During the first half of the `long' eighteenth century the English were, as a nation, vehemently anti-Catholic, yet the art that was most admired, collected and talked about, was Catholic in origin and subject matter (pictures showing the intercession of saints or the figure of God, for example). Such art might have been rejected by English collectors, certainly idolatry was chief among the heresies ascribed to the Papists, but the belief in the supremacy of Italian art was long-standing and tenacious in pan-European culture. The thesis demonstrates that rather than rejecting it, elaborate strategies were developed which allowed the cultural and social value of ownership and knowledge of this canonical art to accrue, whilst managing its potentially troubling content. For example, the royal ownership of the Raphael Cartoons (c. 1514) was a matter of increasing national pride during this period, which is surprising at first sight, given their provenance and their celebration of the apostolic succession of the Papacy from SS Peter and Paul. These meanings were not expunged from the Cartoons by English commentators, instead means were found to transpose them into a Protestant register and to maintain Raphael's reputation as the great universal artist. Each chapter of the thesis offers a different mode of address to the central theme, exploring, for example, the encounters grand tourists had with canonical art in Catholic churches in Rome and the ways in which the Catholic meanings of pictures were managed in a collection. In another chapter I explore how art was used and discussed within the Church of England. It has become clear that the Catholic associations of art did present a historically-significant political challenge to English connoisseurs and that, for example, new histories and theories of art, modified from their continental models, were developed to facilitate its acceptance. In addition, by paying careful attention to the ways in which issues of class, nationhood and culture were managed in relation to this problem, insights into the complex nature of anti-Catholicism in England have been gained.