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No matter how fine, even perfect, the arrangement, I would say that the artist had no deep feeling for the fountain and he may even have had it suggested to him by those who commissioned it. In fact, if you look closely, the group appears, more than anything, to be a spectacular display of masterly technique in fountain design to satisfy banal taste. The dolphin attempting to get back into the water is nothing but an excuse to put the Triton in a position that will show off the tension required for such a tremendous effort; but this tension, which seems realistic enough thanks to the powerful muscles and the twisted posture, is obviously only a superficial dramatic effect produced by the fountain, because, instead of turning his fine head toward the object about to escape his immense efforts, the Triton is inexplicably gazing off into the distance, with a completely indifferent expression on his face.
In this fountain, there is no sign whatever in this "Moor" of the vigor and simplicity of, for example, the "Neptune and Glauce" at the Villa Montalto or the group that Bernini himself engraved in 1631 for the frontispiece of a book of verse by Urban VIII, which featured the young David in combat with an Icon. Nevertheless, without wanting to take back everything I’ve just said (which might scandalise a few "experts" or upset the "lovers of all things Roman"), this sculpture is no more than a beautiful object, one of the very few known to the citizens of Rome and one of which they seem fond; and because of the typically African features of the statue’s foreign-looking face the Romans refer to it as "the Moor".
The Features of the Fountain
These features (which he copied from the masks Michelangelo designed for the tops of the pillars of the Palazzo dei Conservatori) recur, as a kind of standard assembly kit, in a number of Bernini’s sculptures and he seems to have been very attached to them. In fact, the first time he carved this typical face with small, almost animal-like eyes, a snub nose, protruding lips and, sometimes, with long dishevelled hair down to the neck and heavy facial hair was probably for the rim of the fountain at Palazzo Barberini; only then he carved it four times over. There was a very slight hint of it in the "Barberini Triton", then it made a stronger appearance in one of the Four Rivers statues and in an ornamental head on one of the coats-of-arms of that same fountain. In "the Moor" he took it to extremes, then repeated it finally as an ornament on the saddle of the little elephant in Piazza della Minerva.
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