Upper Basin of the Fountain in the Piazza Scossa Cavalli

We here look at the ancient Roman basin that Carlo Maderno incorporated into a fountain on the Piazza Scossacavalli, near the Vatican. It was still at that site when the artist sketched it in 1913, but was later moved when the square was demolished in 1937 to allow the construction of the Via della Conciliazione. In 1957 the fountain was rebuilt in the Piazza S. Andrea della Valle, opposite a church designed by Maderno, although the upper basin had to be remade. This proof is one of a series of 43 wood engravings that Ruzicka made to illustrate "Fountains of Papal Rome," 1915, where it appears on page 25. For a smaller image of the whole fountain, see Metropolitan Museum proof, 18.25.43.
Ruzicka went to Rome in 1913 with the manuscript of Mrs. Charles MacVeagh's "Fountains of Papal Rome" in hand as a guide. When published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York in 1915 the book contained fourteen full-page images and twenty-nine page headings and vignettes. The artist later described the book as a "quite remarkable work...still the most authoritative book there is on the subject in the English language."