Earthquakes have captured man's imagination since ancient times. First mentioned in the Bible, they were depicted in bass reliefs of Roman times,and described in the age of Christianity through manuscripts and frescoes of the Middle ages, up until the first seismic maps of 1627 by Matteo Greuter, based on the Gargano earthquake in Southern Italy. Huge cataclysms continued to be depicted through sketches and maps from the earthquake of Val di Noto in Sicily to the Calabrian earthquakes of 1783 up to the mid-19th century when modern studies of seismology began and images of natural catastrophes became widespread through the press.