Triton Fountain

In all the medieval and sixteenth-century examples of the fountains that had adorned Italian cities, there had always been a clear separation, when not an antagonism, between the sculptural and architectural structure and the fluid element, water. Gothic medieval art had insisted on the preciousness of water, developing the figurative concept of the protective enclosure, ne animalibus vel impuris profanetur; the Renaissance exalted its decorative aspects, with strict rigour of design. Bernini overturned these rational conceptions and introduced into his invention a capricious but extremely dynamic factor: the integration of stone and water is absolute; the figurative support, the triton, is one with the cascade of water, pantheistically dissolved in a glimmering flow of matter.