Tribolo's Wall Fountain of the Labyrinth
This wall fountains predates the seated river gods on Giovanni Bologna's Fountain of Oceanus in the Boboli Garden, which was constructed between the years 1567 and 1576, and was probably their prototype; the young Fleming, who made the terminal figure for Tribolo's Wall Fountain of the Labyrinth at Castello, as well as the bronze birds in the grotto of that villa, must have known this figure at the adjoining Villa Rinieri. Tribolo probably adopted the sitting posture partly because of its adaptability to a narrow niche, partly because of his desire to work out in the round the agitated pose suggested by one of Michelangelo's frescoed Ignudi. In doing so he set the precedent for a new conception of the river god, which typifies the turbulence rather than the fluid character of the stream. Giovanni Bologna transferred this motif from the wall fountain to the freestanding type, copying the position of the urn, but giving his figures downward lines rather than the upward and outward lines of the earlier statue.
Professor Antonio Munoz, in considering the Boboli figures as possible prototypes for Bernini's famous river gods on the wall fountain in the Piazza Navona, Rome, has contrasted their comparative calm, characteristic of the usual Cinquecento treatment of the river god, with the agitation that pervades the baroque statues. Yet the Corsini river god, in spite of its early date, anticipates to an astonishing degree the excitation of the baroque. For the figures of the Tiber and the Arno in his companion fountains in the "loggia" or second court of the Villa Giulia at Rome (1550-1555), Bartolommeo Ammannati chose the more static recumbent pose, well adapted to the horizontal lines of these wide rectangular niches, and more attractive to his classic temperament, and his particular flavor of wall fountains. These river gods, carved of peperino, recline against a stucco background of rocks and vegetation. The Tiber is attended by the Roman wolf; the Arno, with the usual Florentine lion, holds a cornucopia symbolizing plenty. The water issued from their urns into the trough-like marble basins of classical design, decorated at the angles with harpies.
Both the figure motifs and the iconography of the Arno recall Vasari's description of Tribolo's Arno wall fountain and Mugnone wall fountain; indeed, the treatment of the entire court, with its many niches decorated with ancient sculpture, is reminiscent of the latter's design for the wall fountain of the Labyrinth at Castello. The free treatment of the form possible in the plastic peperino is particularly expressive of the fluid character of the streams, and suggests that the sculptor was influenced by the more pictorial figure of Marforio, rather than by the usual hard, academic type of ancient river god. It is unusual to find a wall fountain of the Cinquecento preserved intact, with figure, niche, enframement, and basin in good condition, as in the example in the great courtyard of the Palazzo Nonfinito in Florence.
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