Trajan’s Column

This is a 17th-century plaster cast taken from Trajan’s Column, after the original Roman column, made in marble in the second century AD. The plaster casts of the relief frieze on Trajan’s Column were ordered by King Louis XIV of France. Some of them were found in a sawmill outside Leiden in 1827. They were purchased for the museum by Caspar Reuvens, who was the director at the time.