Designs for a fountain c.1513
Red chalk, pen and ink, on blue paper | 15.0 x 6.0 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 912690
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Two drawings of a fountain, designed as an Ionic column on a base. On the capital stands a naked man bent forward under the weight of a huge basket. Water is squirted from a pipe in his hands into the basket.
This is one of two fragments probably cut from a single sheet, with designs for a ‘Heron’s fountain’, a hydraulic curiosity in which a reservoir of water emptying by gravity into a lower chamber sends a small fountain of water back into the upper reservoir. The device gives the impression of being a perpetual motion machine, though eventually the reservoir empties and the fountain stops. See also RCIN 912691.
The designs offer a rare glimpse of Leonardo thinking as a sculptor in a context other than an equestrian monument. Their scale is hard to determine: they were probably table fountains to be cast in bronze or silver, but the columns seem monumental in conception and they could have been full-scale fountains for a garden.
Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018Provenance
Bequeathed to Francesco Melzi; from whose heirs purchased by Pompeo Leoni, c.1582-90; Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel, by 1630; probably acquired by Charles II; Royal Collection by 1690
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Creator(s)
Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Red chalk, pen and ink, on blue paper
Measurements
15.0 x 6.0 cm (sheet of paper)
Other number(s)
RL 12690Alternative title(s)
Designs for a 'Heron's Fountain'