Only one of the ancient Roman aqueducts…
1588 CE
Only one of the ancient Roman aqueducts that brought water to the city, the Aqua Vergine, was still being maintained and working at the beginning of the reign of Pope Sixtus V (born Felice Peretti) in 1585.
Romans seeking clean drinking water had only the single fountain near the site of today's Trevi Fountain.
Pope Sixtus has taken on the responsibility of restoring other aqueducts, including the Acqua Alexandrina, which he has renamed Acqua Felice after himself.
The new fountain that marks the terminus of the restored aqueduct is the first new monumental wall fountain in Rome since antiquity.
The first effort to build the fountain, by architect Matteo Bartolani, had been a failure: Bartolani had miscalculated the incline of the channel, so the flow of water was much less than needed to supply drinking water for the neighborhood.
A new fountain, constructed by architect and engineer Domenico Fontana in the form of an ancient Roman triumphal arch, features, as ancient Roman fountains did, an inscription honoring its builder, Pope Sixtus, beneath angels holding the papal coat of arms.
Within each of the three arches are sculptures on Old Testament subjects.
The central arch features a large statue of Moses, made in 1588 by Leonardo Sormani and Prospero da Brescia.
To the left is Aaron Leading the Israelites to Water, and to the right is Gideon Leading His People across the River Jordan sculpted by Flaminio Vacca and Pietro Paolo Olivieri.
Water flows from the statues into basins, where four Egyptian lions are spouting water.
The statue of Moses is criticized at the time for its large size, disproportionate to the other statuary, but the fountain makes its political statement; that the Catholic Church, unlike the Protestant Reformation, is serving the needs of the people of Rome.
It also achieves its social purpose of reviving the Quirinal neighborhood, its newly available good drinking water transforming what had been a rustic area of villas into a thriving urban neighborhood.
Aldus Manutius the Younger, the last member of the Italian family of Manuzio to be active in the famous Aldine Press established by his grandfather Aldus Manutius the Elder, had written a work on Latin spelling, Orthographiae ratio, when only fourteen years old.
While in Venice superintending the Aldine Press after his father, Paulus Manutius, had moved to Rome, he had published his Epitome orthographiae (1575) and his commentary on Horace's Ars poetica (1576).
About the same time he had been appointed professor of literature at the chancery in Venice.
Manutius had moved in 1585 to Bologna, where the next year he published his life of Cosimo de' Medici; in 1587 he had gone to Pisa, and in 1588 Pope Sixtus V calls him to Rome to work in the Typographica Apostolica Vaticana, the printing press Sixtus V had founded in 1587.