#6: “Rome as it was and as it is” - Giovanni Maggi, Alessandro Donati and the invention of the before-and-after illustration - [Reception stories. The Antiquitatum Thesaurus blog]

This article traces the still successful principle of before-and-after illustrations of ancient monuments back to its beginnings in the 16th century. After the juxtaposition of reconstructed original states of buildings in ancient Rome and their ruined or transformed state in the present was first tested in drawings, from 1600 onwards, the same instructive depiction of the decline of ancient grandeur was increasingly used in printed products, preferably in handbooks on Rome, travel guides and illustrated works for the general (pilgrim) public. The protagonists here were Giovanni Maggi and Alessandro Donati. Reusing the former's pictorial inventions, the first systematic use of before-and-after illustrations was made in posthumous new editions of the latter's works from 1662 onwards, disseminated in numerous subsequent reprints.