A gilt-bronze and white marble model of Trajan's column, after the Antique Empire, circa 1820

Comparative Literature:
H. Ottomeyer/P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Volume I, Munich, 1986, p. 310, plate XLII.  

Towards the end of the 18th century, reductions of Trajan's column became increasingly popular. The most celebrated example is the two metre high copy executed by Luigi Valadier in gilt-bronze, marble and silver-gilt and lapis lazuli in 1780, now in the Schatzkammer of the Residenz in Munich, illustrated by Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, Yale, 1961, p. 21, fig. 26. Napoleon later commemorated the victories of La Grande Armée with a full scale copy in the Place Vêndome, Paris.

Trajan was Spanish by birth and a soldier by profession and was adopted as a successor to Emperor Nero and ruled between 98-117 AD. His achievements were universally admired and he soon achieved the title Optimus Princeps.  His victory in the Dacian Wars was commemorated in Trajan's column.