Two anecdotes recounted by Carlo Cesare Malvasia in his biography of Guercino play a fundamental role in the argument Unger makes in this book that Guercino was a political painter. On two occasions Guercino declined the invitations of foreign sovereigns to enter their employ. When King Charles I invited the painter to become his court artist in 1624, Guercino turned the offer down on the grounds that he did not wish to work for a heretic. Some fifteen years later Louis XIII sought out the artist for a similar post. Guercino declined again, citing his earlier refusal. Unger argues that even if these two anecdotes are not true (and Unger does not accept Malvasia's alleged reason for Guercino's second refusal), the biographer's characterization of Guercino amounts to a recognition of the painter's “political commitments” (6).

Following a biographical sketch of the painter, two sections, each consisting of four chapters, form the core of this book. Each section is preceded by a very brief prefatory description of the first and second phases of the Thirty Years’ War, which gave rise to distinct political attitudes in Catholic Europe. These, the author believes, motivate the political messages in the specific paintings under examination. Unger is not the first scholar to investigate the political dimensions of Guercino's art, though he does so here on an unprecedented scale, considering paintings as varied as St. Jerome Sealing a Letter, Return of the Prodigal Son, The Burial and Reception into Heaven of St. Petronilla, St. Gregory the Great with Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, and The Death of Dido. With several notable exceptions, scholarship on Guercino has been principally concerned with the question of stylistic development. Most recently, Shilpa Prasad has set Guercino's naturalistic manner in the context of the flourishing theatrical and musical culture of Northern Italy.

To examine Guercino as a painter not merely of images embodying a patrons’ political agenda, but also one who articulates his own political and religious allegiances, strikes a decidedly new note. It also requires some justification, which Unger provides in his Introduction. Citing the work of John Beldon Scott, Stephen Ostrow, Evonne Levy, and Anthony Colantuono, Unger argues for the fundamentally political nature of seventeenth-century Catholic art. Unger states that “every religious work of art produced in the first half of the seventeenth century and designated for the public domain was likely to have been motivated not only by a desire to infuse the illiterate with fundamental religious truths but also by a political incentive derived from practical needs” (3). This position will be regarded as controversial, however, and, given the present state of research on seventeenth-century Italian art, is unlikely to meet with universal acceptance. Some of the broader theoretical issues this approach raises are discussed particularly well by Levy and Colantuono and it is helpful to refer to their treatments in relation to the present book.

Unger rightly acknowledges that “it is not easy to define what constitutes a political painting” (3). This is all the more so when the political dimension of an image may lie beneath the religious, since the period did not produce, Unger writes, “overtly political works of art” (5). It is difficult, in other words, to access the political messages in seventeenth-century Catholic art, and, when there is a tendency in the field, as Levy has demonstrated, to “neutralize” Catholic images, considerably more burden of proof is placed upon the author. Unger's approach is to interpret specific paintings in relation to the identity of a specific patron, who reflects a particular religious institution's agenda, which Unger too often reduces to a call for a crusade. Where the historical record is silent, however, as it is on the patron and destination of St. Gregory the Great with Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier and St. Jerome Sealing a Letter, the results can only be speculative. The book would thus have benefitted from integrating a discussion of specific paintings within a fuller consideration of the political culture of the period and an examination of contemporary political discourse. Unger's book raises important questions and, it is hoped, will spur further research on Guercino and on the broader methodological questions of interpreting seventeenth-century Italian art.