When I visited Siena with Chester and Maria last week I was struck by my ignorance of the provenance of this fountain – I had a memory that it had taken a long time to complete and the name Jacopo della Quercia at the back of my mind , but also a sense that his fountain wasn’t the beginning – or even the end -of the story , so I promised to look it up for them.
Naturally water was needed in the Piazza del Campo and the first fountain was designed with a statue of the goddess Venus. This fountain called Gaia (or ‘joyful‘),was completed in 1343, after 8 years of work, and initially the Sienese were delighted with it – however after an outbreak of Black Plague which took the lives of a third of the population of the City – they blamed the Statue of Venus for bringing them ill fortune and destroyed it!
Therefore the first fountain Fonte di Gaia of the 1300s was replaced in 1419 by that of Jacopo della Quercia.( 1374 – 1438)
The new rectangular fountain , as shown above, was built in white marble and dedicated to the Virgin. It is adorned on the three sides by many statues and multiple spouts – including water from the mouth of wolf statues which remind us of the suckling of Remus – by a she wolf. Remus was the father of Senius, whom legend tells us was the founder of Siena. Legend also tells us that Senios rode a black horse and his brother Aschious a white one -which led to Siena adopting heraldic colours of black and white.
In reality Siena was probably originally an Etruscan hilltop village which was developed as a fortress town by the Romans during the reign of Octavian Augustus. .
Once again the fountain ground slowly towards completion – largely because della Quercia accepted other commissions at the same time. He started in 1414 and the fountain was only finished in 1419 – but he was probably pleased that he had taken three years fewer than his predecessors’!.
In 1898 the water damaged old statues were replaced by copies made by Tito Sarrocchi. The originals are now on display in the loggia of the Palazzo Pubblico.
Today the fountain is as much an attraction for visitors, children – and huge numbers of pigeons as it ever was!
It was also visited by Chester and Marie in March 2013
