Friday, October 7, 2011

Trajan's Column


Personally, I think that the most impressive piece of art that we have studied so far was Trajan's Column. The level of detail that went into making it is simply incredible. It was over 100 feet tall and showed the entire story of Trajan. The artist was very talented in the use of low spiral relief. I cannot even imagine how much time and effort went into created this thing. He also had to be creative in representing the different scenes and ages of Trajan. He was differently depicted many times with armor or body shapes. The artist had to figure out how to symbolically represent certain things that would've been to hard to carve, such as wavy lines for the ocean or lines in the background for a mountain. I am truly impressed by this column and would like to visit it one day.

3 comments:

alyb said...

I personally thought that the Parthanon was the most impressive feat of the ancient world. I found it really amazing that the builders used no mortar or sealer of any kind. They fit the stones together that there was no need for mortar. In our world today we dont even use this tatic in building things. I think this showed the genius that the greeks applied in their buildings.

sara pendleton said...

I don't know if it was the "most impressive feat of the ancient world" but I do think Trajan's column is really beautiful and represents Roman culture. I love the intracate images across it which portray past and contemproary Roman history. I think the photo Ravin posted really shows the full magnitude of this monument in a way that viewing the depicted scenes alone couldn't.

Mallory said...

Oh...I just commented on the other post about the trajan's column. I also thought that it was interesting all of the subtle hints to change the story lines within the spiral frieze. It was interesting that a crescent moon in a woman's skirt meant that it was night time.