The Trevi Fountain up to the time of Jacopo della Porta (1600)
I mentioned at the very beginning that the arches of the original Roman aqueduct carrying the Aqua Vergine almost certainly ended in a great display fountain near the baths built by Agrippa and it is highly probable that, since those arches crossed a large area of the City of Rome (practically from the start of Via Capo le Case to the Pantheon), smaller fountains were built along the route. It is impossible to say in exactly which year the urban section of the aqueduct was destroyed, but we can be sure from an account of 8th century Rome that it had already happened, so one of those lesser water fountains must have acted as the terminal or “showpiece” water fountain of the Aqua Vergine: and we can say with almost absolute certainty that this terminal fountain was the one always referred to later as “the Trevi fountain”.
However insignificant and modest the architecture of that primitive fountain may have been, it is interesting that even the earliest incomplete maps of Rome featured the Fountain of Trevi alongside other far more important statues and fountains. Not only does this show how well known it was, it also gives us an idea of how it used to look. In fact, if I am not mistaken, its first appearance is in a dilapidated little plan in a fresco painted by Taddeo di Bartolo in Sienna in 1412-13, though this itself was based on a model from before 1348. Here, the Trevi Fountain consists of a row of three separate basins lined up against the wall of a very small building, which could well be the terminal pier of the aqueduct.
Judging by that schematic illustration, this simple fountain and statue structure was not intended to be a decorative fountain but was purely functional until, in 1453, Pope Nicholas V decided to refurbish it. Although he took the advice of artists such as Leon Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino, the improvements were anything but major and the fountain was simply adapted slightly with additional statuary. In fact, the three large water spouts were left on the same wall of the building and the only difference was that instead of three water basins there was just one large oblong trough. In the centre of the tablet behind the water spouts, below the papal crest and the two smaller shields of the City of Rome, there was a huge inscription. According to 16th century authors the whole read as follows: “Nicholas V, P.M., having enriched the City with important statues, figures, fountains, and monuments, had the disintegrating conduit of the Aqua Vergine restored and splendidly decorated at his own expense in the year 1453, the seventh of his pontificate”.
The typically 15th century, tall crenellated façade almost certainly depicts the building as altered by Alberti, while the Fountain of Trevi, with a much lower and possibly longer wall, without battlements but with protruding ornamentations and statuary – modifications that were probably made only a few years later, at the time of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84). Next Page on Trevi & Della Porta...
