From the Water Fountains of Rome
But who is the "Porter" of Porter Fountain Fame supposed to be? Unfortunately, to answer such a question, even I am obliged to offer you, if only to start with, the usual confection (or should I say "old chestnut"?). Tradition has it that the fountain represents a well known 16th century porter, described in the Latin inscription alongside as: "Abbondio Rizio, crowned in the common gutters, past master at tying up packages and carrying them on his shoulders, who moved as much stuff as he wanted, lived as much as he could, and died, without wishing to, whilst carrying one barrel of wine in and another out". If I am not mistaken, the first mention of this inscription (in 1859) was made by Andrea Belli, who, it is said, had the words direct from the mouth of the "most erudite and humorous Abbot Godard". I don't need to tell you how, since that time, the fans of "all things Roman" have fallen for Belli's nice little story and his subsequent commentary in which he spoke of the "empowerment", i.e. initiation of the new porter to permit him to pursue his trade... "Empowerment meant being grabbed by two porters of superior rank or, as used to be said, by the local bosses, who crowned him with Beet or Pellitory and a few mocking songs before throwing him violently, butt-end first, onto the street; and the ceremony ended up, as is all too easy to imagine, with everyone tanking themselves up with wine in the nearest tavern". Apart from the "empowerment", which has absolutely nothing to do with it, the story that there may have been a porter with the name of Abbondio Rizio stems, in my opinion, solely from Abbot Godard's imagination, confirming but adding nothing to the vague and ancient definition of "porter" associated with the little fountain. I say vague definition because there was never any trace of Porters as such having their own corporation, either at the time when the statue was made or later. Records exist to prove that all the other clearly demarcated trades had their own guilds and corporations - or Universities and Confraternities, as they were known then. Moreover, as we shall soon see, the type of trade depicted by the "Porter's Fountain" was in fact very well defined. In a painstaking article published in 1872 (i.e. the same year that the Porter fountain at the corner of the Corso was moved to its present location), Enrico Narducci gave a brief account of the history and tales attached to this fountain. Without revealing his sources, he referred to a "tradition not to be sneered at" which related that "before Clement XII had the Trevi fountain made into the splendid thing it is today, at a time when the Aqua Vergine flowed from three humble outlets into a simple shallow basin... a porter, who had filled a large number of recipients from it during the night, carried the water to the nearby houses the next day and, for a small recompense, spared the consumers the trouble of drawing water from the fountain. Having thus amassed enough savings to build himself a house at the corner of Via Lata, as a sign of recognition to the water, he wanted the public to know that his modest fortune could be copied and he had his own effigy made to show him in the act of pouring water, as in fact he used to do. The story is all the more plausible since I have no idea what strange thing might have prompted Gregory XIII to have a miserable little fountain made in this mould; nor, moreover, can I find any record of it among the works of that great pontiff".
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