A quickening of tempo appears inside the figures on the four river gods made by Bernini within the fountain in the center of your Piazza Navona when put next with Giovanni Bologna's figures within the Fountain of Oceanus while in the Boboli Yard. In Tribolo's river god for the Villa Corsini, Bernini experienced an excellent closer feasible prototype for his sprawling figures, representing the 4 continents of the planet thrown into attitudes of question at beholding the obelisk erected from the munificence of Innocent X. On this occasion the figures are of white marble, contrasting with their rocky placing, as in Montorsoli's rustic fountain on the triton at Genoa. The quite allegory in the four river gods follows a protracted Florentine tradition, which seemingly commenced in 1536 with the non permanent figures erected for the Ponte Santa Trinita in honor of Charles V, and was continued by Montorsoli and Francesco Camilliani.
For the triton which he modeled in 1633 for the middle of the fountain erected from the late sixteenth century at one particular finish of The nice Piazza Navona, Bernini chose the outdated motif of a determine having a spouting dolphin. The standing central determine dominating lesser creatures of The ocean, current in lots of Tuscan fountains, is below introduced to perfection, not merely in the naturalism and impetuous motion of the statue, but will also in its Physical fitness, in the torsion of the body as being the central ornament to a freestanding fountain. The skilful utilization of contrapposto, the depth of your facial expression, as well as the tossing with the tousled locks reinforce the impression of impassioned movement.
The pathos and agitation here of baroque sculpture, like that of Scopas in antiquity, look significantly tailored towards the representation on the restless creatures of The ocean. At the beginning look, it may appear a much cry through the Neptunes of Ammannati and Giovanni Bologna, with their tricky modelling, to the liberty and verve of the figure; but Bernini's triumph might have been extremely hard with no prolonged and arduous exploration of your Florentine sculptors of your previous century in the issues introduced by a figure placed at the middle of the freestanding fountain.
Two of Bernini's isolated fountains are decorated with central figures of tritons spouting upward by way of a conch shell  the dropped fountain in the Villa Mattei, made about 1629, identified only from an etching in Falda, as well as the well-known Fontana del Tritone, erected within the Piazza Barberini in 1640. As we have seen within an earlier chapter, the motif of the triton spouting upward was recognised to Florentine sculptors from the Cinquecento, and was even utilized given that the central motif about freestanding fountains.
In his later and much more monumental triton fountain, Bernini turned down the plurifacial remedy of his Tuscan prototypes for an easier frontal conception far more in keeping with the colossal proportions of his determine. His usage of travertine being a medium is especially content. Darkened from the drinking water, and overgrown with moss until it seems a Component of nature, this stone dissolves to the bordering atmosphere additional readily compared to the white marble normally utilized at Florence.