Detail of the Fountain of the Four Rivers

The Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi' or The Fountain of the Four Rivers, erected in 1651 in the central Roman Piazza Navona, is considered a masterpiece of public sculpture by Gianlorenzo Bernini. It stands in the center of the long oval piazza in front of the facade of Sant'Agnese in Agone, and yards from the Pamphilj Palace, which housed the family of its patron, Innocent X,(1644-1655). Pope Innocent had commissioned models for a fountain to grace the site. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1536x2048, 1492 KB) it: Fontana dei Fiumi, Roma, Piazza Navona 16/X/2005 File links The following pages link to this file: Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1536x2048, 1492 KB) it: Fontana dei Fiumi, Roma, Piazza Navona 16/X/2005 File links The following pages link to this file: Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used... Fountain of the four Rivers with Egyptian obelisk, in the middle of Piazza Navona Piazza Navona is a square in Rome, Italy. ... A self portrait: Bernini is said to have used his own features in the David (below, left) Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini) (December 7, 1598 - November 28, 1680), who worked chiefly in Rome, was the pre-eminent baroque artist. ... The facade of SantAgnese from piazza Navona. ... Diego Velazquez portrait, which Innocent X found too truthful Innocent X, né Giovanni Battista Pamphili (May 6, 1574 - January 5, 1655), Pope from 1644 to 1655, was born in Rome in 1574, attained the dignity of cardinal in 1629. ...

So strong was the sinister influence of the rivals of Bernini on the mind of Innocent X that when he planned to set up in Piazza Navona the great obelisk brought to Rome by the Emperor Caracalla which had been buried for a long time at Capo di Bove for the adornment of a magnificent fountain, the Pope had designs made by the leading architects of Rome without an order for one to Bernini. Prince Nicollo Lodovisio, whose wife was niece to the pope, persuaded Bernini to prepare a model, and arrange for it to be secretly installed in a room in the Palazzo Pamphilj which the Pope had to past. When the meal was finished, seeing such a noble creation, he stopped almost in ecstasy. Being prince of the keenest judgment and the loftiest ideas, after admiring it, said: “This is a trick … It will be necessary to employ Bernini in spite of those who do not wish it, for he who desires not to use Bernini’s designs, must take care not to see them.”

Paraphrase from Fillipo Baldinucci, The life of Cavalierie Bernini (1682) [1]

Fountains in Rome served two purposes, in the centuries before home plumbing, they were highly needed sources of water for neighborhoods. In the designs of fountains, political statements, tributes to the patron and the papacy, were added. Earlier Bernini fountains had been the Triton fountain in Piazza Barberini, the fountain of the Moor in the southern end of Piazza Navona [2] erected during the Barberini papacy, and the Neptune and Triton for Villa Montalto, whose statuary now resides at Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Luxor obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris An obelisk is a tall, thin, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramidal top. ... Fountain of the four Rivers with Egyptian obelisk, in the middle of Piazza Navona Piazza Navona is a square in Rome, Italy. ... The Cromwell Road entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum viewed from Thurloe Square The main interior courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004. ... For other uses, see London (disambiguation) and Defining London (below). ...

This fountain means to depict allegories for the four great rivers in the four continents recognized by the Renaissance geographers: the Nile in Africa [3], Ganges in Asia [4], Danube in Europe [5][6], and Río de la Plata in America [7]. Each has animals, plants, or river gods with sometimes awkward racial physiques to carry forth the identification. Each has a river god, semi-prostrate, in awe of the central tower, epitomized by the slender Egyptian obelisk (built for the Roman Serapeum in AD 81) [8], symbolizing by Papal power surmounted by the Pamphilij symbol (dove). In addition, the fountain is a theater in the round, a spectacle of action, that can be strolled around. Water flows and splashes from a jagged and pierced mountainous disorder of travertine marble. A legend, common with tour-guides, is that Bernini positioned the cowering Nile River god to comment on the Sta. Agnese facade of his rival Borromini. The classical four continents Europeans in the 1500s divided the world into four continents: Africa America Asia Europe During this time, nothing was known of Antarctica or Australia, the other two land masses which we consider continents today. ... For alternative meanings of Nile, see Nile (disambiguation) The Nile (Arabic: النيل an-nÄ«l), in Africa, is one of the two longest rivers on Earth. ... Early morning on the Ganges The River Ganges (Ganga in Indian languages) (Devanagiri गंगा) is a major river in northern India. ... The Danube bend at Visegrád is a popular destination of tourists The Danube (German: Donau, Slovak: Dunaj, Hungarian: Duna, Slovenian: Donava, Croatian: Dunav, Serbian: Дунав/Dunav, , Bulgarian: Дунав (Dunav), Romanian: Dunăre, Ukrainian: , Latin: Danuvius), all ultimately derived from the PIE *dānu, meaning river or stream, is Europes second... Río de la Plata in relation to Uruguay and Argentina A satellite view of the estuary The Río de la Plata (from Spanish: River of Silver), also known by the English name River Plate, as in the Battle of the River Plate, or sometimes [La] Plata River, is... There are nine Egyptian obelisks in Rome. ... The Serapeum of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt was a temple built by Ptolemy III (reigned 246 BC–222 BC) and dedicated to Serapis, the syncretic Hellenistic-Egyptian god who was made the protector of Alexandria. ... Francesco Borromini (Bissone near Lugano, Switzerland, September 25, 1599 – August 3, 1667 in Rome) was a Baroque architect, and active in Rome alongside the more prolific papal architect, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. ...

The dynamic fusion of architecture and sculpture made this fountain revolutionary when compared to prior Roman projects, such as the stilted designs Acqua Felice and Paola by Fontana in Piazza di Bernado (1585-87) or the customary embellished geometric floral-shaped basin below a jet of water such as the Fontanina, Piazza Campitelli (1589) by Giacomo della Porta. The Bernini fountain is drama in stone. The idea for the Acqua Paola began in 1605 when Camillo Borghese became Pope Paul V. At that time, the Roman suburbs west of the Tiber River, including the Vatican, were suffering from chronic water shortage. ... Domenico Fontana (1543 – 1607) was an Italian architect of the late Renaissance. ... Giacomo della Porta (c. ...

Della Porta also authored the Neptune and the Nereids fountain (Fontana di Nettuno)(1576) on the north end of Piazza Navona[9]. Bernini's father had completed the other less impressive fountain flanking this one. Later fountains, like Nicola Salvi's glorious Rococo Trevi Fountain (1748-49), weaker in program and sculpture, move even further into the scenographic display. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Fontana di Trevi (Roma) The Trevi Fountain (in Italian, Fontana di Trevi) is the largest (standing 85 feet high and 65 feet wide) and most ambitious of the Baroque fountains of Rome. ...

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Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

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