Bernini's Fountains: an Illustration of How This Art-Form Can Be Said to Symbolize the Emotional Stability of Its Creator—The Seventeenth Century Genius

BERNINI'S FOUNTAINS: AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THIS ART-FORM CAN BE SAID TO SYMBOLIZE THE EMOTIONAL STABILITY OF ITS CREATOR—THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GENIUS

by

JANE MAYNARD MATHER B.A., McGill University, 1952

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department of Fine Arts

We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 1967 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree

that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and

Study. 1 further agree that permission for extensive copying of this

thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my

Department or by h.i>s representatives. It is understood that copying

or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Department of

The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ABSTRACT

The oft cited man on the street has never heard of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, although this great artist was perhaps the genius of the seventeenth century. Such ignorance, it is my contention in this thesis, arises from the myth that links creativity with illness, genius with insanity. The same man on the street often knows of other artists not so much, unfortunately, from their work, as from the much publicized idiosyncrasies of their personalities. Bernini, as I have endeavoured to show in this paper, was a man of outstanding stability, vitality, dis• cipline—and a man entirely committed to, and involved in, the time in which he lived. Symbolic of this balance and involvement, it is also my contention, are Bernini's Fountains in Rome. It is generally acknowledged that Bernini brought to this art-form new unity and life, and I have endeavoured here to show how this achievement in the art-form is, more than any other of his well-known accomplishments in Sculpture, Architecture, etc., closely connected to, if not completely.a projection of, the emotional stability of its creator. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION • 1

II. EMOTIONAL CLIMATE—BERNINI AND HIS TIME ... 6

III. THE PLACE OF FOUNTAINS IN THE EMOTIONAL BACK• GROUND AND THEIR PARTICULAR RELEVANCE TO TOWN PLANNING AND THE THEATRE 28

IV. THE FOUNTAINS 42 The Water Supply • 42 Eighteen Fountains by Bernini—descriptions and comments 58 Conclusion 114

V. CONCLUSION 118

BIBLIOGRAPHY 121

ILLUSTRATIONS 13 0 BERNINI'S FOUNTAINS: AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THIS ART-FORM CAN BE SAID TO SYMBOLIZE THE EMOTIONAL STABILITY OF ITS CREATOR—THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GENIUS

Beethoven, the creator of some of the greatest music ever written, in addition to becoming deaf at an early age (and partially perhaps because of this) was tortured through• out his adult life by irritability, jealousy, suspicion, violent anger and loneliness. Van Gogh, convinced that he had become an insupportable burden to others, committed suicide at the age of thirty-seven. Modigliani, whose paint• ings now hang in museums of first quality and the best pri• vate collections throughout the world, took to hashish and alcohol to which he became addicted before he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six. (At dawn the follow• ing day, Jeanne Hebuterne, his mistress and the mother of their child, jumped to her death from the window of their fifth floor apartment.) In our own times, it is now known, that in spite of considerable success and recognition (even adulation), that Ernest Hemingway shot himself. All of these artists, in fact, received varying degrees of recognition during their own lifetimes, and yet theirs, and scores of other similar stories prevail among the accounts of the lives of creative men. Whether these stories with their tragic endings tell of poverty, lack of 2 recognition, illness, or other difficulties in the artist's external circumstances, or whether they tell of searing inner conflict and loneliness, of an inability to have close relationships with others—they have given rise to the widely held belief that to be an artist one must, in modern terminology, be neurotic (or even psychotic), or at least to have suffered some sort of serious deprivation. It is, as Kubie puts it, "the old observation which links genius with insanity, creativity with illness.""*" (Those who hold this belief will even go so far as to dismiss the quite inescapable phenomenon of the creative man, whether artist or scientist, who has not suffered any of these things, by saying that the quality of his work is second-rate.) The insane-or-ill-genius idea, however, is a point of view that has in this century been frequently reexamined, and as a result of such scrutiny, become less and less widely held—particularly among those in medicine and the social sciences. Nor do I take that point of view here. This thesis is, in fact, intended to be an illustration of the reverse of this point of view; notably, that the true man of genius is a man capable of unusual self-discipline, a man of vitality, of great stability and inner resources —in short, a person of superior emotional and mental

"^Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D. , Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process, Porter Lectures, Series 22 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 195&), p. 1. 3 2 health. I put forward as the prototype of such a man— Glan Lorenzo Bernini, 1593-1680. In choosing to develop this thesis, I am perhaps

The reader may be struck here by a number of thoughts; first, to what heights might Beethoven, Modigliani etc., have soared had they not been ill and beset by dif• ficulties? Secondly, because of the undeniable masterpieces left us by these artists—the "ill-genius" myth must, it seems, contain a "grain of truth," and thirdly, would not such a thesis then imply its converse, that to become creative is to cure? Without being flippant, one can answer the last question by saying that Modigliani did not paint his way out of the self-neglect and abuse that led to his death, nor Hemingway write himself away from the lure of the shot-gun. The second has always had considerable support, from such extremes as, Dryden: "Great wits are sure to madness near allied,/and thin partitions do their bounds divide," to Kubie "... these intertwined yet mortal enemies, the creative and the neurotic processes, are uni• versal; because both arise in early childhood, not out of exceptional circumstances but out of simple and ubiquitous human experiences." One of the purposes of Kubie*s book, in fact, is to show just that. But one of his other pur• poses (and it is of course impossible here to follow the whole course of his argument) is to show that the person who can successfully free himself from the neurotic pro• cesses within him is leaving the way open for the creative processes to develop to their fullest potential. In fact, from the writings of Kubie and many others, it is now gen• erally known and accepted that it is the neurotic elements in an individual that project the sterotyped and the banal, while it takes the healthy element to produce something creative, original and unique. Other writers (among them Ojemann in a lecture entitled "Are Creativity and Mental Health Compatible?") perhaps placate the die-hards of the "ill-genius" theory further by qualifying the sort of de• privation and hardship the latter are talking about. Substituting the word "problem" for the word "deprivation" they make it clear that there are those problems which an individual can solve by calling upon his own resources— often ones that he and others did not know he possessed, and there are other problems—impossible problems—which simply lie beyond the solving power of a given individual. An answer to the first of these questions is still purely speculative, but would probably emerge from the other two. 4 treading on uncertain ground as I have no specialized know• ledge of psychology, but I have done so for two reasons: first, because it seems to me to be impossible to give any serious thought to the life and work of Bernini without being struck by this theory, and secondly, because the con• cept of a world in which the latent creativity in all people is developed to its utmost is such an exciting one, that it might be considered incumbent upon any student who has come to this realization to proselytize and to do what he can to destroy the belief in the neurotic genius.

It is beyond my abilities and the scope of this paper to delve into the dynamics of mental health. (Nor do

I intend to define the terms used in this paragraph as I am not attaching to them meanings other than those generally understood.) But some description of the ground against which the individual is placed—the accepted conditions that shape a human being—is necessary. I therefore intend to discuss in this paper about Bernini some of the aspects that are usually scrutinized when considering the stability of an individual. Notably:

i. the prevailing Zeitgeist. and how Bernini fitted

into itj

ii. the particular culture in which Bernini lived and

its attitude towards him and his workj

iii. his own beginnings and family background. 5

Of the enormous body of work created by Bernini during his long life, I have chosen to discuss his Fountains; of all the other areas of his achievement I consider them to be the creations most truly symbolic of their creator—the stable man of genius. CHAPTER II EMOTIONAL CLIMATE—BERNINI AND HIS TIME

In this chapter about Bernini and his time, let me at the outset make two points that are fundamental to what follows and which should be constantly borne in mind by the reader. The first of these, and one central to my whole thesis, is best put forward by Ralph H. Ojemann (in an essay to which I will refer in more detail elsewhere), who points out that creativity flourishes best in a culture that is not inimical to the individual's beliefs, way of life, or especially, to his talents. The second of these has been well stated by Hauser:

One ought, really, never to speak of a uniform "style of the time" dominating a whole period, since there are at any given moment as many different styles as there are artistically productive social groups. Even in epochs in which the most influential work is founded on a single class, and from which only the art of this class has come down to us, it ought to be asked whether the artistic products of other groups may have been buried or lost. . . . The artistic aims of the curia in Rome were fundamentally different from those of the royal court in Versailles, and what they had in common could certainly not be reconciled with the artistic purpose of Calvinist, bourgeois Holland. Nevertheless, it is possible to establish certain common character• istics. For, apart from the fact that the development which promotes intellectual differentiation always helps to integrate, at the same time, by facilitating the spread of cultural products and exchanges between the different cultural regions, one of the most important cultural achievements of the age of the baroque, the new natural science and the new philosophy based on 7

natural science, was international from the outset; but the universal outlook, which found expression here, also dominated the who.3.e art production of the age with all its ramifications.

Thus "Baroque" in this paper refers to the art forms in the south, and more specifically in courtly Catholic Rome, than it does to the art of Poussin or similar expressions in Europe at the time. Baroque is the term now generally accepted to describe the exuberant and extravagant forms in architecture and sculpture, and the dramatic and realistic effects of light and colour in painting that characterize works of art created in Europe in the period between 1600 and 1750. Traditionally 2 (Wittkower for example), the realism in the art of the period has been seen partly as a reflection of the great strides being made in science and philosophy—(this is the period of Descartes and "Cogito, Ergo Sum")—and partly, together with Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 195D, Vol. I, pp. 430-2. 2 Rudolph Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750> ed. Nikolaus Pevsner (Penguin Books, revised ed., 1965), writes: "Religious imagery was admitted and welcomed as a support to religious teaching. One passage of the decree [the Document produced by the Council of Trent] de• mands that *by means of the stories of the mysteries of our Redemption portrayed by paintings or other representations, the people be instructed and confirmed in the habit of re• membering, and continually revolving in mind the articles of faith.* Consequently strictest discipline and correct• ness in the rendering of the holy stories were required, and the clergy was made responsible for the surveillance of the artists. The terse deliberations of the Council were soon enlarged upon by a veritable flood of literature pro• duced by churchmen and reformers rather than by practising artists." p. 1. 8 the drama and exaggerated forms, as obedience to the spirit of the tenets of the Council of Trent which held its last session in December 1563. (These tenets were greatly re• inforced by the writings of other religious figures— particularly, as we shall see, by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.) That two such seemingly contradic• tory impulses, the secular and the religious—or rational and mystical— should combine to produce this unprecedented realism in art points up yet another characteristic of the period and its art—notably, complexity. (A further word about the "realism" of the period seems pertinent here; not only did the Baroque artist concern himself with a faithful depiction of external traits and events, but, what was new about it, with the inner psychological reality of the situ• ations depicted. This will become clearer as we continue.) Other writers, such as Janson, are inclined to dis• count these explanations on the grounds (in the case of the emotionalism and religious fervour) among other things, that their impact had subsided before 1600. It seems to

3 yHorst Woldemar Janson, History of Art; A Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Pres• ent Day (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1962), p. 405. Janson expresses doubt that the Counter-Reformation was in• fluential in inspiring "Baroque Art" on three counts; first, that the Counter-Reformation had done its work by 1600, secondly that the princes of the church (the greatest art patrons of this time) were more worldly than religious, and thirdly, that Baroque art very quickly penetrated the north of Europe where Protestantism was in force anyway. He also discounts two other factors, traditionally regarded as the 9 me however that such a judgement is at the least arbitrary and Janson's alternative theory rather lame when one con• siders the widespread familiarity with the teachings and visions of the great religious figures of the years immedi• ately preceding the Baroque period, and that "the four great reformers Ignatius, Teresa, Philip Neri and Francis Xavier, were canonized during Gregory XVs brief pontificate, all on 22 May 1622."4 Bernini was twenty-three at the time that this took place, and sixteen at the time that St. Teresa—whose chief vision Bernini later depicted—was beatified. Unquestion• ably (although Janson might point out that Teresa had died eighteen years before Bernini was born), a young man, later to become known as the artist of the Baroque, of Bernini's intelligence and sensitivity, living in Rome—the protege of Popes and Papal nephews since childhood—was bound to be deeply personally affected by such an event. In fact, as Baldinucci records, "Bernini himself used to say that this, was[i.e., St. Teresa], the most beautiful work ever to come from his hand." An additional comment on Bernini's faith, or in lay language—emotional stability—might be that this work was cultural and social phenomena behind the artistic forms—the prevailing absolutism and the arising interest in science and philosophy, substituting instead the rather weak alternative that the Baroque art forms were merely one of several develop• ments which characterize the period between 1600 and 1750. Hfittkower, p. 6. 10 executed at a time, 1645-52, when Bernini was suffering Papal disfavour and the persecution of all of Rome because of the unfortunate affair of the bell towers of St. Peter's. To remind the reader of the quality of St. Teresa's experience which was well-known and accepted in its original spirit throughout the seventeenth century—so as to inspire Bernini's "most beautiful work," it is worth quoting St. Teresa's own description of her vision:

Beside me, on the left hand, appeared an angel in bodily form, such as I am not in the habit of seeing except very rarely. Though I often have visions of angels, I do not see them. . . . But it was our Lord's will that I should see this angel in the following way. He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest rank of angels, who seem to be all on fire. They must be of the kind called cherubim, but they do not tell me their names. I know very well that there is a great difference between some angels and others, and between these and others still, but I could not possibly explain it. In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul then content with any• thing but God. This is not a physical, but a spiritual pain though the body has some share in it—even a con• siderable share. So great is this wooing which takes place between God and the soul that if anyone thinks I am lying, I pray God, in his goodness, to grant him some experience of it.5

"The Life_of Saint Teresa of Avila by herself, trans, with an Introduction by J.M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1957), p. 210. Bernini's sculptural depiction is in the Cornaro Chapel of S. Mana della Vittoria, Rome. 11

As Howard Hibbard points out:

Bernini's images constantly resolve the duality of Christianity through their physical record of spiritual states. Teresa's words left little to be imagined and Bernini made her vision concrete in accord with the principles laid down by St. Ignatious in his Spiritual Exercises.^

The Exercises, written in the zealous spirit of the Counter-Reformation were possibly the most influential of all the literature produced after the Council of Trent and they were written by the great founder of the influential Society of Jesus. (Although first published in mid-sixteenth century, the Exercises became most effective after 1599 when Ignatius published a Directorium in Exercitia or guide, to the Exercises.) They were designed to help man discover what

Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 242, notes. The contemporary reader would be in• clined to agree with Y. Bezard writing in 1931 whom Profes• sor Hibbard also quotes in this note when Bezard says: "L'amour divin doit t*tre sculpte avec plus de modestie. II tient ici un peu trop a l'humanite. ..." Post-Freudian critics would probably declare St. Teresa's unconscious motivation to be limpid clear, and seize for corroboration on such elucidating of her comments as: "I began, then, to confess to the priest . . . and he became extremely fond of me. . . . He clearly understood from ma that nothing would induce me to commit any grave offence against God, and he gave me the" same assurance for himself." The Life, pp. 40- 41, and more comments about this particular relationship that seem the common symptoms of a fantasied love. Else• where in the Life Teresa dwells frequently upon her struggle between the flesh and the spirit, and perhaps pertinent to her vision too is her recurring illness: "... the pains in my heart, of which I had come to be cured, were so much more intense that I sometimes felt as if sharp teeth were being plunged into it." Life, p. 42. 12

God's will was in regard to his life and then to give him the energy and courage to follow that will. But their particular novelty and the source of their intense influ• ence was the method set down by Ignatius to lead to this discovery. It involved employing all the senses. "The senses are brought into play with almost scientific pre• cision and help to achieve an eminently realistic awareness 7 of the subjects suggested for meditation."' These were, during the four week programme stipulated by Ignatius—sin and its consequences during the first week, Christ's life on earth the second week, His passion the third, and His risen life the fourth. (The practice of these exercises, although somewhat changed as far as the length of time in• volved is concerned, has now come to be known as "going into retreat"—as the exercitant withdraws into seclusion or re• treats from the world.) Such is, in brief outline (for I have not touched here upon other figures such as Philip Neri, Saint John of the Cross or Charles Borromeo), one ingredient of the emotional-psychological-spiritual ground against which Bernini, by being born at this time, was placed, and into which, to continue the figure, he blended perhaps better than any other artist of his time. Bernini was a devout man and became more so as he grew older.

Wittkower, p. 4. 13

His close relations with the Jesuits were well-known, and it has been noticed that there is a connexion be• tween the directness of Loyola's spiritual recommenda• tions, their tangibility and realism [as we have seen in the case of his Cornaro Chapel Saint Teresa] and the art of Bernini and his generation.°

Baldinucci often refers to this aspect of Bernini's life and in one instance paints a quite vivid picture:

. . . but from that hour [when he married] he began to behave more like a cleric than a layman. So spiritual was his way of life that, according to what was reported to me by those who know, he might often have been worthy of the admiration of the most perfect monastics. He always kept fixed in his mind an intense awareness of death. He often had long discussions on this subject with Father Marchesi, his nephew who was an Oratorian priest at the Chiesa Nuova, known for his goodness and learning. So great and continual was the fervor with which he longed for the happiness of that last step, that for the sole intention of attaining it, he fre• quented for forty years continuously the devotions conducted toward this end by the fathers of the Society of Jesus in Rome. There, also, he partook of the Holy Eucharist twice a week. He became absorbed at times in the thoughts and in the expression of the profound reverence and under• standing that he always had of the efficacy of the Blood of Christ the Redeemer, in which, he was wont to say, he hoped to drown his sins. He made a drawing of this subject, which he then had engraved and printed. It shows the image of Christ Crucified, with streams of blood gushing from his hands and feet forming almost a sea, and the great Queen of Heaven who offers it to God the Father. He also painted this pious concept on a great canvas which he wanted always to have facing his bed in life and in death.9

Of his dying, which apparently was of several days' duration., Baldinucci adds (p. 69):

8 Wittkower, p. 5. 9 Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans, from the Italian by Catherine Enggass (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), pp. 68-9. 14

Throughout it all he was very patient and resigned to the Divine Will. Nor did he as a rule converse about anything but his trust in it. His words were so striking that those in attendance, among whom the Cardinal Azzolino did not disdain to find himself often, marveled greatly at the concepts that divine love sug• gested to him.

Twenty odd years earlier when he was bidden by Louis XIV to come to France to redesign the Louvre, he was pleased and honoured, but anxious about the journey. Baldinucci recounts as follows (pp. 49-50):

But fear constricted his heart at the thought of the imminent dangers of such a long voyage as he was then about sixty-eight years old. He found himself, therefore, in great anxiety which his dearest friend, Father Gian Paolo Oliva, knew how to handle with care, eloquence, and love. Father Oliva was the General of the Society of Jesus, that noble order, one of the glories of our century. Father Oliva, following his own instincts, wishing to please the King and impelled by the importunities of Cardinal Antonio Barberini who was acting in the King's name, entered into the negoti• ations. After leavening Bernini's justifiable fears with hope, he asserted that to submit to such a summons, even at the cost of life itself, was an admirable action. Bernini then, without further thought, made up his mind and resolved to leave.

These revelations of Bernini's life show us that against at least one area of the vivid and variegated seven• teenth century ground—that of a renewed and powerful faith— he is in complete harmony.The other areas that compose

Tin the course of the seventeenth century the Order of the Jesuits itself went through a characteristic meta• morphosis: under the generals Muzio Vitelleschi (1615-45) Vincenzo Caraffa (1645-49) and Giovan Paolo Oliva, mundane interests in wealth, luxury and political intrigue, and a frivolity in the interpretation of the vows replaced the original zealous and austere spirit of the Order. Moreover, 15 the ground have been said to be (at least as far as Italy and southern Europe are concerned) Absolutism in the poli• tical sphere, the rise of natural science, the new Ration• alism in philosophy, and a wave of exploration, discovery and colonization resulting in a commercial revolution.

