I will investigate Renaissance and Baroque paintings in and around Rome that were destination sites for artists and writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to determine how they may have physically changed over time with evolving visual alterations. I intend to study published and unpublished travel journals, manuscript texts from the same periods, and other documents with evaluations and interpretations of these paintings. I will research how the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often mistaken interpretations, written perceptions, and art-historical analysis of these works were compromised by the context of their period cultural and aesthetic values and why these changed works of art prompted new aesthetics for painters. This research will reveal rich and important material for a discourse on period perceptions of altered physical objects as cultural icons and commodity and may serve as a model for interpreting how desires and perspectives influence visual culture interpretation to suit each period’s needs.