Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Fountains

True to the decorative dynamism of Baroque which loved the aesthetic pleasure and emotional delight afforded by the sight and sound of water in motion, among Bernini's most gifted and applauded creations were his Roman fountains, which were both utilitarian public works and personal monuments to their patrons, papal or otherwise. His first fountain, the ' Barcaccia ' (commissioned in 1627, finished 1629) at the foot of the Spanish Steps, cleverly surmounted a challenge that Bernini was to face in several other fountain commissions, the low water pressure in many parts of Rome (Roman fountains were all driven by gravity alone), creating a low-lying flat boat that was able to take greatest advantage of the small amount of water available. Another example is the long-ago dismantled "Woman Drying Her Hair" fountain that Bernini created for the no-longer-extant Villa Barberini ai Bastioni on the edge of the Janiculum Hill overlooking St. Peter's Basilica.

His other fountains include the Fountain of the Triton, or Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini (celebrated in Ottorino Respighi 's Fountains of Rome), and the nearby Barberini Fountain of the Bees, the Fontana delle Api. The Fountain of the Four Rivers, or Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, in the Piazza Navona is an exhilarating masterpiece of spectacle and political allegory in which Bernini again brilliantly overcame the problem of the piazza's low water pressure creating the illusion of an abundance of water that in reality did not exist. An oft-repeated, but false, anecdote tells that one of the Bernini's river gods defers his gaze in disapproval of the façade of Sant'Agnese in Agone (designed by the talented, but less politically successful, rival Francesco Borromini), impossible because the fountain was built several years before the façade of the church was completed. Bernini also provided the design for the statue of the Moor in La Fontana del Moro in Piazza Navona (1653).
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