June’s Item of the Month is a Rosso Antico column of Trajan, Italian, circa 1850, on a Nero Belgio plinth.
The original marble Trajan’s Column stands at the centre of The Forum of Trajan, just north of the Roman Forum in Rome, and was built to commemorate Emperor Trajan’s two successful campaigns against the Dacians in AD 101 – 2 and 105 – 6. The column is thought to have been designed and constructed under the supervision of the architect Apollodorus of Damascus, completed in AD113 and illustrates the two campaigns in the designs. The spiralling low relief frieze winds round the column from the bottom to the top for over 200 metres, and illustrates 155 scenes and more than 2500 individual figures and animals.
Moulds were taken from the original column, on the order of Emperor Napoleon III, so that a copy could be displayed in Paris, this was then copied to create the replica column on display in the Cast Courts at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The column became a popular subject of Grand Tour works of art.