The Water Fountains of Rome
The only and very scanty mention of this fountain is to be found in the aforesaid account of the Chancellery: "The hospital of St. John originated from those people who carried water around Rome, and during the festival the Hospital held each year a chasuble was put on display, on which one could see a donkey laden with barrels of water taken from the fountain ". Other corporations built fountains with their own emblems: for example, the well known "Botticella" or barrel (now in Largo S. Rocco), the obvious sign of the Innkeepers' Corporation, whose guild church was the adjacent San Rocco; and the much less famous fountain of the "Specialist Grocers" in the garden of S. Maria del Orto ["Holy Mary of the Market Garden"] in Trastevere. In the same way, the Water Sellers' Corporation, when it was still firmly on its feet (well before the pontificate of Gregory XIII) was represented in "our" little fountain by the sculpture of an Acquarolo wearing the clothes of his day and with the symbol of his trade - the little barrel fountain - in his arms. My notes about the water sellers, of whom so little is known, would be even less complete if I neglected to tell you that, in such badly reduced circumstances because of the advent of so many fountains, their Corporation soon became impoverished and ceased to exist; not only did the streets and churches named for them lose their titles, but the Water Sellers themselves, the Acquaroli, had to be content, in the early 1600s, to share the church used by the Innkeepers' Confraternity. Like attracts like.
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