In an early armorial binding for Philip V of Spain

[Trajan's Column]. Album with 72 drawings of scenes depicted on Trajan's Column.

€ 45,000.00

Substantial and coherent suite of 72 studies after the reliefs on Trajan’s Column in Rome, recording episodes from both Dacian campaigns and reflecting the enduring scholarly and artistic engagement with the monument from the late Renaissance through the early Enlightenment.

Executed in pen, ink, and ink wash by at least two Italian hands working at different dates yet in closely related manner, the drawings are on distinct papers and appear to derive from a common printed model. The later group, on light cream paper, follows the initial narrative scenes at the base of the column and has been mounted in correct sequence; the earlier group, on darker paper, concentrates on the martial episodes higher up the spiral frieze and appears to have been partly mounted in reverse order, opening with victory scenes from the close of the first Dacian War.

The close fit of adjacent sheets indicates that portions were originally drawn as continuous frieze segments, likely on a long strip subsequently cut and mounted, consistent with contemporary practices of copying the column on rolls or rotuli. The handling and state of preservation - especially in the earlier set - suggest historical use as a working reference by artists or antiquarian scholars. The binding of gilt red morocco, bearing the large armorial centrepiece of Philip V of Spain (1683-1746), underscores early prestige ownership and frames the later, uniform 19th-century album leaves to which the drawings are mounted.

The iconography and sequencing correspond most closely to Alfonso Chacón’s foundational "Historia utriusque belli Dacici a Traiano Caesare gesti" (Rome, 1576) and its celebrated engraved suites by Francesco Villamena, and later by Giovanni Pietro Bellori with Pietro Santi Bartoli; the present album exemplifies how such printed cycles informed drawn repertoires across two centuries.

A rare survival of an extensive, purpose-assembled corpus of column studies, valuable both as a visual digest of the Trajanic narrative and as evidence for early modern modes of antiquarian study and transmission.