Builders of the First Garden Fountains

Builders of the First Garden Fountains Often working as architects, sculptors, artists, engineers and cultivated scholars all in one, from the 16th to the late 18th century, fountain designers were multi-talented individuals, Throughout the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci exemplified the creator as a innovative master, creator and scientific specialist. He carefully annotated his examinations in his now famed notebooks about his studies into the forces of nature and the attributes and mobility of water. Early Italian water feature engineers altered private villa settings into ingenious water exhibits complete with emblematic meaning and natural beauty by coupling imagination with hydraulic and horticultural experience. The humanist Pirro Ligorio brought the vision behind the wonders in Tivoli and was celebrated for his virtuosity in archeology, architecture and garden concepts. Other fountain designers, masterminding the fantastic water marbles, water features and water jokes for the various mansions near Florence, were tried and tested in humanistic subjects and traditional scientific texts.

Back Story of Garden Water Fountains

Back Story of Garden Water Fountains Himself a highly educated man, Pope Nicholas V headed the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 till 1455 and was responsible for the translation of scores of age-old documents from their original Greek into Latin. It was imperative for him to beautify the city of Rome to make it worthy of being known as the capital of the Christian world. In 1453 the Pope instigated the repairing of the Aqua Vergine, an historic Roman aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into the city from eight miles away. Building a mostra, an imposing celebratory fountain built by ancient Romans to memorialize the arrival point of an aqueduct, was a custom revived by Nicholas V. The Trevi Fountain now occupies the space previously filled with a wall fountain crafted by Leon Battista Albert, an architect commissioned by the Pope. The Trevi Fountain as well as the renowned baroque fountains located in the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona were eventually supplied with water from the altered aqueduct he had reconstructed.