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Renaissance and Baroque
The Renaissance in Italy began a new phase of fountain design in which sculpture became prominent. A common type was a sequence of circular or polygonal basins on a vertical support topped by a fountain figure from which water spouted. Leonardo da Vinci designed fountains. During the following period of the Italian Baroque, fountains became complex compositions of basins, sculpture, and water display. Rome is noted for its many fountains of baroque design, notably the Fountain of the Rivers (1648–51) in the Piazza Navona by Giovanni Bernini and the Trevi fountain (completed 1762) by Niccolo Salvi. Such fountains dramatized the rebuilding of the city, its piazzas, and its churches, done under papal direction.
In addition to these public fountains, the Italian development included an enormous number of original villa garden fountains of spectacular and sometimes amusing designs. Trick effects were made possible by elaborate mechanical devices. For example, the water organ at the Villa d’Este, Tivoli (1549), played only when certain pavement stones were stepped on. The hillside location of most villas was utilized, upper fountains supplying the lower ones in turn, as at the Villa d’Este and the cascade at Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati.
Italian precedent set the design for monumental civic fountains and for ornamental garden fountains in northern and western Europe.
An early example of an ornamental fountain in France is the Fountain of the Innocents (1550) in Paris by Jea Goujon, an original work that does not follow Italian models. The Medici fountain in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris by Salomon de Brosse is a fine example of the niche type. The most spectacular and ambitious fountains in France are those of Versailles, part of the vast garden complex designed by André Lenôtre (1661). Large reflecting pools were part of the axial scheme, and fireworks often accompanied the fountain display. Hardly secondary to the artistic achievement was the engineering feat of supplying water in volume and pressure to run the numerous fountains at Versailles. Purely ornamental fountains continued to be popular in the 18th century as focal points for civic design in large cities and as decoration for royal palaces and country seats.
Chatsworth in England was noted for its fountains designed by Sir Joseph Paxton in the 19th century, especially the single jet of water 260 ft (80 m) high issuing from a formal reflecting pool. Elsewhere at Chatsworth, a false willow tree of copper rained water on the unsuspecting beneath its branches.
In the 19th and 20th centuries fountains did not lose their popularity, although quality and imagination is less evident. Expositions have provided occasion for ambitious fountain displays. Among the many examples are the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London; the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago, Ill. (1893), and the New York World’s Fair of 1939. At the Festival of Britain, London (1951), a mobile water sculpture composed of pivotted receptacles was set in motion by changing points of gravity. When each receptacle was filled, it would overturn only to right itself and be filled again with water from above. Of permanent fountains, a fine modern example, although derivative in design, is the Buckingham Memorial Fountain in Chicago (1927) by Jacques Lambert.
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