This volume makes a valuable contribution to the study of Federico Barocci's patronage by exploring his popularity with the Oratorians in Rome, and with the “Oratorian orbit” elsewhere, and how he helped “the fathers understand just what their aesthetic was” (2). In his introduction, Verstegen validates the concept of a collective Oratorian style, and points to his support of this by “analyzing how a style or aesthetic can emerge from the actors and the values and social organism they share” (6).

Verstegen begins by showing affinities between Barocci's style and the focus of the Oratorians’ visual rhetoric on “direct, uncognized grace” (15) in his first chapter. He applies the concept of “Christian optimism” to the “intensely personal and ecstatic approach to prayer” (23) of Filippo Neri, the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory. The occurrence of visions in Neri's devotions finds parallels in the development of visionary iconography in Barocci's paintings, suggesting why Barocci's eventual altarpieces for the Chiesa Nuova, in Rome, were considered so effective by Neri and other Oratorians.

In the second and third chapters, Verstegen discusses the two altarpieces Barocci executed for the Chiesa Nuova, the Visitation and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. The two paintings belong to a unified program of Marian imagery, centered on the mysteries of the Virgin. Verstegen describes the Visitation as being itself a vision, rather than a depiction of a vision, which may account for its selection by Neri as the focus of his often-rapturous devotions. During the years spent executing the Presentation, Barocci was approached by the fabbrica of the Duomo of Milan to supply three altarpieces, which possibly had been initiated by the Neri follower Cardinal Federico Borromeo, for whom Barocci painted a Nativity of Christ in these same years (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan). Here we observe how Barocci's connections to the Roman Oratorians spread outward to other patrons through a network of affiliations.

To complete his examination of Barocci's association with the Chiesa Nuova, Verstegen devotes the great majority of chapter 4 to a project that the painter coveted, but that came to naught for him: the high altarpiece. Verstegen deftly interweaves archival sources to reconstruct the story of how the opportunity to execute the church's most prestigious altarpiece was lost due to a lack of funds, not to insufficient interest on the part of the Oratorian fathers. The subject of the painting was to be the Nativity of the Virgin, and Barocci offered in the spring of 1603 to finish an abandoned project for the subject that he had begun for the king of Spain. Plans stalled, and by the spring of 1604 talk of changing the iconography of the painting and the accommodation of the supposedly miracle-working medieval Madonna della Vallicella ended Barocci's hopes. The commission ultimately went to Peter Paul Rubens.

Verstegen's consideration of what might have been extends to a carefully constructed argument for a largely neglected Nativity of the Virgin in the church of San Simpliciano, Milan, as the partial embodiment of Barocci's conception for the altarpiece. An assistant—probably Alessandro Vitali—executed the finished work, but the painting makes a fascinating case study in Barocci's working process, especially with respect to delegation of responsibility. Given the paucity of scholarship on the Nativity, a note on Verstegen's argument is called for here. The author believes, quite reasonably, that Barocci's abandoned project had reached the stage of an advanced compositional drawing. We do not know such a drawing to exist, so he adduces a developed life study of a child's arm as evidence of the advanced stages of Barocci's preparation for the figure of Mary (106–07); this sheet, however, contains drawings for the angel at the upper right of the Madonna del Popolo (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence).

The author concludes with a discussion of a “recurring Baroccismo in Oratorian patronage” (121) following Barocci's death. This chapter helps contextualize the work of a number of Barocci-inspired painters working in Rome during the Seicento, among them Guido Reni. Verstegen's characterization of the Oratorian aesthetic not only illuminates Barocci's career but also allows us to understand better the painter's posthumous influence, about which more research needs to be done.