Fountain of Neptune, Bologna

The Fountain of Neptune (Italian: Fontana di Nettuno)

is a monumental civic fountain located in the eponymous
square, Piazza del Nettuno, next to Piazza Maggiore, in
Bologna, Italy[1] Its bronze gure of Neptune, extending
his reach in a lordly gesture of stilling and controlling
the waters, is an early work by Giambologna, completed
about 1567.[2]

ce was demolished to make space for it. The fountain

was completed in 1565,[4] and the Neptune was xed in
place within a couple of years.
The logo of the Maserati car company is based on the trident in this Neptune statue. In 1920 one of the Maserati
brothers, the artist Mario Maserati, used this symbol in
the logo at the suggestion of family friend Marquis Diego
de Sterlich. It was considered particularly appropriate for
the sports car company due to fact that Neptune represents strength and vigor; additionally the statue is a characteristic symbol of the companys original home city.[5]

1 See also
Fountain of Neptune, Florence
Neptune
Mythology

2 References
[1] The urbanistic history and quasi-political character of
these interrelated civic spaces and structures expressing conicting connotations of papal and communalrepublican instruments of government are discussed in
Naomi Miller, Renaissance Bologna: A Study in Architectural Form and Content (University of Kansas) 1989.
[2] Date in Charles Avery, Giambologna (1987); a description of the fountain appears in the second edition (1568)
of Giorgio Vasari's Vite; a collection of essays on the conservation undertaken in the 1980s on the Neptune fountain, Il Nettuno del Giambologna: storia e restauro (Milan)
1989, contains an essay by Richard Tittle on the contracts
for it, of 1563, and one by Giancarlo Roversi on its impact
on public life in Bologna and changing attitudes towards
its display of nudity.

Detail with a lactating nereid.

An innovation of Giambolognas fountain designs is

the fantastic and non-geometrical forms he gave to the
basins into which water splashed and owed, curiously folded, bulging and elastic in form, as Rosalind
Grippi remarked.[3] The fountain is a model example of
Mannerist taste of the courtly elite in the mid-sixteenth
century: construction of the statue was commissioned
by the Cardinal Legate of the city, Charles Borromeo,
to symbolize the fortunate recent election of Borromeos
uncle as Pope Pius IV.

[3] Rosalind Grippi, A Sixteenth Century Bozzetto The

Art Bulletin 38.3 (September 1956:143-147) p. 146; the
bozzetto Grippi was discussing was not related to the fountain.
[4] Documents in the State Archives in Bologna were used
by W. Gramberg, Giambologna, eine Untersuchung ber
seine Wanderjhre (Berlin) 1936.

The work was designed by the Palermitan architect

Tommaso Laureti in 1563, with an over-lifesize bronze of
the god Neptune on the top, executed by Giambologna,
who had submitted a model for the fountain of Neptune in Florence, but had lost the commission to Baccio
Bandinelli. Before the fountain was built, an entire edi-

[5] http://www.maserati100.com/history/timeline.html

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3.1

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Fountain of Neptune, Bologna Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Neptune%2C_Bologna?oldid=616967439 Contributors: Wetman, Popolon, Rjwilmsi, Jpbowen, Attilios, CARAVAGGISTI, Marek69, Pconlon, The Anomebot2, TUFOWKTM, TIY, Addbot,
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