Federico Barocci and the Oratorians: Corporate Patronage and Style in the Counter-Reformation by Ian F. Verstegen (review)

Ian Verstegen has made important contributions to Barocci scholarship. The 2008 article with John Marciari on scale relationships between Barocci’s drawings and paintings is among the most frequently cited studies in the Barocci literature. The 2007 volume he edited on the della Rovere dukes provided insights into Barocci’s primary patrons, and his 2003 article enriched our knowledge of Barocci’s most important Roman altarpieces.⁶ Therefore, one turns to his new publication with high expectations. Although there is some new material in the present volume, Federico Barocci and the Oratorians is, by and large, disappointing.

The core of the book reprises the 2003 article. This is acknowledged in the book’s preface, although the extent of overlap, with some passages reprinted virtually unchanged, is not really made clear. Verstegen has added an introductory section that lays out the theoretical and methodological framework for evaluating style. Any but the most theoretically adept scholars will find the terminology and opaque conceptualizations less helpful than they are obscuring. The book, therefore, has limited usefulness for teaching, and would have benefited from attentive editing to serve a wider readership. Furthermore, since Verstegen’s interest is stylistic rather than iconographic, those looking for discussions that elucidate the theological issues in Barocci’s paintings should turn elsewhere.

There are several interesting contributions that Verstegen puts forth. As he himself acknowledges, the inclusion of a high-quality photograph of Barocci’s Ambrosiana Nativity (1597) helps buttress the argument from his 2003 article that the Milan painting rather than the Prado version is the primary and finer picture. He is correct on this point, although he does not adequately argue the case for attributing the Prado painting entirely to Barocci’s pupil, Vitali.

Verstegen expands his earlier discussion regarding Barocci’s possible involvement in the main altar at the Chiesa Nuova. He explores the possibility that Alessandro Vitali’s Nativity of the Virgin (1588–1603; now in S. Sempliciano, Milan) may represent Barocci’s ideas that were never executed. That picture, however, is composed entirely of rote adaptations of previous Barocci elements with little evidence of Barocci’s design, in spite of Verstegen’s identification of an autograph chalk sketch in Düsseldorf as an early study. That sheet, a type that Barocci used only one other time, represents a topic worthy of further investigation. Verstegen also publishes a new pastel head for the Circumcision, and although this reviewer is skeptical that it represents Filippo Neri as the author claims, it is a beautiful addition to the oeuvre.

In multiple small ways, however, the book seems hastily prepared and carelessly edited. Typos and errors abound—two examples make the point: On page 68, Barocci is identified as being from Rome rather than Urbino; on page 82 his Last Supper in the cathedral in Urbino is titled a Last Judgment.

Illustrations are confusingly labeled, and there is no consistency in the manner in which drawings are identified. The sheet from Düsseldorf (p. 105) is labeled with the inventory number, a standard, whereas on pages 74–75, the captions for sheets from Copenhagen, the Fondation Custodia in Paris, and Stockholm include not a single inventory number among them. Their identifying information has been jumbled and would confuse a reader who has not dealt with this material before and would be unable to trace the source of the drawings.

All of this makes it seem as if the volume was never carefully edited and certainly not proofread, lessening its value as a contribution to Barocci studies. It is also unfortunate that the press has adopted a style where footnotes do not always include page numbers.