Fountain of Neptune

The Neptune Fountain was a legacy from the ageing Bandinelli who had decided on the model. On his death a competition was won by Ammanati over aspirants as famous as Cellini, Vincenzo Danti and Giambologna. Ammanati was forced to use the block of marble chosen by Bandinelli for the central figure and his Neptune, unveiled in 1565, was no more than the archaising heir of a misunderstood classicism.

During the next decade, however, Ammanati, assisted by the best sculptors and casters in Florence, placed around the fountain’s octagonal basin a circle of male and female river gods reclining at their ease, framed by laughing satyrs, while sea-horses emerged from the foam in the centre. The bronze contrasts with the marble and the shimmering water. It brings out the dynamic expression of the figures, the mettlesomeness of the sea-horses and the bantering whimsy of the satyrs. Thus a coherent whole is formed, in which the monumentality of the composition is united with the contrasting movement of the bodies. All future fountain-makes, whether Mannerist or, later, Baroque, looked to it as their source and point of reference.