Wednesday, December 25, 2013

FOUNTAIN OF THE BLACK MAN

FONTANA DEL MORO
1576 central basin by Giacomo Della Porta (1533/1602) for Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572/85)
Larger basin by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598/1680) originally designed by Francesco Borromini (1599/1667)
"Statue of an Ethiopian man fighting with a dolphin" 1654 by Giovanni Antonio Mari (active from 1635/d. 1661) designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini commissioned by Olimpia Maidalchini sister in law of pope Innocent X Pamphilj (1644/55)
"Mermen and other ornaments" copies made in 1874 by Luigi Amici (1817/97) from the originals executed in 1575 by the Florentine sculptors Simone Moschino (about 1560/1610) and Taddeo Landini (about 1550/96), by the Flemish Egidio della Riviera De Molines and by Giacomo Silla Longhi (active since 1568/d. 1619) from Varese
The originals are in the garden of Villa Borghese's Lake
"Four Masks", also copies of the originals at Villa Borghese. They were moved with the four Mermen from the fountain in Piazza del Popolo by Giacomo Della Porta, that had been removed in 1823 by Giuseppe Valadier
One of the four masks was heavily damaged in 2011 by a deranged man who wanted to draw attention on himself
"The most radical of the iconographical innovations of Bernini was his contribution to the history of the baroque fountain. A tradition of fountains with figures existed in Florence more than in Rome and that tradition Bernini took up and revolutionized" (Rudolf Wittkower)

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