Design for a Fountain with Sea Horses and Triton Base, Basin, Dolphins and Tritons, Three Grotesque heads and Neptune 1545 - 1555

Curator: Oh, it feels like peering into a dream doesn’t it? A wispy vision of another world bubbling up from the depths. Editor: It's Battista Franco's "Design for a Fountain with Sea Horses and Triton Base, Basin, Dolphins and Tritons, Three Grotesque heads and Neptune," created sometime between 1545 and 1555. You're quite right; there's a sense of otherworldliness to it. Note how Franco uses line and shading in this drawing to articulate form and space. It is a play of visual dynamics between idealized forms and almost caricatured faces on the lower tier. Curator: Caricatured, yes! There's a definite tension there. Those grotesque heads down below seem to be wrestling with something, maybe even wrestling with holding up the sheer exuberance of the figures above. I mean look at Neptune rising, all fluid power! And those darling little sea horses. Editor: The stratification is, indeed, highly expressive. Battista segments the design to present a cohesive visual narrative—the base denotes foundation or origin, then figures like tritons embody dynamism and serve as the literal support. Finally, Neptune crowns it all to convey authority. This stratified presentation mirrors the humanist ideals underpinning much of the Italian Renaissance art, particularly, in their synthesis of classical and contemporary themes. Curator: I can almost hear the water cascading, feel the spray on my face… it’s like he’s trying to capture not just the form of the fountain, but its essence. I bet, actually, I *know*, if you stood there long enough looking at the actual sculpture in real life, you'd feel time start to… blur. Do you know what I mean? Editor: It's interesting that you pick up on the aspect of time. Drawings like this one often served as more than just blueprints; they were explorations of artistic possibility and conceptualizations meant to crystallize complex visual ideas across time for posterity and subsequent implementation. You get to see art's chrysalis here. Curator: A chrysalis of wet dreams! Beautiful, let’s go dream a bit ourselves. Editor: An apt way to look at how this drawing encapsulates Battista Franco’s ambitious, if ultimately unfulfilled, endeavor of fountain design.