Bologna's Neptune, Giambologna's Giant and its riddles

In the heart of Bologna, between Piazza Maggiore and Piazza del Nettuno, stands one of the most celebrated fountains of the Italian Renaissance. The Bolognese affectionately call the statue that crowns it the Giant. The work of the Flemish sculptor Jean de Boulogne, known in Italy as Giambologna, the fountain is at once a political manifesto, an artistic masterpiece and a store of popular anecdotes handed down for centuries among the city's inhabitants.

A fountain for papal power

In the sixteenth century Bologna was part of the Papal States. The papal legate, Cardinal Charles Borromeo, and the vice-legate Pier Donato Cesi promoted the creation of the fountain during the pontificate of Pius IV, Borromeo's uncle. The architectural design was entrusted to the Sicilian painter and architect Tommaso Laureti, while the bronze sculptures were commissioned from the young Giambologna. The work took place between 1563 and 1566.

The choice of Neptune was no accident. Just as the sea god rules the waters, so the pope was meant to govern the world, and the fountain visually celebrated papal authority over the city. The Latin inscriptions on the base record that the work was made to adorn the forum, for the benefit of the people and with public money, in a civic rhetoric typical of the Renaissance.

Sirens, putti and dolphins

At the statue's feet four putti grasp dolphins, while at the lower corners four female figures, often called sirens or nereids, make water spring from their breasts. In the classical imagination these creatures represented the fertility of the waters, while the putti have been seen as an allusion to the great rivers of the continents then known, the sign of a power extending over the whole world.

Even at the time the work provoked mixed reactions because of the sensuality of its figures, in a period marked by the climate of the Counter-Reformation. It is said that the church authorities asked the artist to restrain certain anatomical details of the main statue, considered excessive. There are no documents confirming the request in the terms reported by tradition.

The stone of shame

From this very episode arises the best-known legend. It is said that Giambologna, forced to scale down his Neptune, found an ingenious solution: looking at the statue from a precise point in the paving, a slab set in the direction of the Sala Borsa, the thumb of the god's outstretched left hand seems to protrude from his body in a suggestive way. The Bolognese call that slab the stone of shame.

Whether this was a joke intended by the artist or simply a perspective effect, noticed and reinterpreted later, cannot be known for certain. What matters is that the anecdote has become part of the city's identity. A few steps away, in the basilica of San Petronio, lies evidence of an entirely different kind: the great meridian line traced in 1655 by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, among the longest in the world.

The Fountain of Neptune thus contains several levels of reading. It is the symbol of papal power over Bologna, a masterpiece of Mannerist bronze sculpture and the centre of a legend with the lightness of a popular joke. Restored several times, most recently in work completed in 2017, it remains the meeting place par excellence for the people of Bologna.