Design for a wall decoration

Peter Fl�tner, one of the period’s most inventive artists, fabricated small fountains in the form of miniature landscapes. His presentation drawing for a wall fountain portrays four men and two women bathing in a natural grotto. Spring water spouts from the rock wall through two cherub heads into a dammed up pool and out again through a faun mask’s mouth into a stream and, presumably, a basin below.

This fountain, much like an attractive landscape painting, brought a bit of the natural world, however artificially constructed, into a patrician’s urban residence.

In the inscription, the patron is informed that the drawing is not done to scale, as if to imply that the finished fountain would be somewhat larger.