Fontana Maggiore

Raised on Perugia's main square at the end of the 1270s, the Fontana Maggiore carried water from Monte Pacciano into the city and gave Perugia a marble manifesto of itself: its months, saints, founders and political ideals, carved by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano into one of the richest sculptural programmes any medieval Italian commune set in public space.

Why it matters

The fountain stands at the crossing point of Perugia's civic and religious life, on Piazza IV Novembre between the Cathedral of San Lorenzo and Palazzo dei Priori. The municipality credits the sculptural work to Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, executed between 1278 and 1280 to celebrate the completion of the new aqueduct; the overall project came from fra Bevignate, a Benedictine, while the hydraulic works were carried out by Boninsegna of Venice. Two superimposed concentric basins carry fifty bas-reliefs and twenty-four statues, an ensemble that turns engineering into civic theology. Ordinary citizens contributed to the cost according to their trade, and the regional portal records that the money was handed back between January and April 1286 once the work was paid off, a detail that says much about how communal projects were financed and audited.

What to notice

Read the basins in order, from the ground up. The lower basin, in white marble over a red base, carries fifty panels divided by little column clusters. The subjects move through the twelve months with their zodiac signs, the liberal arts (the seven traditional disciplines plus Philosophy), Old Testament stories such as Adam and Eve, Samson, and David and Goliath, the mythical founding of Rome with the she-wolf and the flight of the birds, and two Aesop fables, the wolf and the lamb and the wolf and the crane. Political emblems appear too: the Guelph lion beside the griffin of Perugia.

The upper basin holds twenty-four statuettes in white Carrara marble set against smooth panels of red stone from Assisi. Look for Augusta Perusia enthroned with her cornucopia, the patron saints Lawrence and Herculanus, Benedict with his disciple Maurus, a tribute to fra Bevignate, Roma Caput Mundi, and the podestà Matteo da Correggio and captain of the people Ermanno da Sassoferrato, dated 1278. A bronze cup crowns the whole, with three nymphs standing for the theological virtues.

Context and history

The fountain is inseparable from the aqueduct that fed it, the long conduit the commune built from Monte Pacciano in the middle of the thirteenth century. Water supply was the era's defining urban project, and Perugia placed its celebration at the foot of the public palaces rather than inside a church. The imagery does deliberate double duty: the calendar and the crafts speak to the working city, the Roman foundation scenes claim an ancient pedigree, and the portraits of the podestà and captain of the people date the fountain precisely while honouring the offices that governed it. Little has been added since: the fountain remains essentially the object the Pisanos and their workshop delivered, which is why it anchors any reading of the square around it.