0094 On Sixteenth-Century Copies of the Reliefs from the Column of Trajan – Two New Drawings from an Unknown Rotulus

Abstract

This article presents two recently discovered drawings of the reliefs on the Trajan's column. To put them in their proper artistic context, the drawings are compared to known examples of such reproductions of the sixteenth century. Current research questions the attribution of codex ms. 254 in the Biblioteca dell'Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte in Rome to Jacopo Ripanda. The two series with representations of the column's entire frieze preserved in the Biblioteca (mss. 254 and 320) are therefore considered as two different strings of transmission of a yet to be identified original, from which derive all other drawings of the reliefs on the Trajan's Column. Research directed at the contextualisation of the newly published drawings has confirmed this view. The drawings belong without doubt to one of the two strings of transmission. In addition, an archaeological examination of representational details of this depiction has resulted in the suggestion of a new date for the rotuli from a private collection in Paris.