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Abstract: With completion of the De Carolis’ family's palazzo overlooking via del Corso, Rome gained a particularly fine example of early seventeenth century Roman art. The building was designed by the architect Alessandro Specchi and its painted ceilings can be described as a «pictorial anthology» of that period. Recent research work has contextualized the building's design within a very specific cultural and historical setting, giving a more complete picture of what the family who commissioned it wanted to achieve through its construction. Although the De Carolis palazzo was initially - and hastily - judged as an ostentatious display of the family's wealth, it was later looked upon as a building that expressed the family’s social rank, culture and ambitions, in addition to providing the proper backdrop for its social and «courtly» functions. In light of this, we can interpret not only the building’s architecture, but also the iconography of its paintings on the first floor as a means of celebrating the family’s newly acquired social status through the exercise of virtue.