On the one hand the church warmly reasserted the mystery of the Faith; on the other, Descartes with his "Cogito ergo sum" displaced medieval faith with reason. It was the century of Galileo and Francis Bacon; of the invention of the telescope, the microscope and the thermometer; of the discovery of the circulation of the blood.11

It is not relevant here to discuss, as Hauser does, the intricate dynamics (although "dynamic" and "movement" are possibly the two words that best describe the essence the Catholic Restoration had led to a consolidation of doctrine and authority, expressed by the glamour of the High Baroque papal court, which vied with those of the absolute monarchies. As a result of such developments one finds, broadly speaking, that inside the Church the anti- aesthetic approach to art of the period of the militant Counter-Reformation was now replaced by an aesthetic appre• ciation of artistic quality. This readiness to discriminate, which began under Pope Paul V, coincided in the pontificates of Urban VIII, Innocent X and Alexander VII (1655-67) with the maturity of the great Baroque individualists, Bernini, Cortona, Borromini, Sacchi, and Algardi, who received full official recognition. The turn to aestheticism in official religious circles is one of the distinguishing marks of the new era. Even if the arts remained an important weapon in the post- counter-reformatory arsenal, they had no longer the sole function to instruct and edify, but also to delight. " Wittkower, pp. 90-91.' Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages; an Introduc• tion to its History and Significance (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1959), p. 430. 16

of this century and its art to a degree that is not compar• able again until the present time) and complexity arising 12 from these contradictory elements. What we are concerned with here is how Bernini looks against this ground. (I do not want to anticipate at this point a chapter on Bernini's fountains but it is fascinating to keep in mind that just in the iconography of La Fontana dei Quattro Fiume [q.v.] can be found many glimpses of the entire seventeenth century ground.) Let us look first at Absolutism. It is quite true that the Roman scene in the seventeenth century was ruled by the Popes—the great, rich, worldly, cultivated princes of the Church and their families: Borghese, Barberini, Ludovisi, Pamphili, Chigi, Altieri, Rospigliosi. And, as Baldinucci records "It was often said that Bernini was a 13 man born to associate with great princes." Indeed as Bernini's genius became increasingly indisputable and his fame grew, he also became a great favourite and companion of these absolute papal rulers who were also patrons of the arts to an unprecedented degree. Baldinucci attests to this over and over again: Gf Cardinal Scipione Borghese (nephew of Paul V): 12 Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), Vol. I, p. 423. Baldinucci, Enggass translation, p. 37. 17

The diligent care that Bernini employed to avoid offending him pleased the Cardinal so much that from that day onward he loved him tenderly, (p. 12)

Of Gregory XV (Ludovisi):

Not much time elapsed before the new Pope, who appre• ciated Bernini's merit above that of any other artist of his age, was pleased to engage him to carve his portrait. . . . Afterwards, the cardinal-nephew, knowing that Bernini possessed great nobility of thought and not a little erudition to match his excellence in art, was pleased to have him dine with him regularly on holidays in order that he might en• gage him in stimulating conversation, (p. 14)

Of Urban VIII (Barberini):

But since we have now come to the last days of Urban VIII, we would like, ... to give briefly some further indication of the marked love with which Bernini was always treated by that pontiff. First of all the Pope wished that Bernini treat him always with the same intimacy as when he was a cardinal. The Pope as a nor• mal practice gave Bernini free access to his private quarters without a prior appointment. During the din• ner hour the Pope used to have pleasant conversation with him until it was time to retire. When sleep brought an end to discussion, it was Bernini's task to pull the blinds, close the windows, and take his leave. As a consequence of the Pope's love and esteem and in order to compensate him handsomely on all occasions, Bernini was made the architect of St. Peter's. . . . Nor do I wish to leave this subject without noting a remarkable instance, which because of the surrounding circumstances is quite exemplary. One day the Pope called in Paola Allaleona, his chief master of cere• monies, and said to him, "Paolo, we would like to go in person today to Bernini's house to refresh our• selves somewhat with the sight of his works. What do you think?" "Holy Father," replied Paolo, "it would seem to me that such a visit by your Holiness would be taxing and I would not advise it." At this the Pope replied, "Well then, we will go to our nephew's house and amuse ourselves with the children." "Oh yes, that I should like," said the master of ceremonies. "You really are an ignoramus," responded the Pope, "not to realize that for us to go in person to see the children would be puerile, whereas to render honor of this sort to the home of a virtuoso of such caliber would be an 18

act of magnanimity in which virtue would be both honored and increased in him and in others." And that very day, accompanied by sixteen cardinals, the Pope went to Bernini's house, to the marvel and applause of all Rome. (pp. 27-28)

Of Innocent X (Pamphili)—after Bernini had reinstated himself with his design for La Fontana del Quattro Fiume: Afterwards and for the rest of his pontificate, Bernini was always in favor and held in the high esteem to which he was accustomed. Indeed, he was so much in the good graces of that pontiff that every week or so the Pope wanted him at the palace, and there he passed several hours in delightful discourse, (pp. 36-37)

Of Alexander VII (Chigi) . . . the Pope wished to have Bernini with him every day, to have him mingle with the learned men with whom he adorned his table. The Pope used to say that he was astounded at how Bernini, by the sole force of his genius, could arrive at the point in the discussions that the others had scarcely attained with long study. The Pope named Bernini his own architect, something which the other popes had not done as they all had family architects on whom they wished to confer that post. After Alexander VII this was no longer the case. Because of the respect his successors had of Bernini's singular virtue, he held that post as long as he lived, (p. 42)

Two times the Pope went in person to Bernini's house. Such was the esteem in which he held Bernini that he was in the habit of saying that nature, in order to make him altogether unique, had given him great genius and extraordinary wisdom and that painting, sculpture, and architecture were the lesser part of his excellence and in this regard it was sufficient to say that he lived during the pontificate of Alexander VII. (p. 61)

Of Clement IX (Rospigliosi): Clement IX followed the custom of Alexander VII and Urban VIII by engaging Bernini in conversation at the dinner hour, but, however, with the difference that Clement ordinarily wished no other person present. He usually dined late in the morning and he never permitted 19

Bernini to go without letting him know by some warm remark how great a pleasure he derived from this so great an inconvenience to him (Bernini was already in his declining years). One day, distracted by I know not what worry, he was about to let Bernini go without a word. When the Pope observed that Bernini hesitated, he asked him if there was something he wished. Bernini replied: "Forgive me, Holy Father, I am so accustomed to receiving from Your Holiness some word of consolation on leaving that I cannot bring myself to depart without it." This incident was most pleasing to Clement, who recognized through it the great esteem in which Bernini held the honor of being with him. (p. 62)

This pontiff also visited Bernini's house on several occasions.

Of Queen Christina of Sweden, then living in Rome:

There are many indications of that great esteem which he always aroused. As proof it will suffice to tell of the first time that Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden did him the honor of going to see him at work in his own house. Bernini received her in the heavy rough garment he was accustomed to wear when working in marble. Since it was what he wore for his art, he considered it to be the most worthy possible garment in which to receive that great lady. This beautiful subtlety was quickly perceived by the Queen's sublime genius. His action not only increased her concept of his spirit, but even led her, as a sign of her esteem for his art, to wish to touch the garment with her own hand. (p. 76)

Very little more needs to be said to establish that Bernini was not only at home in the political system of the time—he was the intimate of the rulers of it. These remarks of Baldinucci add a great deal more to our picture of Bernini in many ways—among them to show that as well as being sculp• tor, architect, painter, playwright and composer, he was a wise, witty, well-informed man of considerable erudition. 20

It is assuredly incumbent upon the man who holds the office of Supreme Pontiff to be well-informed on developments of his time; the reigning popes of the seventeenth century were cultivated men of great intellect, certainly conversant with the latest developments in philosophy and the new natural science and it was they who sought out Bernini for his stimulating and enriching conversation on these subjects.

These facts, although illuminating, are somewhat superficial, or at least merely descriptive; but some remarks of Bernini himself about art—". . . he did not bind himself to the rules. His usual words on this subject were that those who do not sometimes go outside the rules never go beyond them.""*"^—give a somewhat more profound insight into

Bernini the individual, in the light of the changing seven• teenth century concept of individualism."'"^

^Baldinucci, Engg&ss translation, p. 74.

"^In contrast to this, Arnold Hauser, Social History of Art, Vol. I, p. 331, says: "The artist of the age of mannerism had lost almost everything that was able to give a foothold to the artist-craftsman of the Middle Ages and, in many respects, even to the Renaissance artist in process of emancipating himself from the thraldom of craftsmanship: a solid position in society, the protection of the guild, a clear-cut relation to the Church, and an, on the whole, un- problematical relation to tradition. The culture of in• dividualism provided him with innumerable openings that were not available to the medieval artist, but it set him in a vacuum of freedom, in which he was often on the point of losing himself. In the intellectual revolution of the six• teenth century, which impelled artists to undertake a total revision of their world-view, they were unable either com• pletely to entrust themselves to leadership coming from out• side or to rely entirely on their own instincts. They were 21

To oversimplify considerably for the sake of brevity,

Man in the Middle Ages did not look on himself as an individ• ual of varying potential differing in numberless ways from his fellow-man; he was a creature of God whose sole purpose in this world, by following the prescribed path, resisting definite known temptations, was to prepare himself for life in the next. During the period known as the Renaissance

Man's concept of himself underwent a change; he realized that he could, to a great extent, control his own destiny, that his life on earth was worth striving to perfect in it• self not to merely use as a preparation for the next world.

He began to teach himself things, to have accomplishments.

(His was the age of the rise of the portrait—with this art- form swinging around from the profile with idealized features torn by force, on the one hand, and by freedom, on the other, and stood defenceless against the chaos that threatened to destroy the whole order of the intellectual world. In them we encounter for the first time the modern artist with his inward strife, his zest for life and his escapism, his traditionalism and his rebelliousness, his exhibitionistic subjectivism and the reserve with which he tries to hold back the ultimate secret of his personality. From now on the number of cranks, eccentrics and psychopaths among artists increases from day to day. Parmigianino devotes himself to alchemy in his later years, becomes melancholy and entirely neglects his appearance. From his youth up• wards, Pontormo suffers from serious fits of depression and becomes more and more timid and reserved as the years pass. Rosso commits suicide. Tasso dies engulfed in mental dark• ness. Greco sits behind curtained windows in broad day• light, to see things which an artist of the Renaissance would probably not have been able to see at all, but which an artist of the Middle Ages would have been able to see, if at all, even in daylight." 22

to three quarter or full face with the true features of the sitter. It is significant, that the true portrait as we now think of it, that is to say one in which photographic representation of a likeness is secondary to the portrayal of the inner essence or character of the sitter—began to emerge in the seventeenth century.) During the Baroque period the concept of the individ• ual developed not so much further, as in a different direc• tion. This great step forward in human development can be attributed largely to the discoveries of Copernicus; notably that the earth was not the fixed centre of the universe but part of a vast moving system revolving around the sun. Al• though this meant that Man's world had been soundly put in its place so to speak, and that consequently man had, in a world-view, become infinitesimal, paradoxically Man began, having arrived at this concept, taken this great step in the understanding of things, to feel himself capable of unlimited achievement. Hauser puts it thus:

Man became a tiny, insignificant factor in the new dis• enchanted world. But the most remarkable thing was that, out of this changed position, he developed a new feeling of self-respect and pride. The consciousness of understanding the great, overwhelmingly powerful universe, of which he himself was a mere part, became the source of an unprecedented and boundless self-

Perhaps it is not too tenuous an argument to say that Bernini can be regarded as a prototype of the new Individualism.

Hauser, Vol. I, p. 432. 23

His own remarks about art bespeak of this self-confidence, and continual allusions by others to one of the qualities of his genius as an artist—his boldness (whether in con• cept or execution)—attest to this too. Still, to the twentieth century reader, Bernini, as I have so far portrayed him, may not yet take shape as a person. We have, so far, a richly coloured ground—but Bernini seems almost too much part of it; in an age that stressed intense religious experience, Bernini was devout; in an age of papal princes of wealth, cultivation and taste, Bernini was their friend; in an age when these same rulers were discerning and concerned about the arts, Bernini was a great artist; and in an age when the revolutionary dis• coveries of Man were in turn giving individual men boundless self-confidence, Bernini was the prototype of this phenom• enon. Again we must turn to Baldinucci for a glimpse of the greatness and stability that can be separated from this background and be true of the emotionally healthy person at any period in time. Speaking of the persecution and monumental disgrace suffered by Bernini after the debacle of the bell towers of St. Peter's, Baldinucci says:

But when a man loses that which he is accustomed to having, or if he does not have that which he desires, he often gives way to his feelings, and like a city assailed by enemies his peace is destroyed, and he is kept in continual torment to a degree commensurate with his longings. They are deemed the wisest, therefore, 24

who least allow themselves to be carried away by such passion. That a man such as Bernini be subjected to the ordeal of persecutions and lose for a short time the acclaim that his genius attracted from every quarter was necessary in order that the world might have know• ledge of the steadfastness of his powers and other gifts of his spirit, gifts which gained greater magnificence not only through the resoluteness with which he endured many blows but also through his absolute command of his emotions. Thus he lived tranquilly and carried his work on with great diligence. During this very period he brought forth for Rome to see the most beautiful works he had ever done.l?

It is difficult, even for a professional, to recon• struct the psyche of a man at a distance of nearly three hundred years. But I must add a few remarks to those of Baldinucci on the emotional stability of Bernini in order to leave as little doubt about it as possible in the mind of the reader, and thereby, to strengthen my thesis that this quality was a key one in bringing new life, and in some cases, perfection, to the fountains of Rome; to prove (if such a thing is ever possible) that the fountains, in turn, are the art-form that most perfectly reflect this quality in their creator. Many, many writers have dealt with the subject of creativity and emotional stability, but Ralph H. Ojemann in his lecture "Are Creativity and Mental Health Compatible?" sets out succinctly some of the conditions for both. Two of these, the prevailing Zeitgeist or world-view, and the receptiveness of a particular culture—both giving rise to

Baldinucci, Enggass translation, p. 3 5 25 recognition or the lack of it, have already been discussed at length with regard to Bernini. Two more, the blocking or encouraging of motivation, and family or childhood con- 18 ditions I will touch on briefly here. One anecdote quoted from Chantelou will show the relevancy of both to Bernini: One of the first things I remember his telling me is that the Pope, at that time only a cardinal, was once at the house of Bernini's father, who was also a sculp• tor. After seeing a work that the Cavalier had fin• ished at the age of eight, Cardinal Barberini (for so Urban VIII was then called) laughingly said to Bernini's father: "Signor Bernini take care I That child will sur• pass you and doubtless will be more skillful than his master." He said that his father replied brusquely, "Your Eminence knows that in this game, he who loses wins." (p. 126 in A Documentary History of Art by Elizabeth Holt).

We know that Bernini was taught by his father, who was him• self a well-known and successful sculptor of the time (see discussion of La Barcaccia), and this anecdote leaves no doubt that he was encouraged (not, like Beethoven, brow• beaten), by a loving father. Two more considerations by professionals on the subject of the emotional make-up of genius are applicable

"When we feel insecure, or inadequate, or hungry, or blocked in some . . . important motivation we will often attempt to raise our own security or adequacy by blocking someone else. Block strong motivations over a long period of time—that is, make it difficult for the individual to achieve a measure of self-respect, security, activity, sexual expression, personal significance [underlining is mine as these two are particularly relevant], and we have the beginnings of intense mental strains which may lead to a breakdown." Ralph H. Ojemann (essay is incorporated in Creativity and Psychological Health, ed. Michael F. Andrews, Syracuse University Press, 1961), p. 27. 26 in the case of Bernini. One concerns maturity, the other, physical rhythm. Of the first there has already been con• siderable evidence in this paper but one further anecdote about Bernini against the following remarks of Lawrence Kubie, Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process, is pertinent. Kubie is speaking here of the moment of inner decision for a young person (specifically here a medical student), of whether to acquire wisdom and maturity or, simply knowledge:

Shall he or shall he not be his brother's keeper? Shall he cling to the unrecognized prerogative of childhood to shut out the suffering of others or even secretly to exult in it? Or shall he yield to those simultaneous, powerful, internal and external pressures ... to force a confrontation with human needs other than his own? (p. 129)

A few more remarks of Baldinucci will show where Bernini stands in this instance:

Bernini developed great discretion in speaking of the works of others. He was accustomed to praise the good and to remain silent about what was lacking, and if there was nothing to praise, to invent ways of speaking without committing himself. (Baldinucci, Enggass trans., p. 75)

Gilbert J. Rose, M.D., writing in Canadian Art ex• pounds a theory (as have others) that the innate body rhythms of an individual (i.e., an artist) have a direct 19 bearing on his artistic product. With this theory in

7Gilbert J. Rose, M.D., "The Springs of Art—A Psycholanalyst's Approach," Canadian Art, Issue No. 100, January 1966, Vol. XXIII, NoTX 27 mind it is interesting to consider the following description of Bernini:

So I will tell you that the Cavalier is a man of short stature but well-proportioned, thin rather than fat, and of a fiery temperament. His face resembles an eagle's, especially the eyes. He has very long eye• brows and a large forehead that is a little caved in toward the middle and rises gently from the eyes. He is bald, and what hair he has is curly and white. By his own admission, he is sixty-five. Nevertheless, he is vigorous for that age, and walks firmly as though he were only thirty or forty. [My underlinings.] One might say that his mind is one of the most perfect nature has ever formed, for, without having studied, he has al• most all the gifts which the sciences give a man. Be• sides, he has a fine memory, a lively and quick imagina• tion, and his judgement seems clear and sound. His enunciation is very beautiful and he has a special talent for explaining things with words, expres• sions and gestures, and for making them vivid as well as the greatest painters have been able to do with their brushes. u

Could this, possibly, be an additional source of the joyous life that Bernini gave to the fountains of Rome?

de Freart, Sieur de Chantelou, Journal du voyage du Cavalier Berhin en France, Paris, 1930, in A documentary History of Art, Vol. II, selected and edited by Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1958), p. 125. Entry for June 6th, 1665. This was written some years after Bernini's journey to France, I665. The translator is L. Lalanne. CHAPTER III THE PLACE OF FOUNTAINS IN THE EMOTIONAL BACKGROUND AND THEIR PARTICULAR RELEVANCE TO TOWN PLANNING AND THE THEATRE

It would be easy, and the most straightforward reason, to say that I have chosen Bernini's Fountains (as distinct from any other aspect of his work), to illustrate my thesis of the sane-and-stable-man-of-genius, simply be• cause within the scope of this paper it is impossible to discuss all the other aspects; Sculpture, Architecture, Composing, Painting, Town-Planning, Playwriting and Stage Design. Limitation of time and space, is, indeed, one of the reasons, but like the Baroque period itself, one single cause for a manifestation or symptom is not enough, and the etiology for my choice is also a complex one.

A clue to one of the most fundamental reasons can be found in these words of Lewis Mumford:

Life flourishes in dilation of the senses. Without it, the beat of the pulse is slower, the tone of the muscles is lower, the posture lacks confidence, the finer discriminations of the eye and the touch are lack• ing, perhaps the will to live itself is defeated. To starve the eye, the ear, the skin, the nose is just as much to court death as to withhold food from the stomach.^

The seventeenth century or the Baroque period was one which flourished on this "dilation of the senses" and

Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1961), p. 296. 29 one needs only the most casual acquaintance with the sculp• tural works of Bernini to know that, whether consciously 2 or not, he was innately aware of this. And fountains, in that they contain not only the architectural and sculptural elements appealing to the eye, also contain the animate and often dynamic (adjectives applicable to the century as a whole) element of water—appealing to the ear as well as to the eye—and perhaps to something deeper in the spirit as 3 well. Bernini himself, as Baldinucci tells us, was well aware of this universal need for water: Actually, with Bernini, it was conscious. One instance of his remarks to Chantelou show that he was always aware of his audience and the visual impact of his work: "He said another thing even more extraordinary: sometimes in order to imitate the model well it is necessary to introduce in a marble portrait something that is not found in the model. This seems to be a paradox, but he explained it thus: in order to represent the darkness that some people have around the eye, it is necessary to deepen the marble in the place where it is dark in order to represent the effect of that color and thus make up by skill, so to speak, the im• perfection of the art of sculpture, which is unable to give color to objects." "Paul de Freart, Sieur de Chantelou, Diary of Cavalier Bernini's Journey in France" (1665) (ex• cerpts). Elizabeth Gilmore Holt (ed.), A Documentary History of Art, Vol. II (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), p. 126. 3 Charles Moore, "The Architecture of Water," Canadian Architect, 4:1, pp. 40-47, November 1959, says that water "evokes the image of great distances and far places" and like the theatre, acts on our senses and imagination. Elizabeth B. Kassler, "Why Water," Architectural Record, May 1959, p. 189, says, "Consider the Chinese and Japanese, waterlovers both, waterlovers even in damp and rainy climates, and treasuring water not only for the delight it offers the senses, but as a possible source of spiritual growth, for they believe that the right experiencing of nature can help man find his true place in the universe." 30

Another of his precepts should be brought forth since we are speaking of fountains. It is that since foun• tains are made for the enjoyment of water, then the water should always be made to fall so that it can be seen. It was with such a precept in mind, I believe, that in his restoration of the bridge of Sant'Angelo by order of Clement IX, he had the side walls lowered so that the water could better be enjoyed. The eye then may see with double pleasure from the banks of the river the flow of water as well as the bridge above, ornamented with angels that allude to its ancient name.4

Another layer of meaning (hinted at by Mumford and which by now I hope that I have succeeded in making explicit to the reader as a reason for choosing Fountains), is perhaps a fanciful or poetic one but seems to come inevitably to mind and to be inextricably tied to my thesis. The latter is in part concerned with the sane and stable human being. What exactly is meant by this, or what is meant by mental 5 health, I do not intend to attempt to discuss here. But without recourse to definitions or psychiatry text-books, I affirm that it is now an accepted part of the layman's learning that the essence of mental health (whatever else may be involved) is flexibility. Flexibility implies movement; water, a great deal of the time, and almost always as it is found in fountains, is moving. The first layer Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans, from the Italian by Catherine Enggass (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), p. 31. 5 Those far more qualified than I, Ralph Ojemann "Are Creativity and Mental Health Compatible?" Creativity and Psychological Health (Syracuse University Press, 1961), p. 25, for example, describes mental health as one of two terms which are "rather well-known for their persistence in defying definition." 31

then of this reason for selecting Bernini's fountains is that the stable man as well as needing food for his body needs food for his emotions (and Bernini, as we have seen was acutely aware of this), and the second layer is that the essential quality of the stable man—flexibility—can be said to be symbolized by the essential element of fountains, the element without which they would not be fountains— moving water. In spite of the aforementioned limitation of time and space however, two other aspects of Bernini's work— Town Planning and Stage Design must be discussed briefly here not because first, they were both outstanding accomplishments of Bernini, or secondly, because they were both outstanding developments of the seventeenth century—(both these reasons are quite valid)—but because these two are inextricably involved with each other and the resulting combination con• sidered together with fountains can be said to interdigitate. Speaking first of Stage Design, it is again beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the extensive seventeenth century developments in Drama and Stage Design—or the rea• sons for them—(although the reasons are of course in many > cases the same as those underlying other art=forms) but an outline is essential to show in what way they—particularly Stage Design—are related to our subject. The simple perspective stage (which gave the only adequate view of the action to those members of the audience sitting dead centre— usually royalty or the princes of the Church)—gave way, after a series of intermediate steps, to the wing stage— more-or-less as we now know it, thereby achieving once again the great accomplishment of the Baroque—the illusion of perspective.^* This, of course was a great step forward for the enjoyment of the Drama. Also introduced during this period or slightly earlier was the significant development of the proscenium arch "which . . . represented the transi• tion from the reality of the auditorium to the illusionary 7 world of the stage."' A third development, consistent with this enthusiastic embracing of all that produced illusion, was the extensive introduction of elaborate machinery. BjurstrBm, speaking of a stage set thought to be by Bernini says: ". . . it is generally considered to have been the first theatre to have a wing stage with all the increased possibilities for changes of scene that this provided." [This refers to the Teatro Farnese, built in 1618.] BjurstrSm Per, Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design, Figura.. Nova Series II (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1962). 7 Ibid., p. 18. This author continues: "There is the suggestion of a proscenium arch in the two side screens in a drawing from the early 16th century now in the National museum, Stockholm. It appears fully developed in a chiaro- scura woodcut of the theatre belonging to the Accademia degli Intl?onati, Siena, showing the proscenium arch and the set for the premiere of a comedy, Ortensio, in 1560." In a true discussion of the theatre of the period a great deal more would need to be said about the tournament theatre and the parterre theatre, about lighting, about-: types of dramatic entertainment and about the contributions of individual designers. 33

Naturally the entirely traditional mechanical effects were also of importance; the fires of hell and the heavenly choir descending on its cloud.9

For Bernini, as he was in all the main artistic developments in Italy in this century, was also involved in the theatre and in stage design. Once again, Baldinucci tells us:

Bernini's ability to blend his talents in the arts for the invention of stage machinery has never been equalled in my opinion. They say that in the celebrated spectacle The Inundation of the Tiber he made it appear that a great mass of water advanced from far away little by little breaking through the dikes. When the water broke through the last dike facing the audience, it flowed forward with such a rush and spread so much terror among the spectators that there was noone, not even among the most knowledgeable, who did not quickly get up to leave in fear of an actual flood. Then, suddenly, with the opening of a sluice gate, all the water was drained away. Another time he made it appear that by a casual un• foreseen accident the theatre caught fire. Bernini represented a carnival carriage, behind which some ser• vants with torches walked. The person whose job it was to perpetrate the trick repeatedly brushed his torch against the stage set as happened sometimes. It was as if he wanted to spread the flames above the wall parti• tions. Those who did not know the game cried out loudly for him to stop so that he would not set fire to the scenery. Scarcely had fear been engendered in the audience by the action and the outcry, when the whole set was seen burning with artificial flames. There was such terror among the spectators that it was necessary to reveal the trick to keep them from fleeing. After• ward there was another noble and beautiful scene. Once he composed two prologues for a spectacle to be performed in two theatres, one opposite the other, so that the people could hear the play in one theatre as well as in the other. The spectators in the regular theatre, who were the most important and famous, saw themselves recreated in effigy by masks in the other theatre in a manner so lifelike that they were amazed. One of the prologues faced outward, while the other was reversed, as the parts were played. It was delightful

BjurstrBm, p. 26. 34

to see the departure of the people—in carriages, on foot, and on horseback—at the conclusion.

It was Bernini who first invented that beautiful stage machine for representing the rising of the sun. It was so much talked about that Louis XIII, the French King of glorious memory, asked him for a model of it. Bernini sent it to him with careful instructions, at the end of which he wrote these words, "It will work when I send you my head and hands."10

What have these developments in Stage Design and

Bernini's part in them got to do with Town Planning? And what, in turn, has either to do with Bernini's Fountains?

Most succinctly the answers to these questions are first,

Baroque architecture and city planning are continually re•

ferred to as "theatrical," and Bernini, as we have just seen,

had a great talent for the theatre—giving further substance

to this opinion. Secondly, incorporated in these so-called

"theatrical effects" so outstandingly used by Bernini in his

Town Planning projects, in fact to a great extent responsible

for them, were his Fountains. To answer both questions more

fully, I will illustrate two of Bernini's better known Town

Planning projects—the Piazza San Pietro and the Piazza

Navona.

THE PIAZZA NAVONA:

The history of one of Rome's most delightful piazzas

the unusually shaped Piazza Navona, is too well known to go

Baldinucci, Enggass translation, pp. 83-84. 35 into here.^ Bernini became involved with the piazza to a degree when, under Urban VIII, he was appointed, in 1625, Commissioner of the Fountains of the Piazza Navona. Not until twenty years later, however, under Pope Innocent X, Pamphili, did his real involvement with the Piazza Navona begin. A more detailed description of the construction of each of the separate fountains of the piazza, the Nettuno, the Moro and the Quattro Fiume, I will leave until the discussion of the fountains themselves. Here, I will only describe how the placing of these fountains is responsible for making this elliptical piazza, entirely surrounded by buildings, a dynamic place of directed movement, rather 12 than simply a static space. When Bernini's involvement with the Piazza Navona began, the dominant element was the great church of Sant' The piazza is the shape of a long, narrow ellipse— having originally been built in the time of Domitian for Greek foot-races, or agones—the name platea in agone, gradually evolving over the centuries into Piazza Navona. At a later date the piazza was often flooded for water spectacles. Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Penguins Books Inc., Baltimore, 1965), p. 118. 12 Paul Zucker, Town and Square, From the Agora to the Village Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), has developed a theory of archtypal squares, defined in terms of their spatial rather than their functional attributes, and which he calls: the CLOSED SQUARE (space self-contained), the DOMINATED SQUARE (space directed), the NUCLEAR SQUARE (space formed around a center), GROUPED SQUARES (space units com• bined), AMORPHOUS SQUARES (space unlimited); most baroque squares fit into the second category (although of course not all squares fall so neatly under any single one of these), particularly the two we are discussing. 36

Agnese begun by Rainaldi, but given its character by 13 Borromini who later took over from him. J The Church stood in the centre on the west side. Across from it was the smaller Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli (soon to be nearly eclipsed by Bernini's spatial organization), and the remainder of the surrounds of the piazza were palazzi, notably the Palazzo Pamphili, and other buildings. The •^The Church was begun in 1652 at the instigation of Pope Innocent X Pamphili whose family palazzo was situated in the piazza—adjacent to the Sant'Agnese—and who wanted, therefore, to make the Piazza Navona the most splendid in Rome. The virtually oblong shape of the piazza presented great problems to the architects—as all the significant views of what was to be an outstanding church would have to be oblique ones—solved, in the end, brilliantly by Borromini. Of the Sant'Agnese, Wittkower has this to say: "In defiance of the limitations imposed upon Borromini, S. Agnese occupies a unique position in the history of Baroque architecture. The church must be regarded, as the High Baroque revision of the centralized plan for St. Peter's. The dome of S. Agnese has a distinct place in a long line of domes dependent on Michelangelo's creation. From the late sixteenth century onwards may be observed a progressive reduction of mass and weight, a heightening of the drum at the expense of the vault, and a growing elegance of the sky-line. All this reached a kind of finality in the dome of S. Agnese. More• over, from a viewpoint opposite the entrance the dome seems to form part of the facade, dominates, and is firmly con• nected with it, since the double columns at both sides of the entrance are continued in the pilasters of the drum and the ribs of the vault. Circumstances prevented the dome of St. Peter's from appearing between two framing towers. The idea found fulfilment in S. Agnese; here dome and towers form a grand unit, perfectly balanced in scale. Never be• fore had it been possible for a beholder to view at a glance such a rich and varied group of towers and dome while at the same time experiencing the spell of the intense spatial suggestions; he feels himself drawn into the cavity of the facade, above which looms the concave mass of the drum. Art and Architecture in Italy, p. 142. 37

furnishings of the piazza consisted of the northern and southern fountains—later to become the Nettuno and the Moro (q.v.) designed by Giacomo della Porta in 1574 and entirely static in feeling—and in the centre a simple, four-sided basin without ornament which served as a horse trough. What Bernini did was to erect the magnificent, ever- moving spectacle of the Quattro Fiume (q.v.) on the longti- tudinal axis of the square, but off the central axis of S. Agnese. What this did, was to create an undulating move• ment of traffic in the piazza which did not detract from the curved facade of the church, and which:

. . . changed the direction of movement of the passers- by, so that instead of merely passing along an avenue, they had their attention directed toward the facade of the church. The singularly festive character of the Piazza Navona has always been apparent: it is based on the con• trast between the dynamic sculptural volumes of the three fountains with their display of cascading waters and the relatively quiet and neutral frame of the sur• rounding houses, hardly interrupted by incoming streets. Only the facade of Sant'Agnese takes up the colorful orchestration of the three focal points on the square. . . . during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no sharply defined border lines existed between city planning and architecture, between architecture and decoration, between decoration and stage design, be--,, tween stage design and landscape architecture. ...

Simply with fountains, then Bernini changed completely the

Zucker, p. 154. 38

15 character of one piazza. With this moving, vital, art form at which he excelled and which "helped to fulfil one of Bernini's most cherished dreams: to create real movement and pulsating life.""^

THE PIAZZA SAN PIETRO \ The basilica of St. Peter's and its environs has far too long and vicissitudinous a history to relate here. It is not even of particular relevance to my subject to discuss the complex causes of the particular plan for the piazza that was adopted. It was, in fact, Bernini's design that was finally commissioned (he had already drawn up several widely differentiated plans) by Pope Alexander

VII, and was then executed by Bernini between I656 and I667. There were a great many considerations that Bernini had to take into account—some of them physical, some of them ritualistic. Of the latter:

. . . particular importance was attached to two . . . right from the start. At Easter and on a few other occasions the pope blesses the people of Rome from the Benediction Loggia above the central entrance to the church. It is a blessing symbolically extended to the whole world: it is given urbi et orbi. The piazza, therefore, had not only to hold the maximum number of people, while the Loggia had to be visible

nNo one ever understood the artistic value of water as Bernini did." Richard Norton, Bernini 1598-1680 and Other Studies in the History of Art (New York: Macmillan Co., 1914), p. 34. ' Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, ed., by Nikolaus Pevsner, revised edition (Penguin Books, 1965), p. 108. 39

to as many as possible, but the form of the square it• self had to suggest the all-embracing character of the function. Another ceremony to be taken into account was the papal blessing given to pilgrims from a window of the private papal apartment situated in Domenico Fontana's palace on the north side of the piazza. Other hardly less vital considerations pertained to the papal palace. Its old entrance in the north-west corner of the piazza could not be shifted and yet it had to be integrated into the architecture of the whole. The basilica itself required an approach on the grandest scale in keeping with its prominence among the churches of the Catholic world. In addition, covered passage• ways of some kind were needed for processions and in particular for the solemn ceremonies on the day of Corpus Domini; they were also necessary as protection against sun and rain, for pedestrians as well as for coaches.^'

Among other physical factors to be considered were the gigan• tic obelisk which had been erected by Domenico Fontana in 1586, and the fountain on the right hand side completed by Maderno in 1613 and assymmetrically placed. Again, the ritualistic considerations, although unquestionably affect• ing the solution, do not concern us so much here as certain spatial problems and what Bernini did with them.

Bernini conceived of the square as being subdivided into three units; the piazza retta, immediately before the church facade; the piazza obliqua, appearing as an ellipsoid through the pattern of the pavement, but actually constructed as two half-circles and a rectangle in between; and the third, the Piazza Rusticucci, never brought into a definite artistic shape and today part of Mussolini's avenue linking St. Peter's with the Tiber River.

Obviously the three, considered as one, fall into Zucker's

Wittkower, p. 126. 'Zucker, p. 150. 40 category of the dominated square, and as each of the three is interrelated they are generally discussed together. It is, however, really only the piazza obliqua which concerns us here. It was, in fact, possibly the most original and brilliant aspect of Bernini's concept (and certainly the one which brought him the most criticism). What Bernini did in the piazza obliqua was to empha• size the long north-south axis of the oval, that is to say, not the axis leading in direction towards the facade, but the axis which ran parallel to it. He did this by moving Maderno's fountain on axis with the obelisk (at the same time altering the design of the fountain), and constructing a complementary fountain of his own on the other side (q.v.). These two joyous fountains and the great obelisk (ingeniously linked to the four concentric rows of surrounding Doric columns by the paving pattern radiating from the obelisk— and thereby achieving a unity within the piazza obliqua) make a powerful break in the strong spatial thrust that the other two parts of the total plan caused to be made towards the facade (Figure . ). This was indeed the sort of spatial tension character• istic of the Baroque, but to be more specific here—what this concept of Bernini's did was to dramatically arrest the move• ment of the Faithful towards Maderno's great overpowering facade at a point where the latter could be comprehended and digested, so to speak, preventing them from being drawn 41 inexorably towards the great church until they were over• whelmed by it and the moment of climax passed without ever having been experienced.

Perhaps Bernini's expertise with Town Planning and with Fountains can be linked in yet another way—approached from one more direction. The link is Man—the approach, to bring him together with his fellows. Speaking of the square or piazza Zucker says:

They create a gathering place for the people, humanizing them by mutual contact, providing them with a shelter against the haphazard traffic, and freeing them from the tension of rushing through the web of streets. 0

And Lewis Mumford, speaking of fountains says:

. . . the public fountain was often a work of art, gratifying the eye as well as slaking the thirst, notably in the cities of Italy and Switzerland; and it was further a focus of sociability, providing an occasion for meeting and gossiping, since the fountain or pump, no less than the taproom of the tavern, served as the local newscaster for a quarter.21

This sort of social, aesthetic role of the fountain, was, as will be apparent in the next chapter, a long time in coming; its purely functional aspect did not disappear until the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Zucker, p. 1. Mumford, p. 295. CHAPTER IV THE FOUNTAINS

The Water Supply Although this is a paper concerned with fountains built in the seventeenth century, and the aqueducts which supplied them, it is not to be supposed that either foun• tains or aqueducts are a phenomenon of Modern Rome. Both had existed since pre-Christian times, became of central importance in Roman life, and, the aqueducts particularly, have ever since been of absorbing interest to scholars."'" The site of Rome in the beginning was well supplied with water from the Tiber, from underground springs which en• abled the digging of deep wells, and, of course, from the 2 collection of rain-water. With the exhaustion of the local sources, which according to Frontinus the Romans used for almost four centuries after the founding of the city, new supplies were sought further afield and were conveyed by canal, or sometimes by underground channel—to water fields as 3 well as for household use. It was to ^"Ashby, Van Deman, Forbes, etc. (see bibliography). 2 The site of Rome was famous for these springs according to Cicero, deRep. II, 6. "Locumque delegit et fontibus abundantem et in regionem pestilenti salumbrem." 3 Frontinus was Water Commissioner of Rome in A.D. 97« 43

Appius Claudius Crassus, statesman, financier and even poet, with his colleague in the censorship, Gaius Plautius, that Rome owed its first aqueduct. . . . While not a new invention, since the system of convey• ing water from distant sources by artificial channels had been known for centuries in other lands, it was for the Romans a new departure, or better, a new applica• tion of their earlier discovery of the use and construc• tion of underground channels for sewers. . . . Either for protection from their enemies or through lack of skill in the new art of levelling, the channel was laid wholly below the ground except near Porta Capena, where it was carried for a short distance on substructions and low arches. Not far from its source, the depth of the channel below the surface of the ground was not less than fifty feet. The elevation of the conduit in general was also very low, being not more than eighteen to twenty meters above sea-level at its entrance to the city. In its general type of construction, the aqueduct shows but little advance over the sewers after which it was modeled, apart from the introduction of free• standing walls and arches to support the channel near Porta Capena.4 The intake of the Appia is on the estate of Lucullus on the (Collatian)0 Praenestine Way, between the seventh and eighth milestones, on a cross-road, 780 paces to the left (going from Rome). . . . With it connects a branch of the Augusta, at the Spes Vetus,8 in the vicinity of the Torquation and Plautian gardens, arranged thus as a supplementary supply by Augustus, who at the same time gave it the significant name of the Twins. This branch has its intake on the Praenestine Way, at the sixth mile-stone, on a cross-road, 980 paces to the left, very near the Collatian Way, and the aque• duct extends in an underground channel 6,360 paces before joining the Twins. The distribution of Appia begins at the foot of the Publican steps (acclivity), near the Porta Trigemina, at the place called Salinae. [The author's footnote 6 says: "Lanciani says this should be Collatian. See also Middleton, ii.336.n His footnote 8 says:"The Roman double pace, about five feet long, is meant."]5

^"Esther Boise Van Deman, The Building of the Roman Aqueducts (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1934), Publication No. 423, p. 5. ^Clemens Herschel, The Two Books on the Water Supply of the City of Rome of Sextus Julius Frontinus, Water Com- missioner of the City of Rome, A.D. 97. A Photographic 44

The aqueduct, Via Appia or Acqua Appia named for its founder, was eleven miles long and all but three hundred feet of it were underground.

Ten other aqueducts followed to serve the populace of Rome (then about one million);^ the first of these was the Anio Vetus, built in 272 B.C. It and the Acqua Appia supplied the lower levels of the city.

Forty years after the construction of Appia, in the year 481 (1) from the founding of the city, Manius Curius Dentatus, who was censor along with Lucius Papirus Cursor, contracted to have the waters of the river Anio (now called the Anio Vetus), brought into the city, for the sum realized by the sale of the spoils taken from Pyrrhus. . . . The intake of the Old Anio is up-stream from Tibur (Tivoli) at the twentieth mile-stone outside the Baranean Gate, where it gives a part of its water to them of Tivoli. Its conduit on account of necessary deviations is 43,000 paces long, of which there are 42,779 paces of under• ground channel, and 221 paces on substructures above ground. [Herschel's note (1) explains that this date is 273 B.C.] Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 9)

The Anio Vetus was followed in 144 B.C. by the Acqua

Marcia (so-called after the man responsible for it— Clintus

Marcius Rex, a senator)--the first high level aqueduct.

The intake of the Marcia is on the Valerian Way, at the thirty-sixth milestone, en a cross-road, 3,000 paces to the right as one comes from Rome. But on the reproduction of the sole original Latin Manuscript and its reprint in Latin; also a translation into English, and explanatory chapters by Clemens Herschel (Boston: Dana Estes and Company, 1899), p. 9.

Ibid., p. 238, n. 1, attributes this figure for the year A.D. 97 to Beloch "endorsed by Lanciani." 45

Sublacensian Way, which was first paved under the Emperor Nero, at the thirty-eighth mile-stone, and to the left, it may be seen within a distance of 200 paces, at a place where numberless springs gush forth from caves in the rocks, immovable like unto a pool, and of a deep-green hue. (Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 11)

In 125 B.C. the Acqua Tepula—so named because of the temperature of the water—was brought to Rome by the censors Gnaeus Servillus Caepio and Lucius Cassius Longinus

. . . from the estate of Lucullus, but which some hold to belong to Tuscalum. The intake of Tepula is on the Latin Way, at the tenth milestone, 2000 paces to the right as one comes from Rome: whence it was brought by its own conduit into the city. (Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 11)

The Tepula was the last aqueduct built under the Republic which was followed by the Augustan period—one of importance in the building of aqueducts. During this period, which Van Deman breaks into two sub-periods, were built the Acqua Alsietina, the Acqua 7 Julia and the Acqua Vergine. As well as these three new aqueducts, the Anio Vetus, the Marcia and the Tepula were extensively restored by Agrippa on the orders of the Senate. Van Deman, p. 16. "The first of these sub-periods, extending from 33 B.C., when Agrippa was appointed to the office of the city, to his death in 12 B.C., may be called . . . the period of Agrippa, while the second, following immediately upon his death, may be distinguished as the period of Augustus. . . . the work of Agrippa, as shown in the more important remains, especially those of the new aqueducts of the Julia and the Virgo, must be recognized as forming a distinct step in the development of aqueducts." 46

Of the new aqueducts Frontinus says

. . . under the second consulate of the Emperor Caesar Augustus and of L. Volacatius (i.e. in 35 B.C.]. . . . M. Agrippa, when he was Aedile subsequently to his first consulate, at the twelfth milestone from the city near the Latin Way, on a cross-road two miles to the right as you go from Rome, collected the sources of another spring, and tapped the conduit of Tepula. The new aque• duct was called Julia by the man who planned it, the supply, however, being so apportioned that the name of the Tepula was not lost. (Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 13) The same man [i.e. Agrippa], after his own third consul• ship, and under the consulate of C. Sentius and Q. Lucretius, thirteen years after he had constructed the Julian aqueduct, also brought Virgo to Rome, which is gathered on the estate of Lucullus. . . . The name Virgo was given to this aqueduct, because it was a young girl who showed its springs to some soldiers who were seeking to find water. Those who were digging having followed up these springs, found a great quantity of water. There may be seen in a little temple erected near the spring, a painting which represents this tradition. The intake is on the Collation Way, at the eighth milestone, in a swampy region. The spring is increased by being walled in with a wall of concrete, made of broken pottery and lime, so as to keep together the primary sources, as also by a number of other tributaries. (Frontinus, Herschel trans., pp. 13 and 15)

The seventh aqueduct was the Alsietina which was built to serve the site near the Tiber of Augustus' Naumachia. The Alsietina originated from the Alsietinian Lake near Lago di Bracciano (the modern Lago di Martignano) about twenty miles to the northwest of Rome and was intended to serve the Naumachia only. Of it Frontinus says:

. . . I do not rightly perceive the motives which caused Augustus, that most cautious ruler, to bring in the Alsietinian water, called Augusta, since it has nothing to commend it; and is, on the contrary, so unwholesome, 47

that on this account it is delivered nowhere for the use of the people; unless it be that, when he undertook to construct his Naumachia, he brought in this water to avoid drawing upon the better sources of supply, and left the surplus of the Naumachia for the adjacent gardens, and for the use of private parties for irriga• tion. It is customary, however, to draw from it in emergencies, and thus to eke out the supply of the —>jpufi>lic fountains in the ward beyond the Tiber, whenever "the bridges are undergoing repairs and no water can be delivered from this side of the river. The intake is out of the Alsietinian Lake, on the Claudian Way, at the fourteenth mile-stone, on a cross-road, 6,500 paces to the right. (Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 15)

Under Caligula two great new aqueducts were begun— possibly, as Van Deman suggests, to compensate for the emperor's ruthless destruction of a large section of the

Acqua Virgo—(central to the city's drinking-water supply)

—in order to make room for an amphitheatre, yet "no remains belonging to the period have so far been discovered."

During the period of Claudius which followed, "the aqueducts of Rome reached at last their full development in height as well as in magnificence in the famous conduits of o the Claudia and the Anio Novus."7

The intake of Claudia is on the Sublacensian Way, at the thirty-eighth mile-stone, on a cross-road, three hundred paces to the left, taking in two very capacious and beautiful wells, the Caerulian (blue one), so called from its appearance, and the Curtian. Claudiar. also takes in a spring called Albudinus, which is of such purity that when-ever there is need of supplement• ing Marcia, it answers so perfectly, that it in no wise changes the character of Marcia by mixing with it. The spring of Augusta was turned into Claudia, because Marcia seemed plainly to be of sufficient volume by it• self; but Augusta remained, nevertheless, a reserve

Van Deman, p. 13. 'ibid. LB

supply to Marcia, the understanding being that Augusta should run into Claudia only when the conduit of Marcia could not carry it. (Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 17) The intake of New Anio is on the Sublacensian Way, at the forty-second mile-stone, in the Simbrunium, and from the river; which flows muddy and discolored even without the effect of rainstorms, because it has rich and cultivated lands adjoining, and, as a result, loose banks; for this reason a settling resevoir was built upstream from the intake, so that in it and be• tween the river and the conduit the water might come to rest and clarify itself. But in spite of this construction the water reaches the city in a discolored condition, whenever there are heavy rains. The Herculan- ean Brook, which has its source on the same Way, at the thirty-eighth milestone, opposite the springs of Claudia and beyond the river and the highway, joins it, being of itself exceedingly clear, but losing the charm of its purity by admixture., (Frontinus, Herschel trans., p. 19)1°

A long period follows under the emperors Nero, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian during which no new aqueducts were built. But this is not to say that it was a period in which the concern of previous emperors for the Roman water supply and its conduits was neglected. On the contrary there was considerable activity—but chiefly marked by re• routing, alterations and restorations, and the building of bridges (to carry the aqueducts) and tunnels.

With the accession of Trajan to the throne, the aque• ducts, like the realm as a whole, entered upon a period of reorganization and wise administration, equaling if not surpassing in importance that of Augustus a century earlier. As his assistant in the correction of the abuses and corrupt practices which had crept into the

In the later Bennett translation of Frontinus the translator notes that "The Simbruvian Hills were about thirty miles to the north-east of Rome." p. 357. 49 management of the department, Trajan chose Sextus Julius Frontinus, who had already been appointed water commis- sioner in 97 by N'erva.H

At first Trajan continued the organizing and systema• tizing and restorative work of the preceding period and then in A.D. 109 the Acqua Traiana was built. Its springs were just north of the pure Lago di Bracciano north-west of Rome, and it was designed for the use of the district across the Tiber, that is, on the right bank (Trastevere), which until then derived its drinking water from the impure Alsietina (q.v.). The period of Trajan was again followed by periods characterized chiefly by restoration and maintenance under the emperors Hadrian, Severus and the latter's son Caracalla. Caracalla undertook with enthusiasm the building of the famous baths which bear his name and for this purpose re• stored a branch of the Marcia which served the baths and which later came to be known as the Acqua Antoniniana.

To the quiet reign of Alexander Severus, with which the rule of the Severan house comes to an end, is to be assigned the building of the last of the Roman aqueducts, the Aqua Alexandrina, whose picturesque arches are still to be followed across the rolling Campagna for a number of kilometers.12

The source of the Alexandrina is considered to be a group of springs about fourteen miles from Rome to the south of the Via Praenestina at the foot of a hill called Sasso

"^Van Deman, p. 15. 12Ibid., p. 342. 50 bello to the east of Monte Falcone. The modern Acqua Felice (so named by Sixtus V who had been baptized Felix and who was responsible for it), which succeeded the Alexandrina arises from another group of springs slightly higher up on 13 the same hillside. J Again, the building of the Alexandrina was under• taken to furnish water to the new baths in Campus Martius which Alexander Severus had erected for the Roman people. Although there is little recorded information about the Alexandrina its date may be approximated as A.D. 226—when the baths it was to serve were erected.

To those interested primarily in the aqueducts of Ancient Rome, such a cursory description as the preceding one must read as a mere catalogue. A great deal more can,

•p". . . he [Sixtus V] made the decision . . . that he would provide a water supply—the Acqua Felice—for the hill areas of the city, which had lain deserted since the destruction of the Roman aqueducts built by Alexander Severus (A.D. 222-235). Sixtus V intended to conduct water to the very highest points of the Roman hills—the Esquiline, Caelius, Viminal, Capitoline and Pincio. The main difficulty was that there was only a very small fall from the springs that he had purchased near Palestrina, sixteen miles away; and the topog• raphy seemed to make it impossible for the conduit to be laid in a straight line. The problem was solved by carrying the conduit for seven miles along a high arched aqueduct and for seven miles underground." Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, the growth of a new tradition, 3rd ed. (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 100. 51 and has been said by the true students of these early aque• ducts about the evolution of the materials and techniques used in their building, about bridges and tunnels, routes and secondary channels, about the purity of the water supply and so on. What is relevant to this paper, however, is to show the long history of concern with the Roman water supply, and that it was those in the highest offices who evinced this concern. As Clemens Herschel is the first translator into English of Frontinus, The Two Books on the Water Supply of Rome, it may be of interest to the reader (as he himself says) to know who he was:"^

The age,figure,and other attributes of an author need revealing too, and classification in, the minds of his readers, to enable them properly to estimate the value of such author's writings or opinions. ... It is in this spirit and for the purpose named, that I now give my age as fifty-seven, and my life's occupation that of an hydraulic engineer. . . . The reader may be assured that there has all along been a marked bond of sympathy, caused by their professional employment, between the Latin surveyor and water commissioner Frontinus, the French architect Rondelet, the German builder Dederich, and the American engineer-author of this book. We have understood each other quite well, even in places which the world at large has passed over without understanding or appreciating.15

Of Frontinus himself, Herschel is able to give us some quite accurate information. The general concensus of

The books had been translated into French by Rondelet in 1320, and into German by Dederich in 1341. 15 ^Herschel, Introduction to The Two Books, pp. xvi and xvii. 52 scholars' opinion is that Frontinus was probably born about

A.D. 35 or 36. There is definite evidence that he held the office of Praetor urbanus in the city of Rome in A.D. 70.

This was a highly honorable office, generally held in Frontinus' time by patricians, and endowed with both judicial and executive functions. This office, still higher offices subsequently held by Frontinus, such as the consulship three times, the governorship of Britain, and, as he himself points out, his holding the office of water commissioner, "from olden time exercised by the most distinguished citizens,"—all these things mark him as sprung from a patrician or noble,family, which is also indicated by the name Julius.

Frontinus' writings on surveying, so far as we have knowledge of them, betray the teaching of the Alexan• drian school of mathematicians, especially of Hero of Alexandria. A supposition that Frontinus, educated in Alexandria, had distinguished himself in Sicily by his writings and services as a surveyor, and had been there• upon called to Rome and been made praetor urbanus and later consul suffectus at the instance of Vespasian, would therefore be an entirely reasonable one. 17

Much more about Frontinus' honours, career and achievements has been written by Herschel but all that seems relevant here is to give some idea of his position in society and of the great esteem in which the office of Water Commis• sioner was held and of its early establishment.

Not long after [the inauguration of Nerva], presum• ably, at all events in 97, Frontinus was appointed, by Nerva, curator aquarum, which, following American titles, I translate: "commissioner of water works" of the City of Rome.

Herschel!, Chap. I of the Explanatory chapters of The Two Books, p. 105. Bernini also held the office of Water Commissioner.

Ibid., p. 106. 53

The fact alone that he was appointed by Nerva is significant of Frontinus' character. At Nerva's choice as emperor, all that was worthy and patriotic in Rome took renewed courage. In the most accentuated way possible his was the coming into power of what we should now call a reform government, and to be immediately selected for so important an office as sole commissioner of the water supply of Rome, by such a government, at once describes the man. . . . The book was begun by Frontinus immediately after his appointment. . . . 1°

There is evidence to show that Frontinus lived in Ward VI of Rome nnot far from the artillery barracks of the 19 present day on Porta S. Lorenzo. . . ." The eleven aqueducts of Ancient Rome in time gave way to the four aqueducts of Modern Rome—the Virgo being first restored by Pius V in 1570 as the Acqua Vergine; the Acqua Felice built in 1585 by SixtusV, supplanted, as we have seen, the ancient Acqua Alexandrina and indeed arose from a neighbouring group of springs. The Acqua Traiana was restored as the Acqua Paola in l6ll and the famous Marcia was reconstructed in 1870 as the Acqua Pia or the Marcia Pia. (It is an interesting fact, and one to which I will return again, that three of these modern aqueducts came into being, two immediately before, and one during, the life-time of Bernini 1598-1680.) Of great relevance too to the building of fountains was the water pressure available from each of these aqueducts, Herschel, pp. 116-118. Ibid., p. 119. 54 a property, determined in large part by the level at which they entered the city. Frontinus lists the aqueducts about which he wrote—their elevations in order of lowest to highest, as follows: Alsietina Appia Virgo Anio Vetus Marcia Tepula Julia Claudia Anio Novus. Traiana and Alexandrina having been built after his death are not included in the list but Alexandrina would probably lie between Virgo and the Anio Vetus, while Traiana was a fairly high level aqueduct—estimated, to have been 73*71 metres above sea level near the end of its course under 20 what is now the American Academy. Of Virgo, of which I shall speak again later, Van Deman says: Its height above sea level was twenty-three to twenty- four meters at its source, while at the clearing tank near the Piazza di Spagna, it was 18.87 meters. The rate of fall was very low, differing probably but little from that of the modern conduit, which, according to Vescovali, is not more than thirteen centimeters to the kilometer. The volume was 2,504 (103,916 cubic meters in twenty-four hours).21

These facts, as we shall see later, have direct bearing on

20 Van Deman, p. 169. 21 Ibid. The reference to Vescovali is the work en• titled Relazione sullo stato•dell1Acquedotto Virgine e progetto di generale restauro, ag. G. de Angelis D'Ossat (Rend. R. Acad. Lincei XIII). 55 the actual design of the controversial Barcaccia in the Piazza di Spagna. At this juncture, it is pertinent to speak of the distribution of the water carried by these aqueducts, of its use, of the regulations governing its use and of those with the responsibility for enforcing these regulations. From early times the chief outlet in Rome of any aqueducts was a terminal fountain. (Just when this terminal fountain became the mostra, or display fountain as especially designated by Wiles and other writers, is not certain, but we do know that interest in ornamental fountains was early.) Lanciani, for example, traces the history of a beautiful fountain that was set up in front of the main door of the Curia "in the last days of classic Rome ..." part of a "cycle of works carried on in the Senate House and its 23 neighborhood at the beginning of the fifth century." (There is also archeological evidence that this particular The real purpose of this fountain [the Moses foun• tain which was the terminal fountain of the Acqua Felice] can be seen in another of the Vatican Library frescoes . .. ; it is not intended as a show piece. [Even in the sixteenth century.] It is a reminder that this part of Rome had had no water for over a millenium, but above all it is a social institution. The Egyptian lions are spitting water for the use of the passers-by; the three large basins serve as water resevoirs for the.local inhabitants; the marble barriers are there to protect them from pollution by animals, while to the right is a special basin for the use of horses and cattle. Giedion, p. 101. 2^Rodolfo Lanciani, New Tales of Old Rome (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1900), p. 40. 56 fountain was constructed even earlier.) The terminal foun• tains were the chief source of drinking water of the Roman populace, although water was also carried into distributing reservoirs (castella) from which ran the street mains and from which, in turn, ran the lead pipes (fistulae) that carried the water into the houses. An admirer of Roman civilization will ignore the fact that this latter service was only for ecclesiasts and the rich, and piped in water was not, as D'Onofrio points out, made available to all the people: ^

The poor must have carried the water that they used from the public fountains that were placed at frequent intervals in the streets, where the water ran constantly for all comers.25

Carcopino is even more explicit:

According to Frontinus, a contemporary of Trajan, eight aqueducts brought 222,237,060 gallons of water a day to the city of Rome, but very little of this immense supply found its way to private houses. In the first place, it was not until the reign of Trajan and the opening on June 24, 109, of the aqueduct called by his name, Aqua Traiana, that fresh spring water was brought to the quarters on the right bank of the Tiber; until then, the inhabitants had to make their wells suffice for their needs. Secondly, even on the left bank access to the distributory channels connected by permission of the princeps with the castella of his

Cesare D'Onofrio, Le Fontane Di Roma (Roma: Staderini Editore, 1957), p. 141. Harold Whetstone Johnston, The Private Life of the Romans (Chicago and New York: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1932), p. 407. 57

aqueducts was granted, on payment of a royalty, only,to individual concessionaires and to ground landlords. "

He then recounts additional shortcomings and abuses by those in control of the water supply. Throughout the entire history of the aqueducts there was a considerable body of laws, quoted extensively by Frontinus, governing water rights, penalties for their in• fraction, and also penalties for the causing of specified kinds of pollution of the water in the public fountains. It would be quite impossible to set down here all of these laws pertaining to the Roman water supply and to the aque• ducts, or to outline all the multitudinous duties of the water commissioner in enforcing them. One paragraph by Frontinus himself will give the reader some idea of the subject:

I will now set down what the water commissioner must observe, being the laws and Senate enactments which serve for his guidance. As concerns the draft of water by private consumers, there is to be noted: "That no one shall draw water without a writing from Caesar; that is, that no one shall draw water from the public supply without a license, and no one shall

Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome:The People and the City at the Height of the Empire, ed. Henry T. Rowell, trans. E.O. Lorimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 38. Herschel says, Chap. VIII of Explana• tory Chapters, p. 241: "... about thirty-eight gallons per day per inhabitant, which is still a very large figure, when use alone, not waste, is taken into account; and when, further we consider that by far the greater part of the people undoubtedly used only such water as was carried to their homes in jars on the heads of slaves and other women." Throughout the section on fountains in this paper I have used the exact English translation of the Italian word oncia —ounce. What this means, in relation to fountains however, is the quantity of water that flows in a given unit of time through a specified orifice, known in Italian as a magistrale milanese. Without defining the latter—what is meant is that the water flows at the rate of one quarter of a litre per second, or approximately 20,000 litres in twenty-four hours. 58

draw more than has been granted. By this means we pro• pose to make it possible, that the quantity of water concerning whose recovery we have spoken, may be distri• buted to new fountains and may be used for new grants from the sovereign. But in both cases must a great zeal in the service be opposed to manifold forms of fraud. The channels of the aqueducts, without the city, must be frequently examined, one after the other, to review the granted quantities; the same must be done in case of the delivery tanks and fountains, that the water may flow without interruption, day and night, which the commissioner has been directed to see to, by vote of the Senate, etc.27

One can see by these words that the honour and responsibility attached to the office of Water Commissioner were consider• able. By Bernini's time, however, the laws, and presumably therefore Bernini's duties, must have changed somewhat, be• cause after the coming of the Acqua Paola in 1611 water was piped into the houses of all the people. At that time, we can assume, the fountain began to be conceived purely to delight the senses.

