The Fountain of Triton

The Fountain of the Triton  larger view

This fountain was done by Lorenzo Bernini for Pope Urban VIII. It stands near the Barberini Church of the Capuchins, and was intended to adorn the approach to the Palazzo Barberini. This third of the trio of the great palaces of the nepotizing Popes-Farnese, Borghese, and Barberini-was built by Urban VIII in order to invest his house with an importance equal to that enjoyed by the families of Paul III and Paul V. As the fountain was an adjunct of the palace, it had to bear upon it in some way the emblem of the Barberini-the colossal bee-and this explains why Bernini united the curving bodies of his dolphins by escutcheons carrying three bees and the papal arms.

Another fountain, contemporaneous with the Triton, once stood in this same piazza, at the corner of the Via Sistina; and this fountain, also made for Urban VIII by Bernini, was in itself the emblem of the Barberini, for it represented merely a great shell into which the bees spouted water. In some way this second fountain has disappeared, but the piazza still remains the Barberini quarter of the city; and the Triton, as well as the magnificent palace, recalls the days when the power and rapacity of that family brought upon it the unforgetable pasquinade: