Where did Fountains Begin?
Where did Fountains Begin?
The incredible construction of a fountain allows it to provide clean water or shoot water high into air for dramatic effect and it can also serve as an excellent design feature to enhance your home. Originally, fountains only served a functional purpose. Cities, towns and villages made use of nearby aqueducts or springs to provide them with drinking water as well as water where they could bathe or wash. Up to the late nineteenth century, water fountains had to be near an aqueduct or reservoir and more elevated than the fountain so that gravity could make the water flow down or shoot high into the air. Serving as an element of decoration and celebration, fountains also provided clean, fresh drinking water. The main components used by the Romans to create their fountains were bronze or stone masks, mostly depicting animals or heroes. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden planners included fountains to create smaller depictions of the gardens of paradise. Fountains played a considerable role in the Gardens of Versailles, all part of French King Louis XIV’s desire to exert his power over nature. The Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries were glorified with baroque style fountains built to mark the place of entry of Roman aqueducts.
The end of the nineteenth century saw the increase in usage of indoor plumbing to provide drinking water, so urban fountains were relegated to purely decorative elements. The creation of unique water effects and the recycling of water were 2 things made possible by replacing gravity with mechanical pumps.
Modern-day fountains serve mostly as decoration for public spaces, to honor individuals or events, and compliment entertainment and recreational activities.
"Old School" Garden Fountain Creative Designers
"Old School" Garden Fountain Creative Designers Often serving as architects, sculptors, designers, engineers and cultivated scholars, all in one, fountain designers were multi-talented individuals from the 16th to the later part of the 18th century. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci exemplified the creator as an inspired wizard, inventor and scientific specialist. He carefully annotated his observations in his now much celebrated notebooks about his studies into the forces of nature and the properties and mobility of water. Early Italian water fountain designers transformed private villa settings into ingenious water exhibits full with symbolic meaning and natural charm by combining imagination with hydraulic and horticultural talent. The splendors in Tivoli were provided by the humanist Pirro Ligorio, who was famed for his skill in archeology, engineering and garden design. Other fountain developers, masterminding the extraordinary water marbles, water functions and water antics for the many domains in the vicinity of Florence, were tried and tested in humanistic subject areas and classical scientific readings.The Source of Modern Fountains
The Source of Modern Fountains The translation of hundreds of classic Greek documents into Latin was commissioned by the learned Pope Nicholas V who led the Church in Rome from 1397 till 1455.
Embellishing Rome and making it the worthy capital of the Christian world was at the core of his objectives. At the behest of the Pope, the Aqua Vergine, a ruined aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into Rome from eight miles away, was reconditioned starting in 1453. The ancient Roman tradition of marking the arrival point of an aqueduct with an magnificent celebratory fountain, also known as a mostra, was restored by Nicholas V. The present-day location of the Trevi Fountain was formerly occupied by a wall fountain commissioned by the Pope and constructed by the architect Leon Battista Alberti. The water which eventually supplied the Trevi Fountain as well as the famed baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona flowed from the modified aqueduct which he had renovated.