Building

Depictions of construction sites are common throughout art history and often function as a part of a larger narrative. In this drawing, for example, a construction site is supervised by a man (perhaps a military officer) dressed in Roman armor. Under his instruction, large blocks of stone are carried up a ladder, while mortar is applied to bond them in place. The presumed author of this drawing, Nebbia, frequently used Greco-Roman antiquity as inspiration for his paintings and fresco cycles. In this case, he seems to have taken cues from the figurative relief sculpture found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In a scene depicted on the column similar to that of Nebbia’s drawing, the Roman army constructs a fortification under the supervision of the two central commanders. Renaissance artists often utilized Trajan’s Column as an exemplar to reinterpret antiquity.