Dusty Art

My prior Art posts can be found HERE.

How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..

Let’s study art history together.

Latona Fountain (Versailles, France)

Design	André Le Nôtre, Jules Hardouin-MansartGaspard and Balthazard Marsy, Claude Bertin
Construction	1670 – 1686
Height	12 meters (39 feet)
Surface	white and grey-veined Cararra marble, greenish marble from Campan, and red marble from Languedoc
Location	The Gardens of Versailles, France

Versailles in France is so rich in artistic beauty that in totality, you might feel too overwhelmed to really absorb the individual works that do all the whelming. The Gardens of Versailles – beautiful for a variety of other factors as well – are home to one of the world’s best water fountains.

In the pre-20th century world, we took care that our light poles were ornate, our gutters added to the aesthetic of our homes, and that our water fountains were works of art. The details mattered because humanity still – by and large – loved itself. As I’ve said before, this changed as the philosophy of nihilism grabbed a prominent place in the world and began convincing us that we did not matter. If we did not matter, it followed that neither did water fountains.

Attention to beauty is a sign of civilizational health.

Latona Fountain lived well within the time of beauty. However, it was a sign of some big recent society changes. Two centuries earlier, this fountain likely would have featured a Christian symbol at its apex, or a historical figure the present was attempting to remember. The Enlightenment brought with it a love of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Public art displays reflected this change in the times. It was also probably advantageous for Europe’s artists that this change occurred, because it gave them more freedom to depict nudity without fear of ‘sacrilegious’ accusations.

This fountain depicts characters very foundational to Greek mythology and a myth as given to us by Ovid. (more via wiki)

The Latona Fountain in the Gardens of Versailles lies in the Latona Basin between the Palace of Versailles and the Grand Canal. On the top tier, there is a statue of the goddess Latona, mother of the sun and moon gods. The fountain operates three times a week during the high season.

Myth of Latona

The theme of the Latona Fountain is taken from the myth of Latona (the Roman incarnation of the Greek goddess Leto), as vividly told in Book VI of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Latona bore the gods Apollo and Diana by Zeus, which incurred the hatred of Zeus’ consort Juno. She forbade any mortals to give hospitality to Latona and her children, who were forced to wander the earth fleeing Juno’s persecution, until at last they came to Lycia. A thirsty Latona attempted to drink from a local pond, but the inhabitants, obeying Juno’s command, waded into the water and kicked up the mud from the bottom of the pond, so that Latona and her children could not drink. Enraged at their treatment of her, Latona cursed the Lycians to live in their pond forever, and they were transformed into frogs as punishment.

History & design

The fountain was begun in 1670 by André Le Nôtre, then enlarged and modified by Jules Hardouin-Mansart in 1686. In 1667 the sculptor brothers Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy were employed to embellish the basin with statuary. Balthazard created six lead half-human, half-frog sculptures placed around the perimeter of the basin, and between 1668 and 1670 Gaspard created the main statuary group of Latona with Diana and Apollo. The statue was placed on a low foundation of rocks at the center of the fountain, from where Latona faced eastwards toward the palace.

Hardouin-Mansart designed a much grander fountain of four oval tiers forming a pyramid, topped by Gaspard Marsy’s statue (looking west over the gardens and the Grand Canal rather than towards the palace) and enhanced all around with the original figures of Balthazard Marsy and an assortment of gilded frogs and lizards sculpted by Claude Bertin. The four tiers are covered in 230 pieces of marble, composed of the white and grey-veined Cararra, greenish marble from Campan, and red marble from Languedoc.

Restoration

The Latona Fountain underwent an “emergency” renovation between 2013 and 2015, after it was determined that the integrity of the basin supporting the fountain was threatened. The fountain itself was in a serious state of neglect, requiring total dismantlement for off-site restoration of individual parts. This included 230 pieces of marble which were cleaned and repaired, as well as the re-gilding of the frog and lizard lead fixtures. The elaborate system of lead pipes underpinning the fountain was also repaired by the fountain engineers of Versailles. The fountain was formally reopened in May 2015.

For a great short video on the fountain, its underlying mythology, and a better view of the fountain itself, let me direct you to the following: