Modern Garden Decoration: Fountains and their Roots
Modern Garden Decoration: Fountains and their Roots The amazing or decorative effect of a fountain is just one of the purposes it fulfills, as well as supplying drinking water and adding a decorative touch to your property.From the beginning, outdoor fountains were simply there to serve as functional elements. Inhabitants of cities, townships and small towns used them as a source of drinking water and a place to wash, which meant that fountains had to be connected to nearby aqueduct or spring. Until the late nineteenth, century most water fountains functioned using 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 wonderful 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 utilized by Romans to decorate their fountains. Throughout the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden planners included fountains to create mini variations of the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France wanted to illustrate his superiority over nature by including fountains in the Gardens of Versailles. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries manufactured baroque decorative fountains to exalt the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered 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. The creation of unique water effects and the recycling of water were 2 things made possible by swapping gravity with mechanical pumps.
Modern-day fountains function mostly as decoration for open spaces, to honor individuals or events, and enhance entertainment and recreational events.
Bernini’s Early Italian Water Fountains
Bernini’s Early Italian Water Fountains The Barcaccia, a stunning water fountain built at the base of the Trinita dei Monti in Piaza di Spagna, was Bernini's earliest water fountain.
To this day, you will see Roman locals and vacation goers occupying this area to revel in chit chatter and being among other people. The streets surrounding his fountain have come to be one of the city’s most fashionable meeting places, something which would certainly have pleased Bernini himself. In about 1630, the great master built the first water fountain of his career at the behest of Pope Ubano VIII. Depicted in the fountain's design is a great ship slowly sinking into the Mediterranean Sea. The great flooding of the Tevere that blanketed the whole region with water in the 16th was memorialized by this momentous fountain as recorded by documents dating back to this time. In 1665 Bernini journeyed to France, in what was to be his sole prolonged absence from Italy.