Gardens of Nudes - Part Five

This is the fifth in a series of articles about nude statues in the formal gardens of Europe.

I began this series by saying that the gardens of Versailles are the ultimate expression of the formal European garden. This is very true of the fountains at Versailles.

The gardens of Versailles are located in an area that was originally marshland, so it was much better suited to the creation of lakes and canals than fountains. It was always very difficult to build up enough water pressure to feed fountains. In 1680, Arnold de Ville and Renequin Sualem, began the construction of a huge pump, the Machine de Marly. This pumped water from the River Seine and was capable of filling the Marly reservoirs at a rate of four million liters in 24 hours.

The Marly reservoirs fed the fountains of Versailles, but even the Machine de Marly couldn't keep all of the fourteen hundred fountains playing 24 hours a day. The fountain of Latona, which is shown at the top of this page, is located directly below the garden facade of the chateau. The fountains next to the chateau normally played from eight in the morning until eight in the evening, but most of the fountains only played for the king. Servants would turn off the water to a fountain once the king had passed it, so that there would be sufficient pressure for the next fountain to perform for the king.

The lack of water pressure was an artistic blessing. All of the fountains had to be designed so that they would be attractive when the water was turned off, so the sculptures which adorned the fountains needed to be striking works of art. If you compare the photo below with the photo at the top of this page, you will see that even the fountain of Latona is quite attractive when the water is turned off.

The photograph below is of the Fountain of Ceres, which was sculpted by Thomas Regnaudin between 1672 and 1674. This fountain represents summer and is one of four fountains representing the four seasons, all of which were designed by Charles Le Brun. As you can see from the photograph, this fountain was designed to be a superb piece of sculpture. The Fountain of Ceres hardly needs jets of water in order to be an effective focal point. In fact, many of the fountains of Versailles actually look better when the fountains are turned off; water tends to obscure the details.

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