Eighteen Fountains by Bernini—description and comments La Barcaccia, 1627-1629 As this paper is intended to include all the foun• tains associated with Bernini—whether attributable to his hand alone, or partially so—it must include the contro- 28 versial La Barcaccia of the Piazza di Spagna. The pivot

27 'Herschel, Explanatory Chapters of Two Books, Chap. XII, p. 279. 28 All, that is, with the exception of La Fontana di Trevi. This fountain was, of course, not completed until the eighteenth century by Nicola Salvi and Guiseppe of the controversy has been not the fountain's validity as a work of art (frequently the case in an artistic contro• versy), but its authorship; does one ascribe it to Gian Lorenzo Bernini or to his father Pietro? Howard Hibbard, among others, both in his recent (196$) monograph of Bernini and in an earlier article, gives "the old boat" to 29 Gian Lorenzo; while D'Onofrio in his definitive work Le Fontane di Roma (1957) goes to some lengths to prove that although in artistic quality one would be inclined to ascribe the work to the younger Bernini (introducing the subtlety that indeed it is the one good thing of Pietro's and that one must not deprive him of the credit for it), it is in fact by Pietro. Furthermore, D'Onofrio says, this could not possibly be the work of Gian Lorenzo because the latter's works always included human or animal elements. Slim argument; what of Bernini's fountain in the Piazza San Pietro (q.v.)? Because I do not accept D'Onofrio's "proof," or rather because it seems to me to leave many questions un• answered or open to doubt, I will relate his argument in Pannini. But Bernini's involvement with this fountain be• gan in 1640—and the fountain, as executed, is largely based on Bernini's designs. To recount the long and in• volved story of its development, however, would comprise a thesis in itself, so I must reluctantly omit it.

Howard Hibbard and I. Jaffe, "Bernini's Barcaccia, Burlington Magazine, 106:159-70 (April, 1964). 60 some detail here, posing as I go along, my own objections to it. First, however, let me speak of the concetto and of the quality of the work. The fountain is in the form of a barque—a barque which is about to sink—or as D'Onofrio points out (p. 175) the artist's interpretation of a barque, as it is not quite like any ship in real life. Both the poop and the prow are the same height instead of the former being higher and squared off as would be the case in a real ship. This "dirty old ship," a free translation of the affectionate pejorative given by the Romans to the travertine ship, has for three and a half centuries appeared to be about to sink in the oval pool that surrounds it. The pool does not rise above ground level, because the Acqua Vergine (q.v.), the source of the water supply, was, at that location, at the same level as the pool. (An identical problem was faced by Jacopo della Porta with La Terrina (Figure )—his fountain of 1590 for the Campo del Fiori—in which a ship in an oval basin was also represented.)

On the ends of the Bernini boat, on the outside, is the Barberini coat of arms with the papal insignia (Urban VIII became Pope in 1623), and on the inside a sunburst— also a heraldic symbol of the Barberini—with a face from the mouth of which water flows into the boat in a thin, glassy sheet, and then overflows from the sides of the boat into the pool. On the outside of the boat at either end, 61 at the sides of the crest, water arches out into the pool from what one might call gun-ports. In the centre of the boat, itself full of water, is what appears (from photographs) to be another small boat on a pedestal with a single small jet in the centre. The whole marks for the first time, a most happy and successful fusion of the architectural and aqueous elements—something that was not achieved in what are considered the models for the work.

La Terrina, in spite of the similarity of idea, is not considered the model for La Barcaccia, but rather, according to D'Onofrio, the Navicella (Figure ), symbol of the Church, which was adapted to a fountain by Leo X in

1$13. It stands in front of Santa Maria in Domnica. The other source of inspiration was the Galera constructed in the Vatican Gardens in 1620 by Jan van Santen. In this work^

< water spurted from the "ship's" numerous guns.

One cannot help but agree with D'Onofrio when he says that neither of these models can really be considered a fountain. To have made them into fountains seems an entirely contrived idea which in its realization failed

completely to unite the architectural or sculptural>and the aqueous elements. In fact, it is with La Barcaccia for the first time among Roman fountains that a true fusion appears

—a fusion to be developed to perfection by Gian Lorenzo

Bernini.

In spite of the fact that it is generally agreed 62

that just such a significant break was made with La Bar• caccia, D'Onofrio does not think that this fountain was the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. D'Onofrio's argument that the fountain was the work of Bernini's father, Pietro, is developed as follows: first, on September 12th, 1623, one month after he became Pope, Urban VIII appointed Pietro Bernini Architect of the Acqua Vergine (which supplies La Barcaccia), a post the elder Bernini retained until his death in 1629. In this capacity his responsibility was, among other things, the construction of fountains.

Secondly, Pietro Bernini is known to have worked on several fountains while he lived in Naples, and after he brought his family to Rome in 1606 continued to do so. Thirdly, during the period 1623-29, while Pietro Bernini was Architect of the Acqua Vergine, La Barcaccia was the only fountain that was built that was fed by this aqueduct. These three points, according to D'Onofrio, provide an a priori proof that Pietro Bernini was creator of La Barcaccia. I would interpolate here that this evidence although plausible does not seem to be entirely satisfactory; Pietro could easily have acted as director-of-works, so to speak, but not have been the actual author of the fountain. Pietro's signature, as D'Onofrio points out, is on the work sheets, but does that really prove that the concetto was not Gian Lorenzo's—who could then have shown his design, indrawing 63 or model form to his father, and obtained from him approval and permission to go ahead? (Considering the generous attitude Pietro was known to have had toward his son this 30 sequence of events seems entirely possible.) As Pietro was Architect of the Acqua Vergine, his signature would still have been on the work sheets. In addition to this a priori proof, D'Onofrio also turns to literary testimony in favour of the authorship being by Pietro. The first example of this is that of Baglione who was a contemporary of Pietro's and therefore the fact that Baglione names Pietro as the author of the 31 fountain is likely to be quite reliable. Against this he describes the testimony of Baldinucci (who ascribes the fountain to Gian Lorenzo) as being unreliable because it was written fifty-five years after La Barcaccia was com• pleted (not, it seems to me, sufficient cause for inaccu• racy), because it was written in Florence not in Rome, and because, as he then fully illustrates, Baldinucci always erred in speaking of Bernini's public fountains. D'Onofrio deduces therefore that Baldinucci is also wrong in this case and that La Baraccia is not by Gian Lorenzo but by Pietro. 30 J See my quotation from Chantelou, p. 25. 31 J Author of Le vite de'pittori, scultori et architetti, Roma, 1642. 64

Against this verdict I would point out two things: the first is that in many other instances D'Onofrio quotes Baldinucci as a reliable source. It seems to me tenuous therefore, to state categorically that Baldinucci is in• evitably wrong when he speaks of fountains—even if he has been so on other occasions. The second is that Robert Enggass in his Foreward to the translation of Baldinucci by Catherine Enggass, points out that Queen Christina of Sweden, Bernini's great admirer and patron, who commissioned the "Life" chose Baldinucci from Florence rather than any of "the art critics, theorists, or historians then active in Rome" (Foreward, p. vii) because of his great reputation as a scholar and writer. Furthermore, after speaking of Baldinucci's formidable achievement in classifying the Duke of Medici's collection of drawings, then a new science, and of the great pains he took to exonerate Bernini by thoroughly investigating the facts connected with the south tower of St. Peter's, Enggass says of him: "He had a pas• sion for source materials not equalled until the nineteenth 32 century" (Foreward, p. ix). I do not with these arguments intend to say that La Barcaccia was definitely not done by Pietro Bernini, but 32 J Of the spirit of the age Enggass also says, "This interest in ordering and classifying, growing out of an atmosphere favorable to both art and science, had obvious significance in terms of the development, still well in the future, of art history as a formal discipline." (Foreward, pp. viii-ix). 65

simply to point out that there are weak points in D'Onofrio's argument and strong arguments that the work was by his son Gian Lorenzo. The strongest of these, it seems to me, is the quality of the work. Over and over again when admiring the fountains of the younger Bernini, one is struck, as we shall see, by the utter indispensability of the water to the total design. Here that quality appears for the first time in Roman fountains. Here too is the low basin which D'Onofrio himself says repeatedly is characteristic of, and fundamental to,the fountains of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Gruppo del "Nettuno e Glaucon per La Villa Montalto— 1622-1623 Before Bernini devoted himself to a complete foun• tain he is known to have done the crowning sculptural group —Neptune and Glaucus—for a fountain in the gardens of the 33 Villa Montalto. ' The fountain itself is now lost and

It is of some significance that Bernini's group is referred to by some authors (e.g. D'Onofrio) as "Neptune and Glaucus," by others (Hibbard, Wittkower) as "Neptune and Triton." Neptune in Roman mythology was the God of the sea, who, "in the Aeneid, calmed the storm aroused by Aeolus at Juno's request, lifted up the sunken ships, dispersed the clouds and restored the sun for Aeneas and his fleet. . . . Neptune is usually represented in art as a bearded man of stately presence, with a trident as his chief attribute, and the horse and the dolphin as symbols. Triton was . . . in Greek mythology, a gigantic son of Poseidon [the Greek name for Neptune] and the Nereid Amphitrite [but] in the later mythology Tritons appear as a class of minor sea- deities, figuring with Nereids in the train of the greater sea-gods. They were conceived as having human figures from 66

Bernini's group, formerly "at Brocklesby Park in the collec• tion of Lord Yarborough" is now (according to D'Onofrio, captions to Figures 151 and 152), in the Victoria and Albert 34 Museum. ^ The fountain itself was a great peschiera, or fish• pond, oval in shape, and the largest (according to D'Onofrio, p. 188) then existing in Rome. It had been built by Domenico Fontana when "between 1579 and 1581, he erected the villa and laid out the gardens for Cardinal Felice Montalto later Sixtus V."35 The style of the fountain was formal and typically late sixteenth century—wherein the oval pond was surrounded the waist up combined with those of fish from the waist down. A common attribute of the Triton is a shell-trumpet which they blow to raise or calm storms. Glaucus was . . . according to some accounts, . . . a son of Poseidon . . . was transformed into a sea-god and became an attendant of Poseidon. [But in spite of this identification of Glaucus, in the Penguin editions of both the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses, it is Triton who is men- tioned as aiding Neptune at this time.] Catherine B. Avery (ed.), The New Century Classical Handbook, editorial consul• tant, Jotham Johnson (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc., 1962), pp. 744, 1116, and 498. •^Bertha Harris Wiles, The Fountains of Florentine Sculptors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), p. 102. 35Rudolf Wittkower, "Bernini Studies I The Group of Neptune and Triton," Burlington Magazine XIV (1952), pp. 68- 76. Some discrepancy seems to exist about the commission itself for Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 39, says, "Bernini's next commission, which must date from 1619-1620, was from Alessandro Peretti, Cardinal Montalto, nephew [underlining mine] of the great Sixtus V." Wittkower's main concern in the Burlington Magazine article is the importance of this sculptural group in the evolution of style of Bernini's early work. He considers the Neptune to be a link between the Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius of 1619 j and the David of 1623. 67 with a balustrade on which were twelve classical statues. Water flowed from these statues into the basin. On a raised part at one end of the balustrade was placed the Bernini group (Figure ) silhouetted against the back wall of the fountain. "The picture-like impression of the group was strengthened by two small fountains which framed it firmly at both sides safeguarding the axis of the principal view."-^ The powerful marble group shows Neptune standing on a shell, body twisted and trident raised. I quote Howard Hibbard's rather delightful account of the Bernini group:

Once again the subject is apparently drawn from the Aeneid.* Neptune, to protect Aeneas, orders the winds whipped up by Juno to be still—the famous lines (Quos Ego) that have so often been illustrated: "Do you really dare, you Winds, without my divine assent To confound earth and sky, and raise this riot of water? You, whom I.' Well, you have made the storm, I must lay it. Next time, I shall not let you so lightly redeem your sins. Now leave, and quickly leave, and tell your overlord this— Not to him but to me was alloted the stern trident, Dominion over the seas. . . . He spoke: and before he had finished, the insurgent sea was calmed, The mob of cloud dispersed and the sun restored to power. Nereid and Triton heaving together pushed the ships off From the sharp rock. . . P' The angry sea god strides forward, wrathfully winnow• ing the air with his trident; below, Triton, sounding his conch, supports the larger figure.37

Wittkower, "Bernini Studies I," Burlington Magazine, XIV. 37 Hibbard, p. 39. Hibbard's * produces the following note, p. 235: "Neptune—Aeneid, i, lines 133fi'. Pope- Hennessy (text, p. 118) proposes a source in Ovid's Metamor• phoses: .... In Vergil, Neptune rose from the sea to discipline the wind not the waters directly. One cannot, 68

The swirling drapery and also the strong diagonal lines of the Neptune's pose presage future works of Bernini and are also common themes of the Baroque.

By combining the single viewpoint of the Renaissance with the Mannerist freedom from material restrictions [that is, a confinement within the block] Bernini laid the foundations for a new conception of sculpture in which all elements supplement each other: single view• point, energetic action and transitory moment, breaking down of the limitations of the block and the elimination of different spheres for statue and spectator, intense realism and subtle differentiation of texture, these were the means by which Bernini made the beholder an ^ emotional participant in the spectacle before his eyes.

There seems to be little question that Bernini de• rived the inspiration for this'group from an earlier bozzetto for a fountain of the same subject in the Boboli 39 gardens in Florence. therefore, deduce the position of the Neptune's relationship to the pond as being necessarily frontal, nor do various views drawn and painted in the century after its creation support this choice: .... The Ovidian passage would be better evidence for the frontal view, but it specifically states that Neptune put down his trident (Metamorphoses, i, 330f). New sources are published by L. Grassi, Burlington Magazine, CVI, (1964), pp. 170ff. Pope-Hennessey suggests a date of 1622-3 (Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, II, London, 1964, p. 600, No. 03777 3$ Wittkower, "Bernini Studies I," Burlington Magazine XIV, pp. 68-76. 39This is noted by Voss, p. 106; Wiles, p. 102; D'Onofrio, n. 2, p. 188; and Venturi, Storia dell'Arte, Vol. 10, II, pp. 450-451. The model was done by Stoldo Lorenzi. 69

La Fontanina delle "Api" nel Vaticano—1625 About three years after the completion of the Neptune and Glaucus Bernini received a commission for his first com• plete fountain. In 1625 Urban VIII gave him the assignment of creating a fountain for the Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican Gardens. This fountain consists of a perfectly triangular mountain—the ravines of which are covered with shrubs and trees; on either side of the mountain are two large twisted boughs from which smaller branches with enor• mous leaves and pods grow—giving the whole a somewhat sinister and fantastic aura (Figure ). On the upper part of the fountain is an ornamental plaque on which is a distich alluding to the five bees (heraldic symbol of the Barberini) arranged in a verticle semi-circle at the base of the fountain and from which the water flows into a semi• circular basin (Figure ) this being a wall fountain. The distich: "Why do you marvel if the bee which sucks honey from flowers/ Now sends you honeyed water?" According to D'Onofrio (p. 189), and there seems no reason for disagreement with him in this case, the inspira• tion for this fountain seems clearly to be the rustic Fontana dell'Aquila (Figure ) which Baul V (Borghese) had had built about fifteen years earlier as the Mostra of the Acqua Paola inside the Vatican.The latter is a perfect

Mostra is a generally accepted term for a type of facade, or wall fountain, marking the outlet of an aqueduct. The word itself means display. 70

example of the rustic genre—a huge rocky mountain of typical rocaille construction, on the top of which stands an eagle, wings spread.^ Water spurts and trickles from many hidden pipes and there are many niches and caves in the surface of the mountain—some of which contain sculptural groups (see description of La Fontana del Tritone) of dragons and marine figures. Bernini's little fountain (a wall fountain now by the side of the Church of S. Anna) seems almost like a tiny model of the genre of rustic fountains in general and of the great rustic Fontana dell'Aquila in particular. At this juncture I must take issue with a point that D'Onofrio introduces, illustrated by this fountain in particular, but illustrative of Bernini's contribution to fountains in general. (The latter aspect I have mentioned before in connection with La Barcaccia q.v.,—and will allude to again often as it is central to my thesis.) D'Onofrio contends that, before Bernini, the use of human and animal elements in fountains was merely decorative— serving as a sort of hyphen between what he calls "brutish

^^Vasari lists four types of rocaille: first, the natural stalactites, applied to 'Tuscan work' (as in the wall fountains of the Arno and Mugnone at Castello); second, a combination of rocks heaped up in imitation of nature, and overgrown with plants . . .; third, stucco inlaid with shells of various sorts; and fourth, a rustic mosaic of many colours, made of bits of overheated bricks and broken glass, set into stucco. Entire figures of men and of animals were con• structed in this way." Wiles, p. 74. 71 and horrifying nature" and limpid sparkling water (by infer• ence symbolizing, I suppose, serenity and purity). I have no quarrel with his contention that human and animal elements had been merely decorative, but the rest of his contention seems to me to be simply rhetoric; nature, which he calls "brutish and horrifying" human and animal elements, and water, are, after all, of the same stuff. I think, however, that my quarrel with him is slight, and that the real point he is making is the one which all true obser• vers of the fountains of Bernini cannot eventually fail to make; notably, that Bernini's real innovation was to use water as a design element without which the sculptural and architectural elements of the fountain would be incomplete. This great achievement of Bernini will be discussed again frequently but to cite two examples here: a successful example of this is the Piazza Barberini Triton (q.v.), and a fountain wherein the water has no integral meaning at all is the Fountaha delle Tartarughe (q.v.),—the water flowing from masks on the under side of the upper basin.

Fontanina dell'"Ape" nell'atrio di Palazzo Barberini— ca. 1632 Another small fountain of Bernini's which is now lost is one described by D'Onofrio as follows:

It is a little fountain bearing some resemblance to Bernini's first fountain constructed in 1625 for Urban VIII Barberini. This little fountain is in a 72

niche closing the end of the atrium of the Barberini Palace. The fountain consisted of an open shell into which a Sun shoots forth a veil of water: around the sun a gigantic bee (67.5 centimetres) flies—spread• ing a "water of honey." In addition, at the sides of the basin are four turtles, two whole and two half— which send forth water into the lower basin. Large rocky masses—in the rustic manner surround the niche and the whole fountain.^

Although not of particular significance itself, this foun• tain has a certain place (as we shall see) in the develop• ment of other fountains by Bernini.

