A quickening of tempo appears during the figures from the four river gods created by Bernini to the fountain in the center with the Piazza Navona when compared with Giovanni Bologna's figures over the Fountain of Oceanus in the Boboli Yard. In Tribolo's river god for the Villa Corsini, Bernini experienced a fair nearer doable prototype for his sprawling figures, symbolizing the 4 continents of the world thrown into attitudes of question at beholding the obelisk erected from the munificence of Innocent X. In this particular instance the figures are of white marble, contrasting with their rocky environment, as in Montorsoli's rustic fountain from the triton at Genoa. The really allegory in the four river gods follows a lengthy Florentine custom, which evidently commenced in 1536 Together with the momentary figures erected with the Ponte Santa Trinita in honor of Charles V, and was continued by Montorsoli and Francesco Camilliani.
For the triton which he modeled in 1633 for the middle of a fountain erected within the late sixteenth century at 1 end of The good Piazza Navona, Bernini chose the aged motif of a figure using a spouting dolphin. The standing central figure dominating lesser creatures of The ocean, current in a lot of Tuscan fountains, is in this article brought to perfection, not only from the naturalism and impetuous motion of your statue, and also in its Health, through the torsion of your body as the central ornament to the freestanding fountain. The skilful use of contrapposto, the intensity of the facial expression, along with the tossing of the tousled locks reinforce the perception here of impassioned motion.
The pathos and agitation of baroque sculpture, like that of Scopas in antiquity, appear specially tailored towards the illustration of your restless creatures of the sea. To start with look, it may well appear a much cry with the Neptunes of Ammannati and Giovanni Bologna, with their hard modelling, to the freedom and verve of this figure; but Bernini's triumph would have been extremely hard with no very long and arduous research from the Florentine sculptors in the preceding century in the issues offered by a figure placed at the center of the freestanding fountain.
Two of Bernini's isolated fountains are decorated with central figures of tritons spouting upward via a conch shell  the shed fountain of the Villa Mattei, built about 1629, recognized only from an etching in Falda, as well as the renowned Fontana del Tritone, erected while in the Piazza Barberini in 1640. As We now have witnessed in an before chapter, the motif of your triton spouting upward was recognised to Florentine sculptors during the Cinquecento, and was even used because the central motif more than freestanding fountains.
In his afterwards plus much more monumental triton fountain, Bernini rejected the plurifacial therapy of his Tuscan prototypes for an easier frontal conception additional In line with the colossal proportions of his determine. His utilization of travertine as being a medium is especially satisfied. Darkened from the drinking water, and overgrown with moss till it seems a part of character, this stone dissolves in to the encompassing atmosphere much more conveniently compared to the white marble usually employed at Florence.