ABSTRACT
The centrality of historical thinking to eighteenth-century Britain has long been observed and studied. The impact of the visual arts on the development of history since the Renaissance is the subject of Francis Haskell's History and Its Images, a wide-ranging study that foregrounds the part played by portraits taken from ancient coins and medals in the interpretation of the past and in the visualisation of history. Given that the immense majority of Wale's works were made for the book trade in the form of frontispieces, vignettes, and single-sheet plates, they have thus lain buried in eighteenth-century volumes, gradually disappearing from public view, unheeded by scholars whose research focus was primarily on texts. The pictorial histories in which Wale's 117 plates were published are a testament to the early development of illustrated history books in eighteenth-century Britain. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