Fontana del Tritone—Piazza Barberini—1643 Perhaps Bernini's most beautiful and perfect fountain is the Fontana del Tritone of the Piazza Barberini (Figure ). Set in the middle of what is now a hectic piazza, this fountain consists of a mistilinear pool surrounded by a low frame of travertine, in the centre of which four dolphins turn their tails into a pedestal for a graceful undulating shell.^ On top of the shell, in its centre, sits a Triton (Figure ) head tipped back, arms upraised to support the conch from which he blows a single jet of sparkling water. This jet, exactly the right height and diameter for the completion of the sculpture below, lets its sparkling drops

^D'Onofrio, p. 1S9. My translation. ^D'Onofrio speaks frequently of the "vasca mis- tilinea"—that is,a basin that is shaped by straight and curved lines and Wiles (p. 23, n. 1) coins the word "mistilinear" which I borrow. 73 fall appropriately onto the shoulders of the Triton, turn• ing his travertine form into a truly dark and slippery creature of the sea. In the hinge of the shell can be seen the Papal Insignia and Barberini crest and up the tails of the dolphins climb the three Barberini bees. Triton, supported by Dolphins and blowing from a conch, a concetto used twice by Bernini, was not new. ". . . the motif of the triton spouting upward was known to Florentine sculptors in the Cinquecento and was even utilized as the central motif over freestanding fountains." (Wiles, p. 104) Some of these same bronzes which Wiles describes in detail (p. &8ff) are attributed to Bologna and are also supported by Dolphins. Wiles is quite categorical about these being the source of Bernini's inspiration: "... another instance of the Roman master's close dependence, in his early works, upon Florentine fountain sculpture of the Cinquecento." (p. 104) Such a judgement, however, I am inclined to consider conjectural, as, according to Baldinuccij Bernini's first visit to Florence seems to have been on his way to France in I665, nor can I find evidence in any other early source of Bernini having studied Bologna's work.^

^Baldinucci, Enggass translation, p. 51. "Through• out the journey Bernini received honors that surpass descrip• tion from all the princes. Most notable of all was the reception of Ferdinand, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of glor• ious memory. During the few days that Bernini stayed in Florence the Duke commended him to the care of Gabbriello 74

A more likely appraisal of the source of the Triton would seem to he D'Onofrio's, who says that Bernini not only was inspired by, but virtually plagarized from a work by Stefano Maderno (Figure ). In 1611-12 there was constructed in the Vatican as the .Mostra of the Acqua Paola which had been recently led there—an enormous fountain of the rustic genre—La Fontana dell'Aquila. (See also the account of the Fontana delP'Api',' 1625, of the Belvedere Courtyard.) The fountain itself was constructed by Antonio de Pomis and Bernardino Valperga. The various sculptural groups in the many caves and niches of the fountain were done by other artigt •—the relevant one for this study being Maderno (Figure ). One can see from the figure that in the niche to the right of the central waterfall of the Aquila fountain is Maderno's group consisting of a Triton sitting astride a Dolphin, head tipped back, blowing into a conch which he holds with both upraised arms. The pose of Bernini's

Riccardi, Marquis of Chianni and Rivalto, a cavalier of great merit and extraordinary wealth. . . . Bernini was able to see as much beauty as his genius could desire. Be• sides pictures of great value there were in the palace seventy-one busts and eight complete statues. In the garden there were two hundred and ten busts and six complete statues, all precious remains of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the marvellous bronze head and neck of a horse that by common consensus and also in the opinion of Bernini, is by the same hand as the famous horse of the Capitoline. There were also statues by the finest masters of modern times. Bernini remained a few days in Florence in order to see the most beautiful things of his native land." 75

Triton who is sitting astride the central ridge of the shell —is almost identical. The lower part of Bernini's fountain —four dolphins supporting a shell with their tails derives from a lost fountain sculpted by Nicolas Cordier in 1610— also for the Vatican Gardens.^ Although Bernini's models can be easily identified, this fact does not in any way detract from his own composi• tion which far surpasses plagarizing them. In fact if D'Onofrio's use of the word "plagarize" here is in anything but a rhetorical sense, then I cannot agree with him; for what is the whole of art history but developing of themes— the Venus of Urbino^to the totally frank nudes of Modigliani, for example? Except to reiterate what I have said about the perfection of the quality of the single jet of water as an integral part of the concetto, I do not think I can im• prove upon the words of D'Onofrio who says (p. 195):

. . . tutta questa compozione fatta di grande potenza e austera delicatezza, dove l'artista non s'e lasciato un solo momento prender la mano dalla retorica e dal facile effetto, ma dove tutto e misura e poesia. . . .

I am indebted to Howard Hibbard for the following relevant remarks about the Triton:

Bernini's originality lies, on its simplest level, in transplanting this familiar sea god [from its rustic setting] into a Roman Piazza and setting him up in a free version of the typical [until then] geometric piazza fountain. The Triton was, however, also an

D'Onofrio, p. 195. 76

emblem signifying "Immortality Acquired by Literary Study." This esoteric symbolism is probably linked with the massive papal arms entwined in the dolphins' tails. Everyone knew that Urban VIII was a Latin poet of some skill and so the Triton seems to proclaim Urban's literary immortality. The image may be even more complex since dolphins symbolized princely bene• faction and the bees on the Barberini arms were recognized emblems of divine providence. The Triton thus emerges not only as a personal allusion but also as a symbol of enlightened papal government under divine guidance. The complex iconography has, however, been completely digested into the image; the Triton retains its magic whether or not we choose to see it as a meaningful concetto as well as an inspired civic monument. (p. 112)

Once again the dating of this fountain is controver• sial. The traditional view was that Bernini built it in

1640.^ But in 1955, Wittkower in his book on Bernini puts the date three years earlier based on a passage in the AV writing of Domenico Bernini. ' This passage quoted by D'Onofrio (p. 191, n. 9), and on which Wittkower bases his date of 1637, tells of the Pope going to see the fountain when he was sickly and old; but this very event, according to D'Onofrio who then goes on to prove it, took place not before I64O, but shortly before the death of the Pope which was almost exactly a year after the inauguration of the fountain in 1643. Writing in 1957, D'Onofrio bases his judgement in this instance on Baglione (who refers to the Triton being Wiles, Voss, et al. A7 'Rudolph Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, 1955, p. 195« 77 in-the-building at that time) says that the fountain was probably completed during the first half of 1643. In addition to Baglione, D'Onofrio cites as additional proof of the 1643 date^ an original document in the Vatican Archives

in the handwriting oftand signed by>Urban VIII. This docu• ment, dated August 19th, 1643, mentions the "newly- fabricated" Triton fountain and speaks of rewards to Bernini, then the Prefect of the Acqua Felice which supplies the fountain. The use of the phrase "nuovamente fabricata" in• dicates that this document followed closely upon the inaugur• ation of the Piazza Barberini fountain and therefore, as D'Onofrio says, is fairly conclusive that the fountain was completed in the first half of 1643. D'Onofrio also publishes a drawing (Figure ) which he claims (p. 193) to be hitherto unpublished and which he discovered in the Lanciani collection in the possession of the Biblioteca d'Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte in Roma. As he says in his note (p. 193, n. 13), it appears that at the base of the figure, one can see, lightly sketched in, the outlines of the basin of a fountain. The note continues —saying that D'Onofrio believes that this is a drawing of the Barberini Triton described by Frascati known to have been in the collection of the antiquarian Fallani. 7a

Fontana Delle "Api"—Piazza Barberini—1644 It seems to me that further speculative evidence that D'Onofrio's fixing of the I643 date for the Triton is the right one, might be the known date, 1644, for a small fountain also by Bernini, which is closely related to the Triton. Notably, La Fontana delle "Api''on the corner of the Via Barberini and the Via Sistina—in the Piazza Barberini (Figure ). This fountain is in the form of a large open shell. The part of the shell on the horizontal holds the water, blown into it through three bees arranged in a semi-circle on the base of the vertical shell. Above the bees on the vertical half of the shell is an inscription which can be translated as follows:

Urban VIII, Supreme Pontiff, after having had con• structed a fountain to the public ornament of the city [the Triton] had this little fountain constructed for the convenience of private citizens in the year 1644, the twenty-first year of his pontificate.

As it was the custom to construct a small "beveratore delli cavalli" in relation to a larger major fountain, and as this fountain also serves as a reserve water supply for the Triton, it seems reasonable to assume that the major fountain, tMeoTriton, was constructed immediately before it, that is to

say, in 1643• The fountain itself, it will be noted, is similar

to the later lost Fontana dell'Olimpo, I648 (q.v.), and to 79

La Fontana cp.erl Paolo Strada 1667-69 (q.v.). This one is, I think, particularly pleasing in the simplicity of its concetto and the rhythm and grace with which that was car• ried out. Particularly successful is the lower half of the shell forming the basin which is settled into some large, irregularly-shaped, rocks. The bays of the shell seem to correspond in size and in weight to the rocks and together with the smooth surface of the water in the basin, they produce an effect of serenity, simplicity and substance. The open half of the shell, however, does not seem to me to be so successful.

Granted that art demands more than just a replica of a real object, in this case a shell—it also necessitates a realization of its own concept, whether figurative or abstract. Judging from a photograph, La Fontana delle"Api" in its upper part does not succeed in this. The outline of the shell does, by its shape, echo that of the lower basin; the weight, however, does not appear to correspond, and the resemblance to a real shell is literal enough here for us to know that were the shell closed, the top half would not fit. Not only do the bays on the upper half appear smaller and more delicate and not match those of the lower "shell," but the whole upper half appears to be straight, or even convex, as opposed to the way a true shell would be, that is, concave. This last can perhaps be overlooked but the BO question of the weight is troubling. (It is interesting to note that both later fountains with the same motif—La Fontana dell'Olimpo and La Fontana per Paolo Strada—are more successful in these respects.) This fountain was dis• mantled in 1867 and reconstructed at the entrance to the Via Veneto.

La Fontana dell'Olimpo--Villa Mattel--ca. 16A8 To illustrate Bernini's ingenuity, Baldinucci describes another fountain:

In another fountain made for the Duke Girolamo Mattei for his famous villa at the Navicella* he [that is, Bernini] wished to do something great and majestic, but the water would only rise a little. He made a representation of Mount Olympus, on which he placed the figure of a flying eagle, an emblem of the Mattei, which also makes an effective reference to the moun• tain. He placed clouds midway up the mountain, since they could not rise to the summit of Olympus, and from these coulds rain fell.48

As D'Onofrio points out, Bernini's source of in• spiration for this fountain is La Fontana dell'Aquila (see discussion of Fontaina delle ^Api*'nel Vaticano) (Figure ), but here Bernini enriches the concept with his own stamp; three huge dolphins support with their tails an open shell LQ from which an eagle, hovering in flight, is drinking.

Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), p. 81. D'Onofrio, p. 199. 81

This fountain, which dates from approximately I648 (see discussion under Villa Mattei Triton) has also been lost and is known to us only from an etching in Venturini (Figure ). In addition to the Fountain of Olympus there were two more fountains executed by Bernini for the Duke Girolomo Mattei for his villa at Celio—now called the Villa Celimontana. Both these fountains have since been lost. One was the Fontana del Tritone, which the Duke, delighted by La Fontana del Tritone of the Piazza Barberini, asked Bernini to copy, and the other is the pair Le Fontane de "Facchini."

La Fontana del Tritone—Villa Mattei—ca. I648 The Fontana del Tritone of the Villa Mattei is known to us chiefly through its portrayal in a late seven- 50 teenth century etching by Giovanni Francesca Venturini. (Figure ) This etching shows an avenue, formed from what appears to be topiary, at the end of which is a low round basin and in its centre a Triton, head tipped back blowing a jet of water straight up from a conch-shell held in his right hand. He is very similar to the Barberini Triton (1643) but possibly more exuberant and free, or as D'Onofrio says, more "vivacious"—an impression possibly created by G.B. Falda, Le fontane di Roma nelle piazze e • luoghi publici della cittacon li loro prospetti come sono al presente. Rome, 1675. 82

his vigorously squirming tails. He is seated on three, or possibly four (the fourth not being visible in this two- dimensional portrayal) marine monsters which are supported by a low rocky mass emerging from the centre of the pool and which also spout water into it.

- Jjhe; Facchini a Villa Mattei—ca. I648 I will return to the question of the dating of this fountain after mentioning another lost fountain, or pair of fountains known to us from the same engraving; notably, the fountains of the "Facchini" or porters. On either side of the entrance to the avenue can be seen two porters each at the foot of what appear to be flights of steps. Their heads are turned facing each other and each is holding a barrel from the sides of which water flows out into small round pools at their feet. The rims of these pools are constructed in exactly the same manner as the central pool containing the Triton (Figure ).

According to D'Onofrio?a possible model for the "Facchini"was a single"Facchino"on the corner of a building in the Via Lata (Figure ). A poem praising this fountain was written in 1620 and it appears on maps of Rome in the I63O!s. An eighteenth century writer attributes it to Michelangelo and D'Onofrio considers it likely that it was made in Florence as the family it was made for moved from 83

Florence to Rome. To return to the question of the dating of the fountains, earlier writers (Wiles writing in 1933 (p. 104) and Voss in 1910 (p. 103)—author of what was until recently considered the definitive work on Bernini's fountains) date both Villa Mattei fountains early, approximately 1628 or 1629. But E.P. Richardson writing in 1953 about two Bernini bozzetti, "Triton with a Shell"and'^Triton with a Sea-Serpent" (which he, together with Brinckman dates in the 1650's) says that there is no documentary evidence for Voss's theory and that either of the two bozzetti was quite possibly the model 51 for the Villa Mattei Triton. In any case Richardson con• siders the latter to be freer and more exuberant than the Piazza Barberini Triton and therefore to have followed it. Cesare D'Onofrio who might be considered Voss's successor, writing in 1957, like Richardson, places the date of the Villa Mattei Triton after that of the one of Piazza Barber• ini (stating specifically that the Duke Girolamo Mattei saw the Piazza Barberini Triton and asked Bernini to copy it).''2 He stabilizes the date of the three Villa Mattei fountains as being approximately 1643 because it is known that the Duke wanted to renovate his villa on the Caelian 51 E.P. Richardson, "Two Bozzetti by Gian Lorenzo Bernini," The Art Quarterly, 16, 1:2-10 (1953). 52D'0nofrio, p. 193. 84

Hill in preparation for the Holy Year of 1650. Although such an a priori proof seems somewhat tenuous, combined with Richardson's visually-based judgement, the I648 date seems infinitely more tenable than the earlier one.

La Fontana dei Quattro Fiume a Piazza Navona—I648-I65I La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (9th July, l648-12th June, 1651) perhaps marked the zenith of Bernini's fountain career, and certainly the commission to build it rescued him from the nadir of his career as a whole. Bernini him• self, however, disavowed the work in later years, closing the shutters of his carriage as he passed and saying

"How ashamed I am to have done so poorlyJ" There are aspects of the fountain that belong more to the circus than to serious art. Bernini's vision became in• creasingly fervent and exalted in his last years; in that world such a fountain plays no part.53

Rising out of a perfectly round pool, separated only from the pavement of the piazza by a paving design and a low lip of travertine, is a large sculpted rock, also of travertine, from which spring the Four Rivers of the World.54

53Hibbard, p. 123- 54The motif of river gods was not new, and in fact, was frequently found in classical sculpture. Also, fifty years before, Boliagna had done a fountain on a similar theme in the Boboli Gardens. According to Wiles (p. 32ff) both the iconography and the position of the figures changed dur• ing the Cinquecento. Until the execution of the seated figures by Tribolo for the fountains for the Villa Corsini Mounted on top of the rock as the central feature of the fountain, is an Egyptian obelisk which lay in pieces in the Circus of Maxentius on the Appian Way and which was transported, at the wishes of the Pope, to the Piazza Navona by most painstaking and ingenious means. At the top of the obelisk, surmounting the whole, is the Pamphili dove. The coat of arms and papal insignia are at two other places 55 lower down on the rock. In addition to this quite obvious and commonplace iconography, additional interpretations have been given: at Florence, the gods had been in recumbent position. Then, too, the gods assumed earthly significance, representing the countries under the rule of Charles V. Bernini's concept was presumably inspired by the seventeenth century's expanded knowledge, of the world as a whole. ^D'Onofrio has an interesting observation about Bernini's use of masks with African lineaments (D'Onofrio's fig. 183), which I quote here: "Lineament!, del resto, che ritornano un po' come un leit motif in varie sculture del Bernini, il quale (copiandoli dai mascheroni che Michel• angelo aveva disegnato per i capitelli del palazzo dei Conservatori), sembra che ad essi fosse particolarmente affezionato. Infatti, quella caratteristica faccia, dagli occhi piccoli e quasi bestiali, dal naso rincagnato in un 'muso' sporgente, talora con i capelli disordinati e lunghi fin sul collo, e una peluria alle gote, egli una prima volta probabilmente 1'aveva scolpita in quattro copie sull' orlo della fontana nel palazzo Barberini (fig. 157); quindi appena accenata nel 'Tritone Barberini" (fig. 164), poi raffigurata piu decisamente in uno dei Quattro Fiumi ed in una testa ornamentale d'uno degli stemmi di questa medesima fontana (figs. 182 e 1#3); la porto poi alle estreme consequenze con il 'Moro', per ripeterla infine come orna• ment o della sella sull'elefantino della Minerva" (p. 75, in discussion of II Moro q.v.) The one river to which he refers is the River Plate. 86

The resurrected pagan obelisk, originally in a temple dedicated to Isis, rises in obeisance to the Paraphilii church, which itself commands the site of pagan festiv• ities. It has been suggested that the four rivers can be interpreted on another level as the Rivers of Para• dise, a symbol of the ancient world. A re-awakened Rome again dominates the earth, not through arms, but by faith. And so the fountain symbolizes the triumph of the papacy and of the reigning papal family.56

(Complexity in iconography as well as in design were common in the Baroque period and both were handled with excellence 57 by Bernini.BaldinucciTs description of the fountain is so colourful and illuminating that it is worth quoting here, at least in part: About ten palmi [according to D'Onofrio about 1.15 metres] from the two extremities lies a great basin symbolizing, I believe, the sea, in the midst of which there rises to a great height of about thirty palmi a mass or, let us say, a grotto made of travertine. This mass is tunnelled through so that from all four sides one can see through to the other side of the piazza. By means of these openings the rock is divided into four parts which are joined and united at the top. These four parts represent the four continents of the world. The sections, by broadening and jutting out in various craggy masses, provide places for four very im• posing giant figures of white marble representing the four rivers. The Nile symbolizing Africa is the figure

Hibbard, p. 122. Professor Hibbard's source here seems to be Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600- 1750, p. 109. Wittkower also adds that the dove is the traditional symbol of Divine Light and eternity and notes that "This moment of Catholic triumph and victory, there• fore, also contains the idea of the Salvation of Mankind under the sign of the Cross." 57 Of complexity and the Baroque, it is interesting to see Hauser, p. 178 and preceding: "The unity is no longer merely the result, but the a priori of the artistic creation; the artist approaches his subject with a unified vision, and in this vision everything isolated and particular finally perishes." 87

covering the upper part of his head with a cloth as an indication of the obscurity which long prevailed [and which in fact was not ascertained until the nineteenth century] regarding the exact point from which it springs from the earth. Beside it is a very beautiful palm tree.

[One of the few; good ,and sincere parts of the fountain, according to D'Onofrio.] The Danube, which represents Europe, is admiring the marvelous obelisk and has a lion nearby. The Ganges, which stands for Asia, holds a large oar indicating the great extent of its waters. A little below is a horse. [Attribute of the Danube.] Finally comes the Rio della Plata for America. It is represented by a Moor, and next to it are some coins to show the wealth of minerals abounding in that country. Beneath the figure is a terrible monster commonly known as the Tatu [Armadillo] of the Indies. Around all these river allegories water brought there from the Trevi fountain gushes in great quantities. In the basin at the water line appear some large fish in the act of darting into the sea, all of them most beautiful. One fish on the side toward Piazza Orsini is seen swallow• ing the water that sustains its life, and having taken in too great a quantity, it blows out the excess- a truly brilliant concept. (Baldinucci, Enggass trans., pp. 37 and 38).

