaces. This necessitates a reevaluation of the presence of music paintings, which, too often, have been dismissed as a minor genre of merely descriptive representations of contemporary music practices. This paper investigates the implications of the display of music paintings by Caravaggio and Antiveduto Grammatica in the palace of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. Parallel examinations of music paintings in the palaces of Vincenzo Giustiniani and cardinals Francesco and Antonio Barberini reveal similar patterns of display. This paper contends that while paintings of musical subjects are relatively few, surprisingly, they were hung in prominent locations in the private residences of Rome's most powerful and influential cardinals. These paintings were instrumental in helping Cardinal del Monte achieve splendor and fashion himself as a leading arbiter of taste in both painting and music in Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]