Political infighting had brought Jacopo della Quercia…

Political infighting had brought Jacopo della Quercia into the design of a hexagonal basin with bronze panel for the Baptistery in Siena, after the cathedral in 1416 had asked Lorenzo Ghiberti (who had been his competitor for the bronze doors in Florence) to undertake the project.

He had only completed one bronze relief, The Annunciation to Zacharias, because he was working at the same time on the Fonte Gaia and the Trenta Chapel.

His lingering on this project brought him in legal difficulties with the authorities.

Since he had been rejected in the competition for the "Doors of Paradise" in Florence, he had been reluctant to work with bronze.

And when he worked on the tabernacle of the baptistery, he insisted on taking care only of the marble part.

Jacopo della Quercia had been asked in 1406 to build a new fountain in the Piazza del Campo in Siena, as it had been deemed necessary to replace the original fountain, which had featured a statue of the goddess Venus, blamed for an outbreak of the Black Plague.

The statue had been destroyed and buried outside the city walls to avert its "evil influence".

This prestigious commission shows that he was already being recognized as Siena's most prominent sculptor.

The rectangular fountain, built in white marble, is dedicated to the Virgin, adorned on the three sides by many statues and multiple spouts.

Because he also accepts other commissions at the same time, such as the baptismal font in the Sienese Baptistery, progress has been slow.

He had started in 1414 and the fountain is only finished in 1419.

He had carved the panels in the workshop for sculptors, next to the cathedral; this workshop will eventually be converted into the Cathedral Museum.

The fountain is called Fonte Gaia, because of the joy and the festivities when its is brought into operation.

It is now a center of attraction for the city’s many tourists.

When they were set up set up in 1419, Jacopo della Quercia's nude figures of Rhea Silvia and Acca Larenti are the first two female nudes, who are neither Eve nor a repentant saint, to stand in a public place since Antiquity.

The original statues will be replaced by copies in 1858 from Tito Sarrocchi, who will omit Jacopo della Quercia's two nude statues, which the nineteenth-century city fathers found too pagan or too nude; now much-damaged, they are are today on display in the loggia of the Palazzo Pubblico.