This is the fountain that the present viewer sees. The stories connected with its building, historical and structural, are equally interesting; the two are almost in• extricably interwoven and although the historical events are generally known, for the story of their symbiosis, I am 58 almost entirely indebted to D'Onofrio. Le Quattro Fiumi was not the first fountain to be placed in the centre of the Piazza Navona. There had in fact been a fountain there for some time—consisting of a simple four-sided basin without any ornament which served

w as a; b eve rat ore delli cavalli," horse trough, and which D'Onofrio, p. 201ff. 88 had been brought there during the pontificate of Gregory XIII. Jacopo della Porta who had been responsible for the two lateral fountains (q.v.) of the Piazza had, about the year 1587, plans to place in the centre of the basin the ancient statue of Marfori© (Figure ), which possibly 59 represented a sea-god, but this plan was never realized. In 1623, shortly after the election of Urban VIII to the pontificate, Bernini was appointed Commissioner of the Conduits and Fountains of the Piazza Navona. He did no work on the fountains there, however, until more than twenty years later. At that time the neglected piazza came into its own as the palace of the reigning Pope, Innocent X Pamphili (1644-1655) was then being built there. Bernini, although still Architect of St. Peter's, was at that time the victim of papal disgrace—partly on the general count of Innocent X's antipathy to his predecessors, the Barberini, and partly because of the more specific debScle of Bernini's south tower for the facade of St. Peter's.^ He was not, ^The statue of Marforio, now in the Capitoline Museum (Wiles, fig. 70) dates from early Roman times. The caption to D'Onofrio's fig. 37 says that it was restored in 1594- The statue is said to have acquired its name from the combination of the words Mare, sea, and Foro, where it was found. ^Innocent X became the implacable enemy of the Barberini family and feeling ran so high that Urban VIII's closer relatives found it prudent to go into exile. Since the Barberini were by far the most lavish patrons of art in Rome, their departure meant further restriction of artistic opportunity. Bernini, the Barberini favourite, also suffered: the Pope was eager to hear the worst of him." 89 therefore, among the many artists—"Every artist worthy of the name"—invited to submit designs for the great new fountain which was to grace the centre of the piazza.^

The Pamphili palace, in front of which the new fountain was to stand (as did the beveratore), was being completed by

Bernini's rival Borromini, who was also completing the adjacent facade of the church of Sant'Agnese della Piazza

Navona.

The story goes however, that Prince Niccolb Ludovisi, who was a great friend of Bernini and was also married to a niece of the Pope, devised a stratagem whereby Bernini was also to enter the competition, by-the-back-door, so to speak.

Bernini made a model in silver for his proposal of the four rivers of the world (a concetto also used by Borromini who had by this time already been chosen to do the fountain).

Hibbard, p. 116. Bernini did drawings and a model of bell towers designed to be placed on Maderno's foundations on either side of the facade of St. Peter's. His proposal was accepted and in 1637 building began. When cracks started to appear in the facade, Bernini's enemies—who because of his enormous prestige and near monopoly of works significant in Rome, were legion—put it out that Bernini at worst, did not know his art and at best had made a superficial or faulty investigation of the underground springs and general situ• ation beneath the foundations. In I64I work was stopped and in I646 the south tower was pulled down and Bernini disgraced. Baldinucci however, in his life of Bernini devotes a whole section at the end of his book to documentation of his in• vestigation of this incident, concluding that Bernini was in no way at fault and that the cracks, in the opinion of many competent architects were the result of the inevitable settling of the basilica and were in no way dangerous.

6lHibbard, p. 12G. 90

On the occasion of the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, a luncheon was being held in the Pamphili palace at which both the Pope and the Donna Olimpia were present. While the company was at luncheon, Prince Ludovisi had Bernini's model placed on a table in an anteroom through which it was necessary for the party to pass when they left the table. When the Pope saw the work he was enchanted>and after admiring it for some time exclaimed, "This is a trick of Prince Ludovisi's; we must indeed employ Bernini. . . . 62 The only way to resist his works is not to see them." What particularly pleased the Pope about Bernini's scheme, which was not in concept so different from Borromini's (Figure ), was the great rock in the centre. The obelisk, which the Pope was so set on having, was not very tall, and if used centrally in the fountain on a conventional pedestal would undoubtedly have seemed insignificant in the fountain as well as in the piazza; Bernini's great rock, the ingenuity of which so impressed Baldinucci, raised the obelisk to a position of dominance—making it stand supreme in the piazza. 62Hibbard, p. 121. ^Baldinucci says: "The rock mass is made in such a manner that it appears to be a single piece. It cannot be broken into separate pieces through any accident as all the pieces are dovetailed and so placed that one makes bond for the other and all the bonds join to hold the whole together. The pedestal stands splendidly at the exact center of the rock's summit, about twenty-three palmi high. . . . One marvels not a little to see the immense mass of the obelisk erected on a rock so hollowed out and divided and observe how—speaking in artistic terms—it seems to stand upon a void." (Enggass trans., p. 3#) 91

In 1647 the work that Borromini had been doing on the conduits came to an end and on July 10th, I648, the commission to do the fountain was given to Bernini. Bernini continued to modify his design until the last

moment—even during the execution of the fountain>and some of the earlier designs are still extant. A careful examination of their chronology is interesting and also illumines a facet of Bernini's character. (As has often been the case through• out these descriptions of Bernini's fountains, I am here entirely indebted to D'Onofrio for the following account of the development of the final design.) To recapitulate a little; in 1645 Borromini was given the commission to build the fountain. On April 27th, 1647, the Pope went to San Sebastian on the Appian Way to the site of the ruins of the Naumachia of Claudius (the Circus of Maxentius) to see an obelisk which, thereupon, he was determined to have in the centre of his new fountain. (At this point it is necessary to depart from the sequence of events for a moment to describe several preliminary designs by Bernini.) i. The first, in the private collection of the Chigi family, shows an ancient sea divinity, holding coats of arms and emerging from a grotto or cave. Water also comes out of the cave from whence it falls into a large shell resting on rocks. From there the water overflows into a lower basin—large and round (Figure ). From the draw- ing it is difficult to determine whether Bernini intended two or four divinities or how many crests they would hold. ii. The second design, which is at Windsor, shows four complete figures seated, each on a separate mass of rock from which the water flows onto shells supported by the tails of four fish. A circle of columns, only partially drawn in, surrounds the lower pool (Figure ). As both these designs show the obelisk, it can be deduced that they were done after April l6A7 when the Pope decided to use the obelisk. Bernini, however, did not receive the commission to erect this fountain until 1648. iii. In a third drawing, however, discovered by D'Onofrio in the Lanciani collection, an interesting element emerges (Figure ). The drawing is identical to the Windsor drawing except in the following respects: (a) the human figures in the Lanciani drawing are of young men rather than the old and bearded ones of the Windsor drawing. (b) in the Windsor drawing, the "inside" arms of the two figures are in a lowered position partly be• cause of the positioning of the obelisk and partly for the purpose of holding a coat or arms. In the Lanciani drawing the''inside'"arms are raised to support a shell from the centre of which shoots a jet. In short, the Windsor and Lanciani drawings are identical except for the obelisk, the coat of arms and the bearded faces. From this evidence, D'Onofrio concludes that the Lanciani drawing is a copy, albeit a seventeenth century 93 one, of an earlier drawing by Bernini dating from about 1645, that had been lost. The lost drawing was, in fact, an earlier phase of the Windsor drawing—both of which were intended by Bernini from the outset (even though he was not in the running for the fountain commission at either time) to be designs for La Fontana dei Quattro Fiume. To prove this point further, D'Onofrio cites a document dated August 1645 in the archives of the Capitoline Museum which relates that Bernini offered to donate water to the conduit from La Fontana di Trevi (the mostra of the Acqua Vergine) to the Piazza Navona for the building of the proposed fountain, in return for the ownership of the water of the fountain itself. The diversion of such water from the Trevi was in fact necessary, and it is D'Onofrio's view that as early as 1645, even though he was then in disgrace, Bernini was

anticipating supplanting Borromini?and that he executed the lost drawing recorded in the Lanciani collection, and the Windsor drawing, accordingly. The former was done before the Pope decided to use the obelisk. The design sequence then would seem to have been first, the Chigi design which Bernini himself then dis• carded in favour of the lost drawing, copied in the Lanciani collection, which D'Onofrio says was inspired by Jacopo della Porta's Fontane della Tartarughe (q.v.); then, after Bernini received the commission to do the fountain, the obelisk was added and the young men changed to old at 94 the wishes of Innocent X—hence the Windsor drawing. This design was then developed into the completed fountain as we now know it.

There is no doubt that in spite of additional taxes imposed on the Roman populace to pay for the water and the construction of the fountain, that the fountain itself was an enormous sensation and completely restored Bernini's reputation:

It is impossible to relate how, after the fountain was unveiled, the ideas of the great persons who gathered in that place changed from those they had held before about Bernini, and how he was applauded in public and in private. From that point he became the unique object of the praise of all the academies in Rome. (Baldinucci, Enggass trans., p. 39)^4

The same author's account of Bernini's sense of the dramatic,

At this point it is interesting to note one of the respects in which Baldinucci was wrong about Bernini's public fountains. (See discussion of La Barcaccia.) Baldinucci says: "In this great work the entire rock mass, the palm tree, the lion and half of the horse are completely by Bernini. The Nile is the work of Jacopo Antonio Fancelli, the Ganges by Adamo, the Danube by Andrea Lombardo, and the Rio della Plata by Francesco Baratta. However, in the case of this last figure and that of the Nile, Bernini made many of the strokes with his own hand." (Enggass trans., p. 38) In fact, the horse was carved by Giovanni Maria Fracchi who was in charge of a group of sculptors under Bernini's direction; the Ganges was executed by Claudio Poussin, and the Danube by Antonio Raggi. The lion and the armadillo were also carved by Fracchi. The four river figures are each five metres high. 95 and the impression the latter made on the Pope is also worth recounting: .

When this great work was almost completed but before it was unveiled, that is to say, before the scaffolding and the cloth-covered framework which kept it hidden from the public's eye had been removed, the Pope wished to see it. Therefore, one morning the Pope arrived and entered the enclosure together with Cardinal Panzirolo, his secretary of state, and about fifty of his closest confidants. He remained there more than an hour and a half enjoying himself greatly. Since the water had not yet been turned on, the Pope asked Bernini when it would be possible to see it fall. Bernini replied that he could not say on such short notice, since some time was required to put everything in order. Nevertheless, he said he would see to it that everything was done as soon as possible. The pontiff then gave him his bene• diction and turned toward the doorto leave. He had not yet gone out of the enclosure when he heard a loud sound of water. Turning back he saw it gush forth on all sides with great abundance. The Cavalier had, at the crucial moment, given a certain signal to the per• son whose job it was to open the ducts, and he quickly had it coursing through the pipes to the mouths of the fountain. Bernini knew that the more unexpected it was, the more pleasing it would be to the Pope. Overcome by such originality and gladdened by so beautiful a sight the Pope returned with his whole court. Turning to Bernini he exclaimed, "In giving us this unexpected joy, Bernini, you have added ten years to our life." (Baldinucci, Enggass trans., pp. 38-39)

There remains only to give some critical comments about Le Quattro Fiumi—a difficult task—and one is inclined to agree with Bernini himself, who cringed and turned away. Howard Hibbard is most apt in saying that spectacular as the fountain is, it smacks more of the spectacle than of serious art. D'Onofrio speaks more of particulars, admiring Bernini's scheme for the raising of the obelisk and his idea of adapting 96 a rustic fountain to an urban setting. But, he says, in many of the fountain's particulars it is too heavy, and on the whole quite atypical of Bernini. He specifically criticizes the horse, saying it looks more like a giraffe, and the heads of the Danube and the Ganges as being almost identical. Particularly unfortunate, in his view, is the fact that the right leg of each of the river figures is raised—intended for continuity but instead producing clumsi• ness and monotony. The palm tree, bending gently, and the great veils of water that fall from the rock, are, he con• siders, among the fountain's best features.

In these particulars I would agree, and I will speak of this work again in my concluding remarks on Bernini's fountains. My own feeling is, however, that the merit of this fountain lies not so much in itself as in Bernini's use of it in the sculptural moulding of the space in the

Piazza Navona. The plan of Sixtus V>involving two obelisks, could not have failed, I am sure, to have produced a sym• metrical and static space—quite unlike Bernini's piazza of directed movement.

On October 7th, 1623, Urban VIII, the newly-elected

Pope and great friend of Bernini, appointed Bernini the

Superintendent of the Resevoirs of the Acqua Felice and

Pietro Bernini Architect of the Acqua Vergine (which supplied the Piazza Navona); in 1625 G.L. Bernini was also appointed by the Pope to the position of Commissioner of the Conduits 97 of the Fountains of the Piazza Navona. These appointments marked the beginning of Bernini's career in relation to public fountains (his only fountain work to that time was the Neptune and Glaucus group—q.v.), but he did not do any work on the actual fountains of the Piazza Navona until more than twenty years later.

Fontana della "Lumaca"—1652—intended for the Piazza Navona and now in the gardens at Villa Pamphili One of the most successful, and amusing, fountains of Bernini is one that was not, in the end, actually executed by him. This is the Fontana della "Lumaca" de• signed by Bernini in 1652 and carved by Angelo Vannelli. The perfection of this work comes from a combination of the full realization of a concept (the development of the spiral), from Bernini's unerring sense of Tightness in his

later years>and from the grace and wit that these two pro- 65 duced. The spiral arises from the shell, not of a "Lumaca" or snail, as it was instantly christened by the Roman 65 These last attributes were also true of Bernini's personality. Of this Baldinucci says "Bernini's ingenuity did not stop at matters of art. He brought forth noble concepts, acute sayings, and witty pleasantries on every occasion." (Baldinucci, Enggass trans., p. 81) 98 66 populace, but from that of a whelk. This large shell is held aloft by the flipped-up tails—intertwined in a counter-spiral—of three frolicking dolphins (Figure ). This charming little group constitutes the entire sculptural part of the fountain and is itself on a pedes- tal. There remains only the water element of the fountain, and here, as in the Piazza Barberini Triton (q.v.), we find the recurring and inimitable stamp of Bernini—the water arranged in such a way that it becomes an integral and in• dispensable element of the completed fountain. In this case it is the water, a single substantial and vigourous jet, which shoots up from the small end of the whelk, that lends to this sea group its impudence and wit. Without it the sculptural group lacks not only life, but appears meaningless and unfinished. I Historically the "Lumaca" had a somewhat wandering career. After the inauguration of La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in 1651, Pope Innocent X ordered Bernini to restore 66 Webster definition of a whelk is: "A.S.[weoloc, wioloc] Any of various large marine gastropods of the family Buccinidae, having a spiral, esp. Buccinum undulatum which is used for food in Europe." Cry It is amusing to note that even the artistically aware Italians missed the point of the spiral derived from the whelk and instantly christened the fountain, the snail. The idea of using three intertwined dolphins, like so much in art history, was possibly not Bernini's own. Similar, though less lively groups can be seen in Giulio Parigi's "four identical cylix fountains" for the Boboli Gardens. (Wiles, The Fountains of Florentine Sculptors, p. 66, Fig. 126) 99 the lateral fountains of the Piazza Navona (built according to a design by della Porta in 1576) so that they should be in keeping with the new fountain^thereby adding to the elegance of the Pamphili Piazza. In January of the follow• ing year Bernini contracted a sculptor called Angelo Vannelli to carve the group of the three dolphins and the whelk shell to replace the group of low rocks which already occupied the centre of the pool of della PortaTs southern fountain. The group was completed and mounted in May of that year and 68 dismantled a month later. The Pope and his sister-in-law,

Donna Olimpia, appear to have considered it too frivolous to be a companion-piece to Le Quattro Fiumi. It was removed to St. Peter's temporarily for safekeeping and then placed in the gardens of Donna Olimpia at Ripa near S. Maria a

Capella, and then, finally, in the gardens of the Yilla 69 Pamphili by the Gianiculo. 7

According to D'Onofrio Bernini was not himself impressed by the "Lumaca," but was trying to repeat the motif of the dolphins which flanked the masks in the basin of the southern fountain. D'Onofrio does not explain in what respect Bernini did not like it, but possibly he thought its theme, or concetto, lacking in the same sort of grandeur as that of the Quattro Fiumi.

document dated the 29th of July, 1653, signed by the Pope, declared the fountain thereafter to be private, rather than public, property. (D'Onofrio, p. 72, n. 21) 100

Disegno e bozzetto dei "doi tritone et li quattro pesci" for the Southern Fountain of the Piazza Navona— 1652-1653 When it became apparent that the "Lumaca" group was not pleasing to the Pope, and while in fact its final loca• tion was still to be decided, Bernini began working (1652- 1653) on another design, never realized, for the southern 70 fountain of the Piaaza Navona. It is known to us through two almost identical drawings—one at Windsor and the other in the Biblioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte in Rome, and a bozzetto in Berlin. The design, known as "doi tritone et li quattro pesci" shows two seated Tritons holding above their heads four dolphins—a reverse of the arrangement we have pre• viously seen (Figure ). This too was rejected by the Pope and Donna Olimpia, possibly because, as D'Onofrio suggests, they did not like the idea of so many seated figures, there already being four seated Tritons in the basin of the foun• tain. A second reason that D'Onofrio advances for the Pope's rejection of the design, and one he considers to be more likely, was the size of Bernini's proposed new group; the seated Tritons in the pool were each 1.7 metres high. To surmount them as a central group the "doi tritone et li quattro pesci" would have had to have been enormous and D'Onofrio, p. 73. 101 therefore quite out of proportion to the horizontal dimen• sions of the fountain. In addition to this reason, I think the first one advanced by D'Onofrio seems quite valid, and I would carry it further to say that it simply is not as successful a group as Bernini's other ones because there is no tension in the group itself. That is to say, the Gestalt of this group is a simple pyramid which can be understood at a single glance and is in no way altered or enhanced by the water element. The tails of the dolphins flap futilely in the air. By contrast, the "Lumaca"—also somewhat pyramidal in form—is carried to a delightful and unexpected height by its jet of water.

Ii "Moro" of the Piazza Navona—1653-1655 Finally, in May 1653, Innocent X gave approval for Bernini's design for the southern fountain of the Piazza Navona. The design that pleased the Pope was that for the "Moro" which Innocent apparently liked because of its height and size. The statue was executed by Giovanni Antonio Mari in Bernini's house, was completed in December 1654, and put in place in 1655. Before describing the statue itself, I will return briefly to the setting for which the "Lumaca" and the "doi tritone et li quattro pesci" were designed and into which 102

the "Moro" was finally placed. The original fountain and its northern counterpart in the Piazza Navona were designed by Jacopo della Porta— the chief Roman fountain designer of the late sixteenth century. Extant contracts show that in 1574 a sculptor— Ludovico Rossi—was engaged to build the ground pools after 71 wooden models by della Porta. They were to be constructed of Porta Santa marble and were 10.8 metres long by 6.75 metres wide; in 1576 the same sculptor was instructed to build in the pool of the southern fountain an elegant balustrade that was to be 35 centimetres high. The basin or pool was to be mistilinear, that is, composed of straight and curving lines. In the pool della Porta placed four Tritons, each seated on a rock, with its back to the centre of the pool. These Tritons were originally intended for the fountain in the Piazza del Popolo and then in the end were not used 72 there. (Each was sculpted by a different sculptor.) Alternating with the four Tritons on the edge of the pool are four masks—described by D'Onofrio as being composed 71D'0nofrio, p. 65. 72 The sculptors were Taddeo Landini and Simone Moschino (Florentines), and Egidio della Riviera de Malinas (a Fleming) and Giacobbe Silla Longhi. The original four Tritons were removed to the gardens of the Villa Borghese in 1874 as were the masks, and both replaced by copies. D'Onofrio, p. 67. 103 73 of two dolphins, a monstrous face, and a winged dragon.,y In the centre was a modest group of rocks from which the water came in jets; it was these jets which were finally replaced by Bernini with the "Moro." The statue, which was called a Triton by Bernini himself, consisted of a Triton standing, in extreme contrapposto position on a giant conch-shell and holding behind his back a dolphin; the latter twists down between the legs of the Triton and blows water into the pool. The Moor is truly free-standing and has many possible points of view. Basically, he is to be seen from the centre of the piazza, but his vigorously twisting body, the sharply turned head, and the writhing fish show how capable Bernini was of executing true sculpture in the round with many views. In this respect the Moro con• trasts with the Triton of some ten years earlier, where ——^r-an even more evocative series of views is obtained from a figure that has absolutely no torsion at all.'5 (Fig.

