All of these fountains were designed by the architect Jacopo della Porta. All of these fountains were also built after the Aqua Felice was brought to the city. Della Porta;s actual position was “Architect of the Fountains of Rome”, and this was a salaried position. He was assisted by an unknown fountain architect names Bartolomeo Gritti. There are many records that clearly document his fountain designs and water features. Jacopo did a lot fot he water flow calculations, monitoring the works, and basically acts as a supervisor. The fountains that were used for the Aqua Felice were all basically within the same architectural style, a large elongated basin as the base, with an irregular shaped basin held up by two or three steps. This is the basic style, with some variation depending on the specific fountains.
Tortise Fountain:
There are only a fe fountains created by della Porta that are different from the rest. The Tortise fountain is one of these designs. It is located in the Piazza Mattei. These fountains, all of them, none the less, feature no live quality. This basically means that the water and the design of the fountain have nothing to do with one another. The fountains are merely a water receptacle. Therefore the della Porta fountains are all featuring a certain monotony. Even the two fountains that are different, with their tritons and hideous masks, still fail to give life to the fountain. Della Porta was unable to move away from the 16th century norms of the public fountain. The form would not really be changed until early in the next century. Jacopo also worked in difficult conditions. The Congregation fo the Fountains expected 18 fountains, not 18 masterpieces, but 18 working fountains. The idea was that the fountains needed to be practical as well as low in cost. Therefore della Porta needed to create these fountains on basically no budget and in a very short period of time. His inspiration could only come from the only two example of public fountains that existed at that time, one was in Piazza di S. Maria in Trastevere, the other in St. Peter's Square.
