ABSTRACT
Part of the appeal of Wale's historical illustrations certainly lay in the novelty of a device that offered an unprecedented visualisation of national history. This chapter questions the perceived relevance of those historical illustrations, exploring how they were constructed as factual traces of the past. It argues that Wale's reinvention of the past was built upon new representations of monuments, costumes, and objects. The chapter explores the events selected for reconstruction in corpus of plates – and particularly the notable emphasis on what the people would call today “medieval” subjects – it dwells on the visual production of a past aimed at validating the Georgian present. Early antiquarians undoubtedly pioneered the reconstruction of the past. From the seventeenth century, scholars and collectors started amassing objects, recording, and describing monuments that could yield precious historical details. Medieval churches and palaces that had long disappeared, dissolved monasteries or slighted castles were fully repaired on plates.