Later on Bernini removed the balustrade and altered the pool and in 1708 further changes were made. Bernini also worked on the northern fountain—the Fontana del — '^In all photographs that I have so far studied I am unable to discern the dolphins mentioned by D'Onofrio and am only able to see the dragons and the face. Della Porta originally ordered eight of these masks intending four for the southern fountain and four for the northern one; however when he decided to bring the Tritons from the Piazza del Popolo, having only four of them—enough for one fountain in the Piazza Navona, he used only four of the masks also, using the other four for the Pantheon fountain. The Triton was at once christened II "Moro" by the Roman populace because of its conspicuously African features. Hibbard, pp. 123, 124. 104

Nettuno—doing what he had done to the basin of the "Moro." That is, he removed the two steps and the balustrade re• placing them by a large basin at ground level. The inner basin, in porta Santa, is the original one by Jacopo della Porta. The central group—modelled from Bernini's Neptune and Glaucus was not added until the nineteenth century. (Figure ).

Fontana for the Villa Barberini--l653-l671

For the Villa Barberini in the Borgo (c. 1626) Bernini made a fountain surmounted by a marble statue of a woman wringing out her hair, choosing this motif, as his Florentine predecessor had, for its adaptibility to a limited supply of water; for Professor Antonio Munoz conclusion that the sculptor had in mind Giovanni Bologna's similar figure at Petraia seems to me inevit• able. The marble figure, sold into England in the eighteenth century, has disappeared.76

The Florentine statue referred to here is a bronze figure by Giovanni Bologna for the fountain of the Labyrinth at the Royal Villa at Petraia (Figure ). Baldinucci uses this particular fountain to illus• trate a facet of Bernini's character—notably, the ability to turn a liability into an asset. Bernini had splendid precepts concerning architecture: first of all he said the highest merit lay not in making beautiful and commodious buildings, but in being able to make do with little, to make beautiful things out of the inadequate and ill-adapted, to make use of a defect in

Wiles, p. 103. 105

such a way that if it had not existed one would have to invent it. . . . The fountain for Cardinal Antonio Barberini at Bastioni is a fine example. Since there was very little water and very thin jets, he repre• sented a woman who, having washed her hair, squeezes it to produce a thin spray of water which satisfies both the need of the fountain and the action of the figure.77

D'onofrio points out that Bernini may also have been inspired by a "Woman washing the head of a child," a work of Valerio Cioli in the Boboli Gardens.7g It seems to me that Wiles has perhaps confused this fountain at Bastioni—or at least the dating of it—with an earlier fountain (ca. 1632) made for the atrium of the Palazzo Barberini (q.v.). D'Onofrio says that the Bastioni fountain was built sometime between 1653, when the Barberini Villa was begun at the base of the Gianiculum, and 1671 79 when Cardinal Antonio Barberini died. 7 Wiles (as has been noted) dates this fountain as around 1626—much earlier. D'Onofrio's documentation shows that the Palazzo Barberini fountain was recorded in 1638 and 1642 and that the docu• ments (extant) concerning the building of this fountain deal 80 with works between 1629 and 1638.

77 'Baldinucci, Enggass translation, pp. SO, Si. 7^D'0nofrio, p. 199, n. 29. 79 Ibid. D'Onofrio's sources here are Battaglia, con• cerning the building of the Villa, and Baldinucci concerning the death80 Ibid.of Cardina, p. 189l Barberini, n. 6. . One wonders why, if D'Onofrio discredits Baldinucci in some areas (see discussion of La Barcaccia) that he accepts his statements in others. 106

La Fontana delle Tartarughe—1658 La Fontane delle Tartarughe of the Piazza Mattei is another fountain which, although not executed by Bernini, is thought to have been altered by him. In this case the alteration—or the addition—the tortoises—has given the fountain its name. The fountain itself was constructed between I58I-I584 by Taddeo Landini, a Florentine, but his work was based on a design by della Porta. This fountain consists of a low basin—almost at ground level—which, in the undulations of its mistilinear shape reminds one of baroque church facades. In the centre of this basin, which is framed in travertine, is a candela• brum-like structure, undulating at the base, and consisting of four small basins in the form of deep, curving shells above which four bronze youths, their backs to the central pedestal, hold, each with an upraised right foot, the head of a dolphin. The tails of these ubiquitous fish are held behind the youths in their right hands. Their left hands are raised to boost a tortoise over the rim of a shallow round basin above the heads of the youths. In the centre of the basin is a single jet. Water flows from the mouths of masks on the underside of this basin (a rather contrived and meaningless idea) into the main basin below. The dolphins subdued by the feet of the youths, also blow water into the four small basins (a much happier idea) which overflow into the main one below (Figure ). 107

All accounts of this fountain are in accord that the tortoises were added to the fountain during the Ponti• ficate of Alexander VII. (There is in fact an inscription on the base of the fountain which says so.) The only writer

that I have been able to find,however>who suggests that the 81 sculptor of the tortoises was Bernini, is D'Onofrio. His thesis is based on two main facts: first, that Bernini dominated the artistic scene at the time the alteration was made (1658) and that it was therefore more than likely that he did it, and secondly that Bernini had used tortoises be• fore. In the lost wall fountain of the Palazzo Barberini 82 (q.v.) there were "due tartarughe sane e due mezze." D'Onofrio also adds an interesting note on the tortoises: in the fountain as it is now, there is a distance of some centimetres between the raised hands of the youths and the tortoises they are boosting into the basin. If the tortoises were not there, as indeed they were not before I658, the distance between the hands and the basin would be about forty centimetres in each case, providing neither a connection in meaning nor a physical one between the sculptural and architectural elements. Extant instructions to the sculptors provide a solution to this—saying in one 83 place: "Li otto delfini di pietra mischia." 7 There were _ D'Onofrio, p. 56.

82 83Ibid., p. 18956,. n. 10. 108 to have been eight dolphins. Only four are on the fountain. Obviously the other four—longer than tortoises—were to fill the space between the hands and the basin. (Figure )

La Fontana di Santa Maria in Trastevere—l6$9 As well as the addition of the four tortoises to the Piazza Mattei fountain (q.v.) in 165$, Bernini also undertook in the following year a restoration of the ancient Roman fountain of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The earliest record of this fountain is a map dated 1A64 which shows the fountain across the piazza from the church; the map shows a fountain with a square basin ele• vated on a few steps and above it a smaller second basin. The fountain is also shown in a sketch of 1472 (Figure ). (According to D'Onofrio there is also an indication that the fountain is much older than this fifteenth century date, and that it may in fact date from 772, but no proof of this exists.)

In I658 Bernini moved the fountain first from its position across the piazza from the church to the centre of the piazza; then he began its reconstruction, keeping very much to the old model although he changed the basic square to an octagon and added four large curling shells and four wolves heads in bronze around the upper basin 109 from which water flows.

The fountain is now served by fifty-six ounces of water—and Bernini also did some alterations in that regard.

In the 1590's the ancient Acqua Alsietina which supplied the fountain suffered some damage and was therefore replaced by della Porta by the Acqua Felice. The fountain, restored in 1604, was then supplied with fifteen more ounces. The new water supply itself met disaster when the Ponte

Gregoriana^which the Acqua Felice crossed, collapsed. This event led to the restoration of the fountain by Bernini in

I658. At that time he added about thirty-six ounces of water from the Acqua Paola. An engraving of 1675 shows this fountain which was then again restored by Carlo Fontana in

1694 (Figure ). Fontana departed very little from Bernini's fountain except to add the shells which were themselves in• spired by Bernini's Fontana delle "Api" of the Piazza Bar• berini (q.v.).

Le Fontane di Piazza San Pietro—1667-1677

In I656, in the pontificate of Alexander VII, Bernini began work on the great piazza in front of St. Peter's. It was to take many years, and his work on the fountains of the piazza did not begin until eleven years later (under Clement

IX) when he began and completed work on Maderno's fountain 110 on the right side of the piazza^nd began work on a comple• mentary fountain of his own on the opposite side. The latter was not completed until 1677 owing to difficulties with the water supply; the Acqua Paola which supplied the fountains, was plentiful but not when it came to supplying two fountains requiring considerable pressure. Each fountain took three hundred ounces. Maderno's fountain of 1614 was not the first to grace the piazza. He had, in fact, rebuilt one constructed by Bramante during the Pontificate of Innocent VII, 1490-1503. Bramante's fountain, itself a restoration of an earlier one, was small. He added a third small marble basin from which four heads of oxen (emblem of the Borgias) in gilded bronze emerge. A base was made for the fountain as was the custom• ary beveratore. Almost as soon as the Borgia pope died, the oxen were removed from the fountain and replaced by putti. Working documents of 1614 attest to the fact that work was begun on a new fountain under the architect Carlo 85 Maderno. The new fountain did not depart to any great

84 ^For some time the addition of water to the Acqua Paolo from the Bracciani lake was under discussion. The stumbling block was that the purity of the latter body of water was questionable. Its owners, however, the Orsini had conclusively proven that the lake was pure and in 1673 Flavio Orsini sold one thousand ounces of water from the lake to Clement X. Unfortunately the tests were not con• clusive and the purity of the Acqua Paola was henceforth impairedg5. Ibid.D'Onofrio, p. 162, p. 165, n. 22. Ill extent from its predecessor and consisted of a wide rectan• gular basin in the centre of which Maderno put a large octagonal balustrade. On the eight faces of the balustrade were the insignia of Paul V and an inscription bearing the date 1614. The chief characteristic of this fountain, generally candlestick in form, is that its top basin, where the candle would be secured, is inverted; from the platform thereby formed, shoots one powerful central jet surrounded by many smaller jets. The effect is one of an exuberant and joyful upsurge—a veritable Te Deum—appropriate to the world's greatest edifice to the glory of God (Figure ). The odd thing about this fountain was that it was placed asymmetrically in the piazza and remained there until Bernini began his work on the piazza—one of his objects being to make it symmetrical (Figure ). To this end Maderno's fountain

. . . was rebuilt on the long axis of the oval; a matching fountain by Bernini balances the composition at the other side. This long axis is further em• phasized by special porticos on the colonnades.that echo the great aedicula of the church facade.°°

On the eighth of January 1667 Bernini began work on the two fountains. He first relocated Maderno's, and also enlarged and changed the shape of the ground basin or pool to the familiar mistilinear shape. This reconstruction was completed that same year but as I have already noted,

'Hibbard, Bernini, p. 156. 112

Bernini's own fountain was not completed until ten years later.

La Fontana per Paolo Strada—1667-1669 Another fountain of Bernini—believed by some writers to be lost—is La Fontana della Palazzo Paolo Strada, or as 87 it is sometimes called La Fontana della Palazzo Antamoro. This is again a wall fountain (Figures and ) in which two sturdy dolphins that appear to blow water into a low, half oval basin, support on their tails an upper basin formed from an open shell. This is, in my opinion, a much more successful realization of the shell idea than in La Fontana delle "Api"of the Piazza Barberini (q.v.). Above the upper half of the shell is the Papal crest (Clement IX Rospigliosi) supported on either side by two Tritons who lean down over the shell blowing their conchs. (Presumably water was in• tended to come from these conchs into the upper shell-basin, but neither in the photograph of Bernini's bozzetto nor in that of the remains of the fountain is this visible.) D'Onofrio recounts that according to popular story, this fountain was constructed for a certain Paolo Strada "'Wiles, p. 101, n. 3; D'Onofrio, p. 200; and Norton, p. 34. 113 for the courtyard of his palazzo In the Via Paul V at the foot of the Quirinale—later called the Strada Nuova, and 88 today called the Via della Panetteria. The fountain, still extant, is located at number 1$, although both it and the courtyard are today in a state of dereliction and com• plete abandonment. From a document in the State Archives dated the thirteenth of October, 1667, and signed by Clement IX, Paolo Strada, the secret valet of the Pope, was granted for 89 himself and his heirs, three ounces of the Acqua Felice. Two more ounces were granted in July 1669. Again a Venturini engraving records Bernini's bozzetto for this fountain (Figure ). The Rospigliosi crest, shown in the bozzetto, was modified when the fountain passed into the hands of the Counts Antamoro in the eighteenth century at the time they acquired the palazzo (Figure ).

There are two other fountains with which Bernini's name has been connected which should be mentioned here. The first is the mostra of the Acqua Acetosa, and the second is a small fountain in a park facing the Palazzo Barberini,

D'Onofrio, p. 199. Ibid., p. 200, n. 30. 114 said to have been put there by Francesco Azzuri toward the end of the last century (Figures , , ). Of the first, Wiles, who dates it 1661 and describes it as "an architec• tural facade without figure sculpture" (p. 101, n. 3) and others, attribute it to Bernini (Figure ). D'Onofrio, however, says it is not by Bernini but by Andrea Sacchi (p. 154, n. 17). The second is said by D'Onofrio—contrary to the general opinion—to be by Bernini. He bases his evidence chiefly on three trademarks of Bernini: the low basin, the three bees around the jet, and the four large marble masks around the inside of the basin which have features incontestably like those frequently used by Bernini (D'Onofrio, p. I89ff).

Conclusion

All authorities agree that with the coming of the designs by Bernini a significant break occurs in Roman Fountain design. The nature of the break, it is also gener• ally agreed, is that for the first time, an integration or fusion of the architectural, sculptural and aqueous elements— resulting in an almost organic whole—is achieved. Bernini succeeded, in some cases to perfection, in using the water itself as an integral design element thereby giving a more complete unity and, more significant, adding life and move• ment to what had heretofore, in spite of the animate element 115 of water, been a virtually static art-form.

This point has been made repeatedly in this paper in the descriptive section on fountains—the most success• ful illustrations of the point being—La Fontana del

Tritone of the Piazza Barberini, the small fountain of the

"Lumaca" in the gardens of the Villa Pamphili, and the two fountains of the Piazza San Pietro. A reverse example of this, that is to say one in which Bernini has introduced an additional sculptural element for the purpose of inte• grating the water element more closely into the design, is in La Fontana delle Tartarughe of the Piazza Mattei; here,

Bernini's four tortoises—being given a boost into the water—provide a closer link between the sculptural element of the youths who are boosting them, and the water above.

Other innovations of Bernini not so generally acknowledged but nonetheless significant, and instrumental in the achieving of this fusion, are the introduction into an urban setting of the rustic fountain and the constant use of the low, or ground-level basin (both are innovations alluded to frequently by D'Onofrio); nor can one overlook the awareness of Bernini—the Town Planner—of the value of the fountain as a pivot, as a device for arresting movement, as a focal point, and of his extremely successful use of the fountain in these ways.

Turning first to the Town Planning aspect, the reader will remember that in the Piazza Navona, where the 116

problem for the Planner was to emphasize the centre of such a long piazza without disturbing its unity, and at the same time direct attention toward the Sant'Agnese, Bernini's solution was the spectacular Quattro Fiumi—placed just off- centre of the Sant'Agnese and used as a pivot for piazza traffic--thereby achieving both these ends. In the Piazza San Pietro, the possibility of the people being overwhelmed by the facade of the basilica, was realized by Bernini, who solved the problem by moving Maderno's fountain on axis with the great obelisk in the centre of the oval and creat• ing his own complementary fountain in a symmetrical position on the other side. This arrangement created a strong hori• zontal line which arrested the movement of the tide of people flooding toward the basilica. In both the Piazza Barberini and in the Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere (where he again moved a fountain, this time to the centre of the piazza) Bernini uses the fountain as a focal point. In the case of the Piazza Barberini this use of the foun• tain changed what would be merely an enlarged cross-roads into a meaningful place with its own identity, and in the case of the Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, a vacuum surrounded^ by buildings becomes an outdoor living space, or room, where it is pleasant for people to meet. Returning now to Bernini's use of the rustic foun• tain, the reader will remember that the true rustic foun• tain—a great naturalistic tableau with niches, grottoes, 117 marine figures and whole menageries of birds and animals— were popular in the villas of Florence, and to a lesser extent in Rome in the sixteenth century. What Bernini did, however, in case after case^as to take certain of the animate elements from these fountains (the Stefano Maderno Triton from La Fontana dellfAquila, for example) and intro• duce them into fountains in an urban setting. Not only was this an idea in itself fraught with warmth and life (in contrast to the fountain composed of purely architectonic elements) but it also, as D'Onofrio frequently points out, formed a link between the static, architectonic element and the living element of water.

But the happiest innovation of Bernini, and one al• most unequalled to this day (unless possibly by Lawrence Halprin or the Finnish architect ^alt'o ) was his con• stant insistance on the low basin or ground pool. It has been noted earlier in this paper that Bernini understood in his heart that fountains are for the enjoyment of water and that therefore the water should be placed where it can be seen. Water is as necessary to the sustenance of the spirit as it is essential to the life of the body; Charles Moore, in his essay "The Architecture of Water," points out that water in an urban fountain gives the human being an awareness an identification with, the seas and rivers and waters of the world, and he commends Bernini for enhancing this awareness by providing an immediacy of contact—through his use of low, or surface, ground pools. CHAPTER V CONCLUSION

I have chosen in this thesis to put forward Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1598-1680—the great genius of the seven• teenth century—as the prototype of an artist whose impelling force was not the weaker or unhealthy element in his character, but rather the strong, stable, and disciplined one, and of the great body of work created by him I have chosen his Fountains as being illustrative and symbolic of this balance and stability. A secondary intention in choosing to develop and "prove" such a thesis was to help dispel in general the old belief "which links genius with insanity, creativity with illness." In the second chapter of this paper I have described, drawing frequently from the works of those who are experts on the psychological states of human-beings, the generally accepted conditions most conducive to psychological health and to creativity. These, to summarize here, are known to be—a world-view to which the individual's beliefs are not at variance, a particular culture which is receptive to the individual's personality and his talents, and a warm, free and encouraging family background. Bernini as we have seen, enjoyed all of these. Returning now to fountains, I have in the third chap- 119 ter endeavoured to show that the fountain—with its living and moving element of water—was particularly appropriate to the dynamism of the seventeenth century, and that in that period too, the fountain acquired significance in the great new Town-Planning schemes begun in the previous cen• tury by Sixtus V. In the fourth chapter—devoted to the fountains themselves—I have discussed how Bernini brought elements of the rustic fountain to the urban one and used water as an integral element of the design—thereby bring• ing for the first time, an organic unity to the Roman Fountain. Many of the similarities between this art-form and its creator are already implicit in these descriptions. It remains to make explicit their complete inseparability. Flexibility has been cited as probably being the chief indication of emotional health. We have seen evidence of this quality in Bernini in Baldinucci's description of the artist's behaviour in adversity. At that time he was able to bend, he did not break. Another aspect of Bernini's flexibility, not in itself pointed up until now, was his constant ability to work under the limitations of the com• mission. (This was, of course, the working arrangement that prevailed at the time, but for the creative person it is a difficult system to adhere to and not all were as successful at it as Bernini—Salvador Rosa, for example.) And flexibility, in the sense of living movement, was also, under the hands of Bernini, true of his fountains. One more abstraction—involvement—inextricably joins Bernini the creator with his creation-pthe fountains. Bernini was a committed man, completely involved in his time. The Roman fountains which he executed introduced into fountain design itself a totally new concept and achievement—one in which the architectural, sculptural and water elements were inseparably developed (or, mutually involved) and the fountains were placed by Bernini in such a way that they became inextricably involved with the surrounding space. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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