Fountain Beside the Pantheon Page 2
This is convincing evidence that, though made originally for the fountain at the northern end of Piazza Navona, our four ugly, yet somehow equally charming, masks (whose originality and comic appearance seem to me very Disney-like by the way), ended up, early in 1577, on the fountain beside the Pantheon. The inspiration for the masks undoubtedly came from those by Michelangelo, which Jacopo himself was having made at the time for the top of the columns of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. If, as I ought, I were to try and name the person who carved each mask, I would be in trouble; not because I don't know the names but because there were far too many sculptors of these masks and fountains. I am neither a professional archaeologist nor an fountain historian of the kind who needs only a fragment or the ear of a statue to recognize the name, surname and whole family history of the sculptor, so I don't want to risk saying anything that might condemn me. After all, we're simply a retail fountain store online!
Trusted Craftsmen Created the Fountain
Nevertheless, what I can say is that the documents I have "retrieved", as usual from the State Archives, show that della Porta held important talks about the fountains (in fact private agreements) with a number of trusted craftsmen which he then registered with a notary. These contracts for the fountain masks detailed both how the masks were to be made (in accordance with "the said model made by me") and the remuneration of 50 scudi for each mask. The craftsmen entrusted with the work were: Giacomo Siila Longhi, Simone Moschino, Taddeo Landini, Giuseppe Bartoli from Carrara and Giovanni Antonio de Osis from San Gimignano. The first two made two masks apiece for the fountains and all the others only one, so we have only seven masks, not eight. If you're desperate to know who made the last one, I do hope you won't lose any sleep over it, because I simply haven't been able to find out. After a quick reminder that the short flight of steps below the fountain was once surrounded by a low balustrade reflecting the shape of the basin, let us take a look at what took the place of the original basin and baluster that supported a much smaller water basin from which the water spilled gently down. What we find now is an enormous arrangement of rocks with grass and snakes, four dolphins, two crests, two identical descriptions and an obelisk with star and cross. As the duplicated inscription records, the whole jumble of materials (no doubt intended to compete with Bernini's "Four Rivers" fountain) was created on the orders of "Clement XI Pont. Max. for the ornamentation of the fountain and the piazza in the year 1711, 11th of his pontificate". The inscription on the little obelisk, which may have come from Heliopolis in Egypt, recalls Rameses II. It wouldn't have been a big job to bring it here because it was already only 100 yards or so from the fountain, in the little piazza San Macuto, to the right of St. Ignatius' church, where it had probably been since the 15th century. At the very beginning of the 18th century, in the fervour of embellishment and reconstruction symbolized by that great collector and antiquarian Pope Clement XI (Albani), eyes were also turned on this lonely little spire of a fountain.
"Despite the small size of the fountain and lack of ornamentation, might be worthy of a more spacious square than the one it finds itself in at present, and it might be appropriate in future to transfer the fountain to..." Here the Vatican manuscript continues with a list of places that might have suited it: the fountain at the port of Ripetta (which no longer exists), in the centre of Piazza Campo dei Fiori or Piazza Santi Apostoli (which do still exist), or alongside Palazzetto Venezia (which was moved back from the square in 1911). In this last spot, a place that was (unlike today) "little used by carriages", it was suggested that "it might be nice to play with architecture and use it as the gnomon of a sundial that would show the time on a palette of travertine blocks and little white squares" - and, of course, had the fountain been put there, we could now have used it as the centre of a traffic roundabout. Just two more suggestions to finish with: to erect the fountain in the middle of the fountain at the northern end of Piazza Navona or else in Piazza San Gregorio on the Celian Hill "as a funeral monument". Yet it seems that none of these proposals met with approval, so that in 1711 the obelisk was dragged here by main force and set up on top of the fountain whose original tranquil appearance was undergoing such a radical and chaotic transformation. The pope was lavish in his celebration of the new fountain: "Clement accompanied the inauguration of this fountain with acts of munificent largesse, with the distribution of medals... whose overseers bore his own image and the reverse the words Fontis et Fori Ornamento" (Cassio, I)
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