Builders of the First Fountains

Builders of the First Fountains Often serving as architects, sculptors, artists, engineers and cultivated scholars all in one, from the 16th to the late 18th century, fountain designers were multi-faceted people, Leonardo da Vinci as a creative intellect, inventor and scientific virtuoso exemplified this Renaissance artist. With his immense fascination about the forces of nature, he investigated the qualities and motion of water and systematically documented his observations in his now famed notebooks. Transforming private villa configurations into amazing water showcases full of symbolic meaning and natural beauty, early Italian fountain engineers fused curiosity with hydraulic and gardening ability. The humanist Pirro Ligorio provided the vision behind the wonders in Tivoli and was celebrated for his virtuosity in archeology, architecture and garden concepts. Masterminding the excellent water marbles, water attributes and water antics for the various estates near Florence, other water fountain engineers were well versed in humanist themes and time-honored technical texts.

The Source of Today's Wall Fountains

The Source of Today's Wall Fountains Pope Nicholas V, himself a well educated man, governed the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455 during which time he commissioned many translations of old classical Greek documents into Latin. He undertook the embellishment of Rome to make it into the model capital of the Christian world. In 1453 the Pope commissioned the rebuilding of the Aqua Vergine, an historic Roman aqueduct which had carried fresh drinking water into the city from eight miles away. Building a mostra, a grandiose celebratory fountain built by ancient Romans to memorialize the arrival point of an aqueduct, was a custom revived by Nicholas V. The architect Leon Battista Alberti was commissioned by the Pope to build a wall fountain where we now see the Trevi Fountain. The water which eventually furnished the Trevi Fountain as well as the famed baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona came from the modified aqueduct which he had renovated.