Concept: Precision
Three keywords: repetition. continuation. figurativeness.
Bartolis book “Colonna Traiana” portrays the Trajan’s Column a roman triumphal placed in Rome, Italy, that memorializes the roman emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. Whether on a figurative level but also on a narrative level the concept of precision recurs throughout the book.
In “Colonna Traiana” every scenes of the Dacian Wars is placed on a separate sheet of paper to fully exhibit the specificness of the particular scene for the reader to be able to fully comprehend the stories. The scenes are repetitive due to the fact that the story ending always involve a victory of the Roman Empire against the Dacians. Next to the war symbols such as shields, javelins, swords, helmets and body armors the soldiers themselves play an important role in every scene. As well as the Romans means of transportation for example the war ships and the cavalry are a main issue in the narratives as well as the act of building walls and their usage is reshown. In addition the Roman emperor Trajan himself reappears around 60 times throughout the scenes.
Bartoli copies the idea of continuation from the Trajan’s Column and even elongates this with the figurative scenes receiving an own place on one sheet of paper. When looking closely to the scenes in the book it is knowledgeable that all the scenes are connected and form one piece of a narrative story. This play with the time periods persuades the reader to continue reading and to be able to fully correlate all of the different scenes of the Dacian Wars. On the pages, where the Trajan’s Column is completely displayed, the feature of the increasing height underlines the peak of the Dacian Wars. This can be understood as the triumph of the Roman empire over the Dacians Empire when the stories of the war end on top of the Column where Trajan’s statue was initially placed.
One of the last and the most important keypoints is the accurate and descriptive visualisation of scenes of the Dajan Wars. In the book the idea of the picturesque language plays a more important role than the written language. This can be seen as the truly fact that the sheets of paper are around 95 percent covered with drawings whereas the written text is only around 5 percent in the book. Therefore the author has the perception that the drawings will be delivering more significance and that there is no need for adding a long descriptive text.
All in all, the book can be analyzed by the main topics of repetition, continuation and the figurative scenes which are not only precisely demonstrated by the narrative Dacian Wars but also executed exactly by the actual stonemason.