In Piazza della Rotonda
Building of the Pantheon Fountain: When, as usual, on 6 January 1575, a notary (Ottavio Gracchi) drew up the customary detailed "clauses and conditions" - this time with the sculptor Leonardo Sormani - for the building of a fountain "in accordance with the wooden model", we know that the officers of the "Congregation for the Fountains" had not yet decided in exactly which square they wanted to put the fountain, because the document states (in Latin) that the said fountain was to be erected "in a square and in a location to be selected by the gentlemen officers". From this we gather that, as explained in the previous section, the task entrusted to della Porta really was a sort of "production line", since he had to create the models for his fountains without the slightest idea of their eventual location or surroundings. In effect, Jacopo supplied the fountain designs and measurements and then the Congregation chose this, that or the other square in which to place the water fountain.
Eventually Placed in Piazza della Rotonda
This time they chose the Piazza della Rotonda (right in front of the Pantheon) for the fountain that Pope Eugene IV (1431-47) had done his best to decorate with a porphyry tub and two basalt lions. Here, della Porta, "the fountain architect of the Roman People", designed a model of the fountain that was one of the best examples of fountains that combined the circular and rectangular designs - that is to say, those that paid greater regard to the relative proportions. This fountain is shaped as a square whose sides have been cut into slightly short of the corners, continuing as projecting semi-circles. The same fluid motif is repeated in the travertine steps (also by Sormani) below the fountain; you will notice that, owing to the uneven ground, there are five steps in front of the Pantheon and only two on the opposite side. The measurements for the fountain basin set out in the document were "in length 40 hands approx. [= 9m] and the same in width, or a little smaller; the circumference of the fountain to be around a hundred and twenty hands [= 27m] including projections, turns, heights and lengths". The intended material was "mixed portasanta" marble but the water basin was made instead from a superb African marble, dull grey in color, so beautiful that it seems it must have been very important to whoever ordered it for this specific fountain.
When the fountain was being designed, instructions were given that the stone for the fountain should be "well worked, cleaned and pumiced and properly finished so that when the officers [of the Congregation] want to have it polished this can be done without further pumicing of the fountain; but the polishing is to be done at the expense of the People [i.e. the City Council], with the admonition that there should be no knots or lumps nor any kind of mark". Let me turn now to the four masks of the fountain spouting water in the semi-circular parts of the basin. We have seen how, with the ancient fountain at Piazza del Popolo, the four tritons in the original design finished up as part of a fountain in Piazza Navona. Well, something similar happened with the fountain in front of the Pantheon. Jumping ahead a little to what I shall have to say about the two lateral fountains in Piazza Navona, it is as well that you know now how Jacopo della Porta, with the models of fountains he had made, ordered a number of sculptors to produce "eight masks... in beautiful, soft white marble, which are to be made exactly as per the fountain model... that is, with two dolphins and a shell beneath and a mask above and on the edge to the right a dragon" based on the coat-of-arms of Gregory XIII. As it was, only four of these eight masks were used in the fountain at the southern end of Piazza Navona, towards the Palazzo Braschi, since the fountain at the other end was not decorated with any kind of sculpture until the end of the 19th century. Neither the notarised contracts, nor payments recorded, show that the four masks now decorating the sides of this fountain were ever ordered or produced expressly for this purpose; furthermore, when compared to the four masks of the fountain originally located in Piazza Navona (but which in the 19th century were transferred to Villa Borghese and replaced by four insipid copies), these masks are clearly based on the same models.
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