Fountain of Juno (upper figures)

The core idea for Ammanati’s Fountain of Juno was provided by the relevant passage of Aristotle’s Meteorologica which was, by 1580, the standard account of how the water cycle operated. Ammanati seems to have completed the figures for this project over an eight-year period beginning in 1555, though Cosimo I de’ Medici, its patron, never installed the fountain in its intended location, the Great Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Duke Francesco erected the fountain in 1582 at Pratolino.

The Fountain of Juno choreographed its water to emerge from the tipped urns of the Arno (left, sitting on a Marzocco and originally paired with a now lost personification of Florence) and the Hippocrene (right, sitting on the Pegasus that caused this to flow, and originally paired with a figure of Temperance). At the centre stood Ceres (Earth) squeezing water from her breasts. Juno, at the top, holds a tambourine meant to suggest the thunder of gods could cause.