Fountains of Papal Rome/Tartarughe

GIACOMO BELLA PORTA, Domenico and Giovanni Fontana, Carlo Maderno, and Bernini are the Roman masters in the gentle art of fountain-making. Giacomo della Porta stands first chronologically, and he has also created the loveliest of the lovely. This is the Tartarughe fountain for which the Senate and people of Rome paid over twelve hundred scudi, evidently a large sum at that time for a fountain, as Baglioni mentions it particularly. Giacomo della Porta delighted in rare marbles and for his fountain of the Tartarughe he carved the broad shallow bowl of the classic drinking cup in the centre in bigio morrato /osciafo, or veined gray marble, while he made the stem of a mottled yellow marble called Saravezza. The cup stands upon a Carrara base, moulded and carved with decorative shields or escutcheons, from the four corners of which project huge shells of rare beauty and distinction of form carved in different varieties of African marble. It rises from a shallow travertine basin, gracefully shaped and slightly sunk below the level of the present pavement. So far there is nothing to distinguish this fountain from others of its kind except the richness of its marbles and the shape of the shells, but its four bronze figures so harmoniously composed give this design the dignity of a work of art, and mate it the most exquisite of Roman fountains. They are by Taddeo Landini, whose early death was a distinct loss to the world of art.

These figures are of boys in the most beautiful period of adolescence, their sinuous bodies lean against the swelling stem of the cup, one slender leg of each figure pushed backward so that the foot rests on the toes, preserving the balance, while the^ other leg, lifted high and bent at the knee, presses its foot upon the head of a bronze dolphin. The torsos lean toward each other in couples, each supporting itself on its elbow so that the right shoulder of the one and the left shoulder of the other come rather dose together. The hands of these supporting arms grasp the tails of the dolphins, while the other arms, raised high above the head, push upward with open palms and outspread fingers four bronze tortoises which clamber over the rim of the cup in haste to plunge into the water. Projecting from the under surface of the rim are carved in marble heads of cherubs, so placed that the water which they spout falls in a steady stream between the figures of the boys and is received into the lowest basin.

The composition of these figures of boys and watercreatures is quite lovely; and the water, rising in a central jet from the drinking-cup, gushing from the mouths of the dolphins and slipping in slender runnels from the cunningly curved lips of the huge shells enhances, as it should, the joyous naturalness of the entire conception.

The popular appreciation of the beauty of the Tartarughe is shown by the wide-spread impression that it was designed by Raphael. It is painful to give up that belief, and in the face of facts which prove the hopelessness of such a contention the enthusiastic admirer can only assert that had Raphael designed a fountain this is the fountain he would have designed.

There is assuredly some excuse for this assertion. Raphael depicted often, and with peculiar tenderness, the gracious figures of youths. There is, also, a whimsicality in this conceit, a certain sympathy seems to unite the boys with the water-creatures; it is as if they were all joining in the sport of their own free will, and might at any moment break away from each other only to reunite in some fresh prank in splashing water under happy skies. All this is highly reminiscent of the art of Raphael. By virtue of it the Tartarughe belongs not to the end of the sixteenth century but to that great period of the High Renaissance when " for Leo X Raphael filled rooms, galleries, and chapels with the ideal forms of human beauty and the pure expression of existence."

This fountain was erected in the last year of the pontificate of Gregory XIII and the first year of the pontificate of Sixtus V, which would explain why its erection is attributed sometimes to the reign of one pope and sometimes to that of the other. It is difficult to understand how Sixtus V could have permitted the erection of any fountain so entirely devoid of scriptural suggestion, so purely pagan in its expression of joyous and irresponsible life, as is the Tartarughe. Possibly the play of the boys in the splashing water reminded the old man, who was in spite of his fierce enthusiasms so kindly and so human, of the far-off days of his childhood. As Cardinal Montalto he had done much for his native village, and many acts of his pontificate prove he had the poor always with him. He never forgot their sufferings or their simple pleasures, and in that old heart there lingered memories of his father's fruit garden at Fonni, of the pear-trees which he placed in his coat of arms, and of the great cistern in which he dabbled with such happy recklessness that one day he fell in and had to be fished out like any other urchin destined or not for the papal chair.

Rome would, undoubtedly, be the richer for a fountain by Raphael, but it is probably fortunate for the Tartarughe that it was not of Raphael's creation. It is not likely that this bit of fancy in bronze and rare marbles could have escaped destruction at the time of the sack of Rome in 1627, only six years after Raphael's death. Perhaps, also, this last blossom from the golden Summer of Italian Art owes its perfect preservation to its position in an obscure corner close to what was once the Ghetto. But as a setting for this gem no situation could be more inadequate. A mean square of dingy, uniformly ugly houses surrounds it, and there is not one redeeming feature in all this dreariness except the patch of blue sky overhead. A fountain fit to be the crowning beauty of some prince's garden or to be celebrated in a canto of "The Faerie Queene" plays on in this commonplace part of Rome unheeded, and seemingly uncared for. However, when in 1898, one of the tortoises was stolen the indignation felt at the theft was so wide-spread and so fierce that the thief was only too glad to abandon the precious tortoise in a place where it could be easily discovered.

Trevi water supplies this fountain at present. Until quite recently it was the Acqua Paola, but its deposits had so discolored the bronze and marbles that the water in the shells was changed back to the Trevi, for which water it was originally constructed. However, the highest jet in the fountain was not changed, as Paola water can rise to a much higher level than Trevi.