Bernini’s second design of the Trevi Fountain
If I wanted to make this weighty and difficult debate any more complicated, I would make a meal of the fact that this fountain belonged to the previous century; and I would do it with a great display of quotations from all those recent authors who, even if only touching on the Trevi fountain, have always agreed on the point that – in the words of just one of them – the Trevi is “a 17th century work of art in the following century”; which is the same as saying that right in the middle of the 18th century, Salvi would have built something that from historic and artistic perspectives belonged to the 17th century: in other words, practically an anachronism. That, at least, is the opinion of the experts, who are almost unanimous. However, if you would like to make an experiment, almost in corpore vili, i.e. if you were to go out and ask a hundred “real Romans from Rome” (if that many still exist), “Who made the Trevi fountain?”, you may be sure that all one hundred would reply, “Bernini!”; and such a hasty and “ignorant” reply would correspond exactly with the educated and sophisticated thinking of the critics I have mentioned. We saw earlier, when he moved the façade of the fountain in 1640, how Gian Lorenzo surely had it in mind to set it between the wings of the two existing palazzi, which he would have refinished to match each other, but without creating any feeling of continuity between the fountain proper and the two sides.
You will also remember that, on the basis of documents and sketches, it was possible to establish that a succession of popes made continued attempts to solve the Trevi problem once and for all: Clement VIII, Paul V, Urban VIII. After that, with Innocent X (Pamphili), there was a gap until attempts resumed with Alexander VII. Nonetheless, I want to say more about the reign of Innocent X (1644-55) because, even then, though the problem of the Trevi fountain was not solved it remained on the agenda. At this point I have to bring in a new and very important unpublished drawing that I found amongst the treasures of the Lanciani Collection (where I found several others already described or reproduced in this book). This is a delicately tinted sketch of considerable size (66 x 42.5 cm) drawn with a very fine pen and most unusual care.
The picture shows the façade of a two-story building consisting mainly of two very long wings. The eight windows on each side alternate with an equal number of flat rectangular Corinthian pilasters resting on a very shallow foundation. Beneath a little balustrade, the windows on the upper storey have framed arched or triangular recesses. Above the pediment, each wing has 8 statues of mythological figures corresponding to the pilasters below. Next Page...
