Page 6: Piazza del Popolo Fountain
I want to put it in the context of the huge reconstruction of the whole square and fountain carried out by Giuseppe Valadier around 150 years ago. Valadier's initial plans for the fountain greatly transformed the sides of the square but left both the fountain and the obelisk intact. Later, however, (in 1823) he changed his mind and his design to what we see today. With inspired imagination, he set the obelisk in the center of the large square base of the fountain with five steps and circular basins at the corners, each basin having a pyramid of seven steps surmounted by a marble lion from whose mouth the water sprays forth in a sort of veil. Nevertheless, to have arrived at this pleasing scheme of a quadruple fountain in the center of the square, I think Valadier must have somehow been aware of the drawings and plans of the fountain which Domenico Fontana certainly made at the time of Sixtus V, even before that pope had the obelisk and fountain erected. Unless Valadier had been inspired simply by an excerpt from the manuscript Avvisi di Roma [Announcements from Rome], which were diary notes for the use of foreign courts, written by anonymous authors close to the city authorities. The passage in question, dated 28 September 1588, says: "Then His Beatitude [Sixtus V] arrived and gave orders to build the street planned to run from shortly before Trinity Church to the said square [i.e. Via del Babuino], in which His Holiness ordered the raising of the said spire above four lions, that would spurt out water and serve in place of the fountain that his predecessor had erected in the said square, [the spire] to be surrounded with the marble blocks already present and using all possible beauty and artistic skill". If we bear these words in mind, it seems no exaggeration to believe that Valadier was familiar with the old plan or at least made good use of this same note.
The Remains of the Two Fountains
Finally, all that remains is to speak of the two large fountains that close off the sides of the square. These too are by Valadier, erected at the same time as the central fountain. Each consists of a wide semicircular basin of travertine stone placed against a wall, surmounted by a large shell, also of travertine. Above this, a small basin collects the water of the fountain issuing from the hole in the wall. Above each fountain there is a group of colossal statues designed by Valadier himself and carved by Giovanni Ceccarini. The first group, nearest the Tiber, has an enormous figure of Neptune between two tritons. The second, nearest the Pincio, has an weighty goddess (Rome) planted on a pair of formidably sturdy legs between two gigantic bearded river gods; beneath is a very imaginative wolf, with a thick mane, suckling two children. If you want my personal opinion on these two arrangements then I would have to say that, despite their overall heaviness, they do have some extremely good points: out of six statues (seven, if we include the wolf) only two have no huge beard - one triton and the goddess Rome.
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