Campodei Fiori & The Tureen Fountain, Rome, Italy

The Tureen Fountain - 1889 - 1924

Towards the road in front of the Chiesa Nuova [New Church], hiding away as if aware of its own ugliness, you will find this fountain half-sunken in a pool, or rather a marble-clad, oblong hole in the ground. This fountain is either miniature nor monumental, and with its large "lid" it looks just like a soup dish, which is why Romans call it "The Fountain of Tureen". Four low steps at the sides give access to four unassuming jets of water set between imitation handles carved in the stone. This poor little architectural oddity of a fountain is not, however, in its original home, having been placed here only in 1924 after spending around 35 years (from 1889) in the storerooms of one of the Roman museums. The reason for its relegation was not, as you might think, an understandable, even commendable, show of good taste on the part of the citizens but simply that this was the date when the monument to Giordano Bruno was erected in the centre of Piazza Campo dei Fiori at the very spot the "Congregation for the Fountains" had chosen for "our" Fountain and where Jacopo della Porta had placed it in 1590, or perhaps a few years earlier. But could Master Jacopo ever have conceived of such a freak? Don't be afraid to take a closer look at the creature to see what you can find out. The first thing that will strike you is the difference between the usual "beautiful white marble" used for the pool and the everyday travertine stone of the cover, which is hardly characteristic of Jacopo, who normally used travertine for his steps. However, there is something far more important: if you look very hard indeed you will see, carved in tiny letters on the middle collar beneath the knob on top of the lid of the fountain, the following proverb, as facile as it is philosophical: "Love God without fail. Do good and let others do the talking. MDCXXII". The date, 1622, is most important. We know it cannot be a della Porta fountain because he had already been dead for some 20 years, or to the fountain because he had built that more than thirty years earlier, so it must be associated purely with the "lid" and, therefore, its addition to the base of the fountain. This, then, leads to the conclusion that the original fountain designed and erected by Jacopo in 1590 for the popular square known as Campo dei Fiori could not have been covered, despite being semi-submerged in a large hollow below ground level.

If you have any doubts about this fountain, then the following testimonials should convince you. Firstly, those of two 17th century historians: Theodor Ameyden and the German, Theodor Sprenger. In a manuscript now in the Vatican Library, Ameyden wrote: "The 4th fountain for the Aqua Vergine is in Campo di Fiore, dressed with four bronze dolphins in a large marble shell". Sprenger provides a similar description (in Latin) of the same fountain: "Nor is the basin of the fountain in Campo di Flora, decorated with four bronze dolphins, unworthy of note". Finally, and perhaps more important as well as earlier than the last two documents, there is a large and very well known plan of Rome at the time of pope Paul V (1605-21). This is the detailed map by Maggi, which shows the fountain in Campo dei Fiori, clearly still without a cover, as well as the ornaments around its sides which - though slightly less distinct - can nonetheless be recognised as the four dolphins mentioned by Ameyden and Sprenger. The same map also clearly shows that the "hollow" around the basin of the fountain was not rectangular as it was later and still is today but reproduced exactly the elongated form of the pool, which at that time had two short flights of steps at two opposite corners to allow access to the water spouts. As for the four bronze dolphins, I think it is fairly definite that these are the four (out of the eight that were planned) cast, but not used, for the Fountain of the Tortoises; certainly, as we have already seen, it was not unusual for sculptures originally destined for one fountain to end up being used in another.