Fountain of the Four Rivers

Fortune was soon to smile on Bernini once again, and the great fountain in Piazza Navona, right in the fief of Innocent X's family, was to seal its stability. Inexhaustible and imaginative, the sculptor launched into an undertaking that bordered on recklessness: to support a great obelisk he conceived a rock (the Earth), pierced right through, in the centre of the basin of water (the Sea); at the sides of the block, the four principal rivers, which feed the ocean with their jets; animals and plants adorn the hollows of the rock in a teeming ferment of life. The master's assistants took a massive part in the execution of the various parts of the fountain, but he checked that they adhered perfectly to his models, two highly eloquent examples of which have survived (now in the Museo Correr in Venice). This Río de la Plata was executed by Francesco Baratta.