Modern Garden Decoration: Fountains and their Beginnings
Modern Garden Decoration: Fountains and their Beginnings A fountain, an incredible piece of engineering, not only supplies drinking water as it pours into a basin, it can also launch water high into the air for a noteworthy effect.Originally, fountains only served a functional purpose. Cities, towns and villages made use of nearby aqueducts or springs to provide them with potable water as well as water where they could bathe or wash.
Until the late 19th, century most water fountains functioned using the force of gravity to allow water to flow or jet into the air, therefore, they needed a source of water such as a reservoir or aqueduct located higher than the fountain. Artists thought of fountains as amazing additions to a living space, however, the fountains also served to supply clean water and celebrate the artist responsible for building it. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often used by Romans to decorate their fountains. During the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden designers included fountains in their designs to mimic the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France wanted to illustrate his dominion over nature by including fountains in the Gardens of Versailles. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries created baroque decorative fountains to glorify the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the spot where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.
Urban fountains built at the end of the 19th century served only as decorative and celebratory ornaments since indoor plumbing provided the necessary drinking water. The introduction of special water effects and the recycling of water were two things made possible by swapping gravity with mechanical pumps.
Decorating city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the uses of modern-day fountains.
A Chronicle of Landscape Fountains
A Chronicle of Landscape Fountains Himself a highly educated man, Pope Nicholas V led the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 till 1455 and was responsible for the translation of hundreds of ancient documents from their original Greek into Latin. He undertook the beautification of Rome to turn it into the model capital of the Christian world. Restoration of the Acqua Vergine, a ruined Roman aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into the city from eight miles away, began in 1453 at the bidding of the Pope.
The ancient Roman custom of marking the arrival point of an aqueduct with an magnificent celebratory fountain, also known as a mostra, was restored 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 Trevi Fountain as well as the well-known baroque fountains located in the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona were eventually supplied with water from the modified aqueduct he had rebuilt.