Marforio Wall Fountains - Aqua Felice, Rome, Italy
Marforio
Wall Fountains - 1579
In 1579 a colossal Minerva was placed in the central niche instead of the Jupiter. This fountain was replaced in turn, in 1591, by the present small porphyry fountain of a seated goddess restored as Roma. In 1587, a conduit from the Acqua Felice was brought to the Capitol, making possible a much richer flowing water fountain effect than Michelangelo had planned and necessitating a larger water basin, in the style of the late Cinquecento. At least the placing of the river gods in the angles of the fountains seems to have been his idea. Certainly the authority of his example did much to establish this type of wall fountain in Italy.
Michelangelo seemed fated to combine classical fragments into wall fountains, in the Roman manner, rather than to design wall fountains which would afford scope for his own genius. When Julius III (1550-1555) planned to erect a fountain at the head of the corridor of the Belvedere in the Vatican, the Florentine master designed a wall fountain which was to be decorated with a marble figure of his own carving, a Moses striking the rock, from which the water was to flow. The sculptor doubtless supposed that the substitution of a Biblical motif for the inevitable classical one would appeal to the Pope; but Julius III rejected the design on the ground that it would take too much time to execute the wall fountain in marble. Instead, the pagan Pope decided to use the ancient figure of "Cleopatra," today known as the Ariadne of the Vatican, in a grotto of stucco work, giving the commission to wall fountain sculptor Daniele da Volterra.
Thus the inexhaustible supply of classical statuary at Rome tended to discourage the production of original sculpture in that city during the Cinquecento. It was so much easier to erect an ancient figure over a fountain than to order a new work of a contemporary artist! Besides, the classical figures had the added prestige that always accompanies the antique, never more potent than in sixteenth century waterfall movement in Rome. However, Michelangelo's idea bore fruit later in the figure of Moses by Prospero Bresciano in the Mostra of the Acqua Felice, and again in a wall fountain in a courtyard of the Archiepiscopal Palace at Pisa, by Flaminio Vacca.