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84 chapter five THE FRIEZE CONCEPT & DRAFT T he designers of the frieze of the Column of Marcus Aurelius (its regularity suggests that a single designer was responsible for the general form and layout—the generation of its content is a different matter) did not face the same challenge as did the designer of the frieze of Trajan’s Column. They did not have to create an entirely new form of architectural sculpture, but rather were able to rely on a model for guidance. At the same time, the existence of a model (Trajan’s Column) did not make the task an easy one. To start with, the designers would have had to rely on their own observation and interpretation of their model. Working seventy years after the Column of Trajan was built, these men would not have been able to rely on the advice or information of anyone who had been involved in the original project. Just how well did the designers of the Column of Marcus Aurelius understand their model? Even today, with the benefit of close-up photography and numerous detailed studies, the frieze of the Column of Trajan is far from fully understood. Differences between the frieze of the Column of Marcus Aurelius and that of the Column of Trajan have been interpreted as attempts to improve on the original, or as conscious and careful alteration made to project a different message. Are such interpretations valid? Examining the planning process of the frieze can reveal some clues. The first step taken by the designers of the frieze of the Column of Marcus Aurelius was to determine its overall layout. All other factors, including scene placement, were subordinate to this basic step. This simple consideration marks a sharp distinction from the approach followed by the designer of the Column of Trajan and is the first, and in some ways most striking, difference between the decoration of the two monuments. The frieze band of Trajan’s Column is irregular: it varies in the angle at which it proceeds up the shaft and exhibits fluctuations in height that are both extreme and unpredictable. Within one single turn about the column shaft, the height of the frieze can vary by as much as 30 percent. Over the course of the entire frieze the fluctuations in height are even more striking, THE FRIEZE · 85 ranging between 145 and 77 centimeters. One might logically expect the frieze height to increase progressively as it winds up the column, in order to make the upper windings more visible from the ground—but this is not the case. Instead, the first thirteen windings of the frieze of Trajan’s Column vary between 110 to 125 centimeters in height. After this, the height of the relief band decreases irregularly until a low point of 77 centimeters is reached in the nineteenth winding. Then for the last four windings the height of the frieze jumps, to as much as 145 centimeters in one place, almost double its smallest value just a few windings below.1 What are we to make of this? Whatever the course of the relief of Trajan’s Column shows, it is not the hallmark of advance planning.This is puzzling, for the Romans were, after all, masters of planning: in their grid-planned colonies, their centuriated agricultural landscapes, the regular and often complex layouts of their monumental buildings. Even such apparently random things as decorative vine carvings were commonly laid over a restricting grid.Whether grand or marginal, the Romans usually took care to think out and plot their work in advance. The frieze of Trajan’s Column appears to be anything but carefully planned and plotted. Having no model to follow , the designer of Trajan’s Column seems to have improvised the layout of the frieze as he went along. But there is also clear evidence that at least one part of the frieze of Trajan’s Column was carefully planned and its position on the column shaft determined in advance of its carving. This was the Victoria, whose figure is located precisely at the midpoint of the column, exactly along the north axis. Given the unpredictability of the frieze height, it is very unlikely that the figure of Victoria ended up where it did by chance. Rather, her position in the exact midpoint of the column (not, it should be noted, at the exact midpoint of the frieze as measured by its length) was plotted before the course of the frieze.This...

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