The Fountain of the Four Rivers, designed and built by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 – 1680), is an unsurpassed baroque creation located in the center of one of the most important squares in the city.
Author: Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Dating: 1648 - 1651
Materials: travertine, marble, granite, bronze
Original power supply: Vergine aqueduct
Commissioned by Pope Innocent together with the two side fountains in the seventies of the 1500s.
In 1647 the pontiff entrusted Francesco Borromini (1599 – 1667) with the project of the new pipeline which was to bring 180 ounces of Virgin water to Piazza Navona and, at the same time, decided to transfer the obelisk (a Roman copy from the Domitian era) to the square, which it lay in pieces in the area of the circus of Maxentius on the ancient Appian Way.
After completing a competition of ideas in which important artists of the time participated, the pope entrusted the task of creating the work to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who had presented a silver model of the new fountain
At the center of a low elliptical basin, the fountain is imagined as a large travertine cliff, dug by a cave with four openings, which supports the granite obelisk. On the corners of the cliff are placed the monumental marble statues of the four rivers representing the continents known at the time, also identified by the vegetation and animals sculpted next to them: the Danube by Antonio Ercole Raggi for Europe, with the horse; the Ganges by Claude Poussin for Asia, with the oar and the dragon; the Nile by Giacomo Antonio Fancelli for Africa, with the veiled head (allusion to the unknown sources) associated with the lion and the palm tree; the Rio della Plata by Francesco Baratta for America with one arm raised - perhaps to protect himself from the rays of the sun represented by the obelisk - and next to an armadillo.
On the upper part of the cliff there are two large marble coats of arms of the pope's family with the dove carrying an olive branch in its beak, and the same dove, in bronze, is placed at the top of the obelisk.
The fountain was built between 1648 and 1651 by a large group of artists and workers directed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
A masterful fusion of architecture and sculpture, the Four Rivers fountain expresses movement in every sculptural detail, from the vegetation, to the statues, to the fauna represented in the basin and on the cliff, becoming the fulcrum of the entire surrounding space.