Contemporary Garden Decor: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Beginnings
Contemporary Garden Decor: Large Outdoor Water 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 complete your home. Originally, fountains only served a practical purpose. People in cities, towns and villages received their drinking water, as well as water to bathe and wash, from aqueducts or springs in the vicinity. Up to the late nineteenth century, water fountains had to be near an aqueduct or reservoir and higher than the fountain so that gravity could make the water flow downwards or jet high into the air. Fountains were not only used as a water source for drinking water, but also to decorate homes and celebrate the artist who created it. Roman fountains usually depicted imagery of animals or heroes made of metal or stone masks. Muslims and Moorish landscaping designers of the Middle Ages included fountains to re-create smaller models of the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France wanted to illustrate his dominion over nature by including fountains in the Gardens of Versailles. Seventeen and 18 century Popes sought to exalt their positions by adding beautiful baroque-style fountains at the point where restored Roman aqueducts arrived into the city.
Indoor plumbing became the key source of water by the end of the 19th century thereby limiting urban fountains to mere decorative elements. Gravity was replaced by mechanical pumps in order to enable fountains to bring in clean water and allow for beautiful water displays.
These days, fountains adorn public spaces and are used to recognize individuals or events and fill recreational and entertainment needs.
Bernini: The Genius Behind Italy's Greatest Fountains
Bernini: The Genius Behind Italy's Greatest Fountains One can see Bernini's very first masterpiece, the Barcaccia fountain, at the bottom of the Trinita dei Monti in Piaza di Spagna.
To this day, you will see Roman residents and vacation goers occupying this area to revel in chit chatter and being among other people. The streets neighboring his water fountain have come to be one of the city’s most trendy meeting places, something which would certainly have pleased Bernini himself. Dating back to around 1630, Pope Urbano VIII mandated what was to be the earliest water fountain of the artist's career. People can now see the fountain as a depiction of a great ship gradually sinking into the Mediterranean. Period writings dating back to the 16th century show that the fountain was built as a monument to those who lost their lives in the great flooding of the Tevere. In what turned out to be his sole extended absence from Italy, Bernini {journeyed | traveled] to France in 1665.
Classic Greece: The Origins of Outdoor Statue Design
Classic Greece: The Origins of Outdoor Statue Design Most sculptors were paid by the temples to enhance the elaborate columns and archways with renderings of the gods up until the stage came to a close and many Greeks began to think of their religion as superstitious rather than sacred, when it became more typical for sculptors to represent ordinary people as well.
Portraiture, which would be acknowledged by the Romans upon their annexation of Greek civilization became traditional as well, and thriving families would at times commission a portrayal of their forebears to be situated in immense familial tombs. The usage of sculpture and other art forms varied over the years of The Greek Classical period, a time of artistic progress when the arts had more than one objective. Whether to gratify a visual desire or to celebrate the figures of religion, Greek sculpture was actually an inventive practice in the ancient world, which may well be what attracts our attention today.