Atlas Fountain (detail)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini brought the fountain sculpture from the villa to the city, from the natural to the social setting. With him, the sculpture is conceived in relation to the water, to its ceaseless flow, to its shape and course, and thus it becomes one of the “symbolic forms” of the Baroque. Not so in the Atlas fountain at the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, where the water brought in by force has little connection with the mythological personage in the centre of the fountain, which was made in collaboration between Giacomo della Porta and Giovanni Fontana (1540-1614).