03 — ARTWORK
Fontana di Trevi
- MEDIUM
- Marble
- TYPE
- Other
PALETTE
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COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
In the first quarter of the eighteenth century there was a stagnation in the architectural activities in Rome. But in the second quarter, between 1725 and 1745 Rome recovered to such an extent that she seemed to reconquer her leading position. Talented architects produced numerous important structures in this period. The new flowering of architecture in Rome is mainly connected with the names of Filippo Raguzzini, Gabriele Valvassori, Alesandro Galilei, Francesco de Sanctis, Niccolò Salvi, and Ferdinando Fuga. Each of the first five created one great masterpieceA term now loosely applied to the finest work by a particular artist or to any work of art of acknowledged greatness or of preeminence in its field. Originally it meant the piece of work by which a craftsman, having finished his training, gained the rank of'master' in his guild., namely the <a onclick="return OpenOther('/html/r/raguzzin/ignazio.html')" href="/html/r/raguzzin/ignazio.html">Piazza Sant'Ignazio</a> (Raguzzini, 1727-28), the <a onclick="return OpenOther('/html/v/valvasso/doria1.html')" href="/html/v/valvasso/doria1.html">façadethe front or principal face of a building, especially one elaborately constructed; a blind façade is a façade that is purely decorative and does not relate to the structure of the building. of the PalazzoPalaces: large urban dwellings, 'palazzo' in Italian carries no regal connotations. Alberti described the palace as a city in little, and, like cities, Italian Renaissance palaces vary in type according to differences of climate, tradition and social structure. On to these regional stocks were grafted new architectural strains, reflecting theoretical reinterpretations of antiquity and individually influential examples. The atrium and peristyle house described by Vitruvius and now known from Pompeii did not survive antiquity, and much of the interest of Renaissance designs lies in creative misunderstandings of Vitruvius's text. Medieval palace architecture probably inherited the insula type of ancient apartment house, related to the modest strip dwellings which never disappeared from Italian cities. In Florence a merchant palace developed from fortified beginnings, with vaulted shop openings on the ground floor, and the main apartments above, reached by internal stone staircases opening from an inner court. Renaissance developments regularized without changing the essential type, although large cloister-like courtyards were introduced, while shops came to be thought undignified. At Michelozzo's Medici Palace (1444) a square arcaded courtyard with axial entrance lies behind a façade of graduated rustication, with biforate windows, a classical cornice replacing the traditional wooden overhang. The apartments on the 'piano nobile' formed interconnecting suites of rooms of diminishing size and increasing privacy. The classical orders which Alberti introduced to the façade of the Palazzo Rucellai (c.1453) were not taken up by the conservative Florentines, who continued to build variations on the Medici Palace (Palazzo Pitti; Palazzo Strozzi). In the 16th century rustication was reduced to quoins and voussoirs, and large windows appeared on the ground floor, 'kneeling' on elongated volutes. At Urbino the Ducal Palace (1465) reflected Alberti's recommendations for the princely palace, and was in turn influential on late 15th century palaces in Rome (e.g. the Cancelleria). A harmonious Florentine courtyard and ample staircase replace the embattled spaces of medieval seigneurial castles, of which vestiges remain only in the towers flanking the balconies of the duke's private apartments, designed as a scholarly retreat. In the absence of a merchant class or a cultured nobility in 15th century Rome, the architectural pace was set by the papal court. Papal incentives to build, and large households, meant less compact plans for cardinals' palaces, often built next to their titular churches. Renaissance forms appear in the unfinished courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia (1460s), with its arcade system derived from the nearby Theatre of Marcellus, and in the delicately ordered stonework of the Cancelleria (1485). In the 16th century vestigial corner towers and shops disappear from cardinals' palaces, and Antonio da Sangallo's Palazzo Farnese (1516) introduces symmetrical planning and Vitrivuan elements, like the colonnaded vestibule, behind a sober Florentine façade, enlivened by Michelangelo's cornice. A smaller palace type supplied the needs of an enlarged papal bureaucracy, more ambitious for display than for domestic accommodation. Bramante's 'House of Raphael' sets the façade style not only for this new type, but also for Renaissance houses all over Europe. Raphael and Peruzzi made ingenious use of difficult sites (Palazzo da Brescia; Palazzo Massimi), and their sophisticated façades flattered the architectural pretensions of patron and pope (e.g. Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila). Movement of patrons and architects, especially after the Sack of Rome, meant a diffusion of Roman forms to central and northern Italy, where Sanmicheli's palaces in Verona, and Palladio's in Vicenza, adapted Roman types to suit local conditions. Palladio's 4-columned atrium is a Vitruvian solution to the traditionally wide Veneto entrance hall, and his plan for the Palazzo da Porto-Festa contains explicit references to Vitruvius's House of the Greeks. In Venice, defended by its lagoon and a stable political system, the hereditary aristocracy built palaces open to trade and festivity on the Grand Canal. The traditional Venetian palace has a tripartite structure: long central halls above entrance vestibules used for unloading merchandise are lit on the canal façade by clusters of glazed windows (rare elsewhere), and at the back from small courts with external staircases (as in the Ca' d'Oro). Codussi's palaces introduced biforate windows and a grid of classical orders into the system, while Sansovino's Palazzo Cornaro retains vestiges of the Venetian type (small courtyard; tripartite façade) despite its Bramantesque coupled orders and licentious window surrounds. Other cities, like Genoa, evolved influential types. Through engravings and the illustrated treatises, Italian Renaissance ideas of palace planning, originally evolved in response to specific conditions, came to be applied all over Europe. Doria-Pamphilj</a> (Valvassori, 1730-35), the <a onclick="return OpenOther('/html/g/galilei/lateran1.html')" href="/html/g/galilei/lateran1.html">façade of San Giovanni in Laterano</a> (Alessandro Galilei, 1733-36), the <a onclick="return OpenOther('/html/s/sanctis/spanstep.html')" href="/html/s/sanctis/spanstep.html">Spanish Steps</a> (de Sanctis, 1723-26), and the Fontana di Trevi (Salvi, 1732-62). Only the sixth, Ferdinando Fuga, the most profuse talent of the group, secured a number of first-rate commissions for himself, best known are the <a onclick="return OpenOther('/html/f/fuga/consult1.html')" href="/html/f/fuga/consult1.html">Palazzo della Consulta</a> (1732-37) and the <a onclick="return OpenOther('/html/f/fuga/maggior1.html')" href="/html/f/fuga/maggior1.html">façade of Santa Maria Maggiore</a> (1741-43).
The event in Rome that absorbed the best talents of the second quarter of the eighteenth century and joined, as bridge, the first half of the century to the second, was the realization of that great architectural and sculptural complex, the Trevi Fountain. Designed in 1732 by Niccolò Salvi from Rome, after he won the competition organized by Clement XII, the fountain was formally opened - still incomplete - in 1744 and was finished, after the death of its creator, only in 1762. Clement XII made a decisive mark on the development of the fountain when he decided to use, as a theatrical backdrop, the façade of the palazzo that the Duke of Poli had just had built, overriding the duke's protests. In this way, the fountain could extend over 20 meters of the architectural prospect and all 26 of its height, occupying the entire long side of the small piazza. Thus, what might have been a secondary intervention of urban furnishing was transformed into one of the most important undertakings of the century.
Salvi's solution, with the steps descending towards the basin, perfectly interpreted the pope's expectations. The fountain was not simply accommodated by a piazza, but the space of the piazza became an integral part of the monument.
The Fountain of Trevi may be described as the apotheosis of the BaroqueThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. interpretation of the value of the water. Issuing from articulated rocks full of living organism, the flowing water unites the mythological theme (the TriumphWith growing interest from the early 14th century in the history of ancient Rome came a fascination with the city's conquests, the wars by which they were won - and the ceremony which marked their success: the victor's triumph. The knowledge that the privilege of being commemorated by one of these enormous and costly processions of warriors, loot and prisoners was given sparingly, only to the sole commander of a major victory over a foreign army of whom at least 5000 were slain, added to the glamour of the triumph. Its centrepiece was the chariot of the victor himself. Dante gave one to Beatrice in Purgatorio XXIX: 'Rome upon Africanus ne'er conferred / Nor on Augustus's self, a car so brave'. But it was tentatively with the relief carvings on the Triumphal Arch (1452-66) at Castelnuovo in Naples commemorating Alfonso the Magnanimous, and finally with Mantegna's superb Triumph of Caesar cartoons (Hampton Court), that the visual reconstruction of a Roman triumph became complete. Meanwhile, in an age which did not like the idea of large numbers of victory-flushed soldiers parading through its streets, the military triumph became sublimated, as it were, into a number of less controversial forms. This was largely under the influence of Petrarch's 'Trionfi' - poems describing the processions commemorating the triumphs of love, chastity, death; fame, time and eternity. Disseminated soon after his death, they soon appeared in illuminated manuscripts, and the triumph scene became a popular one for woodcuts, decorated marriage chests and other paintings, most beautifully of all on the backs of Piero della Francesca's portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife, Battista Sforza. Other 'triumphs' were invented: of the seasons, of virtues and of the arts. Nor was the theme allowed to be simply a profane one. Just before his death Savonarola published his 'Triumph of the Cross', in which the reader was invited to imagine 'a four-wheeled chariot on which is seated Christ as Conqueror.' Before it go the apostles, patriarchs and prophets, beside it the army of martyrs, behind it, after 'a countless number of virgins, of both sexes', come the prisoners: 'the serried ranks of the enemies of the Church of Christ.' This aspect of the theme was magnificently realized in Titian's great woodcut 'The Triumph of the Faith'. of Neptune) with the transformation of the palace into a monumental sculpture.
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rab17da51940033,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Fontana di Trevi by SALVI, Niccolò},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-08},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/salvi-niccol-rbcf3f3e6c2a4f4/fontana-di-trevi-rab17da51940033},
urldate = {2026-09-08},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-08. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
