Piazza del Popolo page 4
Although the documents make no direct mention of della Porta's name in connection with the fountains, we can be absolutely certain that it was his model "which is at present and will remain in the possession of the Most Illustrious Cardinal Montepulciano", recorded in a contract dated 8 April 1572 which gave very detailed orders concerning "the fountain that is to go in Piazza del Popolo" to an unheard of French sculptor: Giovanni Leminard. Leminard was to be sent several blocks of "saline marble" from which to create the fountain, taken from the huge bases of some columns found "near Nero's facade", very close in fact to the place where the fountain was to be erected, on that side of the Pincio Hill where it was thought Nero's bones were buried. Leminard was to use this marble for his water basin, "the fountain is to be made according to the model, to be well worked, pumiced inside and out, and polished, without emblems, grotesques and Harpies". For his services on the fountain, Leminard, who promised to "supply the finished basin as specified above within the next eight months", requested 750 scudi for the fountain work and the authorities in fact gave him 600. Instead of Leminard, it was a certain Lucio Salvati who signed the deed "in the name of and with the agreement of the above-mentioned Master Giovanni because he is unable to write". It was most unusual - and I'm sure it will still seem so today to Romans who have dealings with any kind of workman - but the job was completed almost a month before the agreed date. In fact, a second contract, dated 12 October 1572, sets out terms between the Capitoline Chamber on the one hand and Leminard, this time with the engraver Melchiorre di Pietro da Settignano, on the other. These latter "undertake and promise to finish or to have finished the vessel of the fountain at Piazza del Popolo, that is to say the pedestal with the water basin above, of marble with engravings and ornamentation as per the model made for this purpose and which they have seen". It goes without saying that the engraving and ornamentation were to be "well made with every diligence and good judgement on the part of the Gentlemen entrusted with the said work" so that the whole should be "well made, polished and pumiced".
Completed ahead of schedule
Finally, having requested 400 scudi and obtained 350, the two craftsmen promised to complete the fountain within four months. When finished (at the beginning of 1573), the fountain probably did not make a very good impression: it was small for this square and, above all, too modest for a fountain decorating the entrance to the city of Rome. To my mind, that was why, exactly two years later, contracts were drawn up, on 26 and 31 January and on 16 February 1575, with the sculptors Simone Moschino and Taddeo Landini (both from Florence), Egidio della Riviera de Malines (a Fleming) and Giacobbe Siila Longhi (from Milan) "for making [four] tritons at the Popolo fountain... which Tritons and Shells [i.e. the shells the tritons sit on], and all the work, must create such an opinion and effect as demonstrated by the clay model of the fountain made by Master Iacomo [sic] della Porta". Once the four splendid and powerful tritons - of which more will be said in due course - were completed, and perhaps even tried out in situ, they must have made the fountain at Piazza del Popolo (which was nevertheless charming) seem even smaller and more wretched.
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