arts Article Marketing and Self-Promotion in Early Modern Painting: The Case of Guercino Daniel M. Unger The Department of the Arts, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel;
[email protected] Abstract: This article focuses on Guercino’s Return of the Prodigal Son, commissioned in the name of Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi and on his marketing choices. This is a case study in terms of self- promotion tactics employed by an ambitious artist. My argument is that one finds in the painting a secondary and more sophisticated level of interpretation, which relates to the relationship between the painter and his patron. To the most traditional iconography of the scene, Guercino added musicians and spectators, thus positioning the entire composition in the theatre. One of the musicians is depicted in a way that casts him as a representative of the painter. The patron understood Guercino’s intentions and commissioned what became Guercino’s most important artworks. It was Guercino’s ability of shifting the attention of a given iconography and deliver current political meaning that is discernible in his Roman works commissioned by the same Cardinal Ludovisi who was elected Pope Gregory XV. Keywords: Guercino; Gregory XV; prodigal son; early modern theatre; self-presentation 1. Introduction Citation: Unger, Daniel M. 2021. Today we may confidently assert the extent to which Guercino’s career was impacted Marketing and Self-Promotion in by Pope Gregory XV (Alessandro Ludovisi 1554–1623). In 1621, immediately after his Early Modern Painting: The Case of 1 Guercino.