2-888-597 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Fountain of Trevi - Rome, 1850. '...a colossal marble group, representing Neptune in his chariot, drawn by sea-horses, and heralded by marine deities...The general effect is very line. Rushing impetuously like a cataract over the face of the artificial rock, the waters plunge with a hoarse roar into a capacious basin, depressed below the level of the street; and the spray, as it dances up and mingles with the lesser streams that issue from the mouths of the marine monsters, envelopes the lower region of the substructure in a misty mantle of gauze - the ensemble suggesting to an active fancy the realisation of the Ocean God coming forth in majesty from some favourite retreat in his marine domain, and cresting in his chariot a mountain wave, the better to survey the troubled waters'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.