Existing comment:
Fountain
third quarter of the 16th century
Austrian, possibly Innsbruck
Bearing the coat of arms of the powerful Madruzzo family of Trento (on the base), this fountain was used to impress guests during courtly festivities. Portable despite its size, it likely spurted wine or water, in either a garden or banquet hall. At the top stands the hunter Actaeon midway through his transformation into a stag at the hands of the goddess Diana, the story of which is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Video Pipes inside the bronze column would have provided liquid to the various spigots from a source hidden higher up, ingeniously employing gravity rather than a mechanical pump. This animation re-creates the sprays the fountain would have produced to delight and surprise noble passersby. The jets' exaggerated thinness and asymmetry, created by the placement of the spigots, are characteristic of the late sixteenth-century Mannerist style. |