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At this point in the story of the Fountain of the Moor, I could embark upon a life of Bernini and continue in strict chronological order the story already started. I would tell you, with documentation to hand, about all the Roman houses to which he supplied water with fountains and all the amounts of water (then an extremely precious commodity) that the popes granted him free of charge in reward for his numerous brilliant achievements in regards to fountains and statuary – and I would tell you how he made no delay in selling this water off privately. Most importantly, I would tell you about his plans for fountains that remained unchanged as well as the fountains he built from scratch: the "Triton Fountain " in Piazza Barberini and the "Four Rivers Fountain" in the centre of Piazza Navona. Finally, I would end with the alterations he made to the Fountain of the Moor in that very square, alterations which, in fact, he made immediately after finishing the Four Rivers fountain.
However, given that it’s not Bernini’s story we are telling but, as the title of this section of the web site declares, the story of Rome’s fountains, I will abandon the chronological order and – at last – return to the Fountain of the Moor which, before this long but not completely irrelevant detour, we left as Master Jacopo built it, except, of course, for the usual damage it must already have suffered. One of those anonymous but very valuable Announcements from Rome regading fountains stated with the usual brevity: "Monday. Public inauguration of the fountain built beneath the spire [of the Four Rivers] in Piazza Navona… Work by Signor Cavalier Bernino famous Architect and Sculptor. His Holiness [Innocent X Pamphili] has given orders for the restoration of the other two ruined but beautiful fountains at the top and bottom of Piazza Navona, the ones Pope Gregory XIII had made".
Thus, it was because of the elaborate ornamentation with which the enormous new fountain endowed the square and, above all, because his omnipotent and ambitious sister-in-law, the renowned Lady Olympia, lived in the great Pamphili palace whose windows looked – and look – out onto the Fountain of the Moor, that Pope Innocent X gave orders for its restoration.
According to the documentation, a modest "sounding" – or estimate – of the cost of the fountain was prepared immediately, relating not to both fountains but only to the one "close to S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli", the church alongside the Fountain of the Moor. The small amount spent on the restoration (254 scudi and 42 balocchi) reveals that the work must have been minor, almost trivial, yet in January 1652 Bernini had a small group of sculptures made for it. The "cutter" was a lowly employee in his workshop, Angelo Vannelli, and the work consisted of three dolphins holding up a shell from which a jet of water emerges.
This group, which the documents always refer to as the "Snail", was the only change made to della Porta’s old fountain, replacing the original rocks, which had disappeared. From the artistic point of view, the first impression is that Bernini, who had created the "Triton Fountain" in Piazza Barberini and the nearby Four Rivers fountain didn’t make much of an effort when he thought up the "Snail". However, on closer inspection, it is clear that although it wasn’t his intention to make something big, Bernini got his idea from the fountain for which the new sculpture was destined. He repeated della Porta’s amusing masks-and-dolphins theme in his own way, twisting the dolphins’ tails together in the air and adding the finishing touch of a large shell, a fairly muffled but perceptible echo of the "Barberini Triton".
Nonetheless, the graceful but over-modest "snail" did not please Innocent X one bit (far less Lady Olimpia) for, despite having been carved in early 1652 and set on the fountain in May that year, barely a month had passed when along came some workmen to hurriedly remove it, at least temporarily, to Saint Peter’s. To tell the truth, Innocent wasn’t entirely wrong when he declared that "it had proved to be an inadequate ornament for that [fountain] because of its small size"; from the point of view of aesthetics and size, when compared to della Porta’s four magnificent and enormous Tritons, the "snail" really was too small and easily overlooked there in the middle. The Pope gave the little group to Lady Olimpia, who almost certainly had it put into a garden on her estate at S. Maria in Cappella; later it finished up in Villa Pamphili on the Janiculum, where it remains to this day. In the meantime, Gian Lorenzo made haste to repair the less than brilliant monument by designing and creating another arrangement, which, as we shall soon see, was fated to die before it was born.
Bernini’s restorations of the fountains and the new statue erected at the beginning of 1655, the main architectural shape of the fountain remained unchanged: the two steps running around the basin were still there and still surrounded by the balustrade exactly as in the old della Porta model. It was only towards the end of 1654, when the statue of the Moor was almost complete and clearly too big for the basin, that Bernini thought of enlarging the whole fountain. Innocent X gave orders to the treasurer, on 11 November 1654, to set aside 1000 scudi: "A statue having been made upon Our instructions to be placed in the fountain in Piazza Navona near the church of S. Giacomo, and it being Our wish, for the greater embellishment of the City, that the said fountain be lengthened and made larger and more beautiful in shape in accordance with the design made by Master Bernini…"
For the new project, which was intended to make this fountain (undoubtedly one of the finest in Rome from the architectural point of view) unbelievably beautiful, Gian Lorenzo made use of the very ideas about fountains that della Porta had failed to put into practice. We have seen how, in his day, the beautiful fountain in Campo dei Fiori (which later became the "Tureen") was originally set in a pool at ground level shaped in the same sinuous lines as the basin and that access to the water spouts was provided by two short flights of steps on opposite sides of the fountain with, probably, small platforms at the bottom. This layout and style were – as we shall see later – quite rightly copied for the "Barcaccia Fountain " [Boat Fountain]. The same design inspired Bernini, who removed the steps and the balustrade and added a wide pool that echoed the line around the the basin of the fountain; then he enclosed everything in a travertine border with the same, though more subdued, motif. In addition, as with the original "Tureen fountain" and the "Barcaccia Fountain", he placed two (or perhaps four) travertine slabs in the pool to allow people to reach the water that flowed from the masks.
Finally, it is interesting to see how, in essence, it was not Bernini who carried out the ultimate refinement of this fountain. Gian Lorenzo had specified peacock [reddish purple] marble for the lip (the marble rim of the lower pool of the fountain). However, della Porta’s basin was made of portasanta, which tends to be reddish in color. Obviously, then, the lip of Bernini’s pool – decidedly red – would not have stood out so brilliantly and in so clear-cut a manner as the foam-white we see now, which has been there since 1708, 50 years later. It was then, at the time of Clement XI, that the new restorer (who can be identified as Giovan Battista Contini, the Architect of the Aqua Vergine) removed the access platforms and, with a true stroke of genius, replaced the peacock coloured lip with the white marble we see today.
Thus the whole superb arrangement is the result of an extraordinary, almost passive energy, like a series of waves spreading outward from the most powerful central force (the Moor) and, at the same time, losing strength as they become, first, the foamy lip of the pool and, finally, the calm of the outer border. Seen from above, the Fountain of the Moor looks like a piece of intricate lace.
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