Jacopo: "Architect for the Fountains", including the Trevi Fountain
Before examining the plan for this fountain, it must be remembered that the old façade and statues of the Trevi fountain (prior to 1640) did not face south as it does now, but crossed the square at a right-angle to the present façade so that it looked west toward Via del Corso, with the back of the founain pointing towards Via del Lavatore. To return to the above-mentioned plan for the fountain, there can be no doubt that this was a scheme to rebuild the old Trevi fountain completely, since the anonymous artist meant to leave the old inscription by Nicholas V and the three crests on the large central tablet of the fountain facade. The Aldobrandini crest above the middle of the façade and the Clemens written in the central scroll certainly date to the period of Clement VIII (Aldobrandini, 1592-1605). But who could be the designer of this over-decorated façade?
Given that Master Jacopo was still “Architect for the Fountains” as well as “Architect of the Roman People” (i.e. city architect) until 1602, the year in which he died, the dates coincide almost entirely with the reign of Clement VIII. Nonetheless, let’s keep Jacopo in mind while we look at the sketch. The peculiar and extremely unusual presence of pathways and pools in the Fountain of Trevi, not to mention the three “water cascades” falling from the mouths of their respective masks, all closed in by two long marble benches at the sides indicate without any doubt that the designer had considerable experience with fountains and displays of water of the kind found in the grounds of large estates or villas; and, in the last years of his life, della Porta was working on the Pope’s magnificent Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, which included a grand fountain.
In addition, the occurrence – six times – in the same design of the logo of the City of Rome (S.P.Q.R.) accompanied, at the far ends of the façade, by two she-wolves, indicates that the Capitol had a direct hand in the scheme, perhaps as the only controlling interest – and the City Fountain Architect was still Jacopo della Porta. We are reminded of him, too, by the two unicorns – the mythological horses with a single horn on their foreheads – each with a seated woman supposed to be the “virgin” who found the water, because Jacopo had used another mythological horse, the wingèd Pegasus, amongst his recent creations for a famous fountain at Villa Aldobrandini. Finally, if you think back to the strange façade decorated and weighed down with a huge collection of figures and statues that Jacopo designed for the Marforio fountain on the Capitoline Hill you will see that it does to some extent resemble the three separate and quite similar raised sections of this particular design for the Trevi Founain; indeed, it may have been a first experiment with the idea. With all these factors to hand, and bearing in mind that “della Porta’s late style became a detailed and pedantic decorativism”, one does tend to think (even if there is still some doubt) that the sketch of the fountain in the Viennese collection, which can be dated to around 1600, was a design for one of the last fountains that Jacopo intended to build, thus concluding his career as it had begun, with the Trevi fountain. Back to Home Page on Trevi & Della Porta...
