The Original Fountain Designers
The Original Fountain Designers Multi-talented individuals, fountain designers from the 16th to the late 18th century often functioned as architects, sculptors, artists, engineers and cultivated scholars all in one. Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance artist, was renowned as an inspired genius, inventor and scientific virtuoso. He carefully annotated his findings in his now celebrated notebooks about his investigations into the forces of nature and the qualities and motion of water. Modifying private villa configurations into ingenious water showcases packed of symbolic significance and natural wonder, early Italian water feature designers fused creativity with hydraulic and horticultural abilities. The humanist Pirro Ligorio provided the vision behind the splendors in Tivoli and was celebrated for his abilities in archeology, architecture and garden design.
Other fountain engineers, masterminding the fantastic water marbles, water features and water humor for the various domains near Florence, were tried and tested in humanistic themes and classical scientific readings.
Modern Garden Decor: Fountains and their Beginnings
Modern Garden Decor: Fountains and their Beginnings
The incredible architecture 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. Pure functionality was the original role of fountains. Water fountains were linked to a spring or aqueduct to supply potable water as well as bathing water for cities, townships and villages. Until the late 19th, century most water fountains functioned using gravity to allow water to flow or jet into the air, therefore, they needed a supply of water such as a reservoir or aqueduct located higher than the fountain. Designers thought of fountains as amazing additions to a living space, however, the fountains also served to supply clean water and celebrate the designer responsible for building it. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often times used by Romans to decorate their fountains. To replicate the gardens of paradise, Muslim and Moorish garden planners of the Middle Ages added fountains to their designs. Fountains played a considerable role in the Gardens of Versailles, all part of French King Louis XIV’s desire to exercise his power over nature. The Popes of the 17th and 18th centuries were extolled with baroque style fountains made to mark the place of entry of Roman aqueducts.
Indoor plumbing became the main source of water by the end of the 19th century thereby limiting urban fountains to mere decorative elements. Gravity was substituted by mechanical pumps in order to permit fountains to bring in clean water and allow for beautiful water displays.
Beautifying city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the purposes of modern-day fountains.
When and Where Did Water Fountains Originate?
When and Where Did Water Fountains Originate?
Hundreds of ancient Greek records were translated into Latin under the auspices of the scholarly Pope Nicholas V, who led the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455. Beautifying Rome and making it the worthy capital of the Christian world was at the heart of his objectives. Restoration of the Acqua Vergine, a ruined Roman aqueduct which had carried fresh drinking water into the city from eight miles away, began in 1453 at the bidding of the Pope. A mostra, a monumental commemorative fountain constructed by ancient Romans to mark the point of arrival of an aqueduct, was a tradition which was revived by Nicholas V. The present-day site of the Trevi Fountain was previously occupied by a wall fountain commissioned by the Pope and built by the architect Leon Battista Alberti. The aqueduct he had reconditioned included modifications and extensions which eventually allowed it to supply water to the Trevi Fountain as well as the famed baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona.