Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

===Fountains===
[[File:Lazio Roma Navona2 tango7174.jpg|thumb|''[[Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi]]'']]

True to the decorative dynamism of Baroque which loved the aesthetic pleasure and emotional delight afforded by the sight and sound of water in motion, among Bernini's most gifted and applauded creations were his Roman fountains, which were both utilitarian public works and personal monuments to their patrons, papal or otherwise. His first fountain, the '[[Fontana della Barcaccia|Barcaccia]]' (commissioned in 1627, finished 1629) at the foot of the Spanish Steps, cleverly surmounted a challenge that Bernini was to face in several other fountain commissions, the low water pressure in many parts of Rome (Roman fountains were all driven by gravity alone), creating a low-lying flat boat that was able to take greatest advantage of the small amount of water available. Another example is the long-ago dismantled "Woman Drying Her Hair" fountain that Bernini created for the no-longer-extant Villa Barberini ai Bastioni on the edge of the [[Janiculum]] Hill overlooking St. Peter's Basilica.<ref>For these two fountains and Bernini's other fountains, see F. Mormando, ''Domenico Bernini: The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' (Penn State Univ. Press, 2011), pp. 136–139 with accompanying extensive notes; for the Fountain of the Four Rivers, see pp.161–165 and notes.</ref>

His other fountains include the ''[[Triton Fountain|Fountain of the Triton]]'', or ''Fontana del Tritone'' in [[Piazza Barberini]] (celebrated in [[Ottorino Respighi]]'s ''[[Fountains of Rome (symphonic poem)|Fountains of Rome]]''), and the nearby Barberini Fountain of the Bees, the ''[[Fontana delle Api]]''.<ref>This fountain was dismantled in the nineteenth century and reassembled (incorrectly) in the twentieth in the [[Via Veneto]]. A second ''Fontana delle Api'' in the Vatican has sometimes been attributed to Bernini of which Blunt has written, "Borromini is documented as having carved the fountain in 1626, but it is not certain whether he made the design for it, and it has also been attributed—not very plausibly—to Bernini" (Blunt, ''Borromini'', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, 17).</ref> The Fountain of the Four Rivers, or ''[[Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi]]'', in the [[Piazza Navona]] is an exhilarating masterpiece of spectacle and political allegory in which Bernini again brilliantly overcame the problem of the piazza's low water pressure creating the illusion of an abundance of water that in reality did not exist. An oft-repeated, but false, anecdote tells that one of the Bernini's river gods defers his gaze in disapproval of the façade of [[Sant'Agnese in Agone]] (designed by the talented, but less politically successful, rival [[Francesco Borromini]]), impossible because the fountain was built several years before the façade of the church was completed. Bernini also provided the design for the statue of the Moor in ''[[La Fontana del Moro]]'' in Piazza Navona (1653).