The fountain of Bacchino, or fountain of the Nano Morgante, is located in the Boboli gardens in Florence, in the north-west area of Palazzo Pitti on the wall where the Vasari Corridor passes not far from the garden exit on Piazza Pitti.
The fountain was sculpted in 1560 by the sculptor Valerio Cioli and represents the dwarf Morgante (ironically nicknamed as the giant of the eponymous poem by Luigi Pulci), who was the most celebrated of the five dwarfs on the court of Cosimo I de' Medici at Palazzo Pitti. It is represented in full bodied nudity astride a turtle, in the guise of a drunken Bacchus (hence the name of fountain). A spray of water leaks from the turtle's mouth and flows into the marble basin below.
The work is exemplary of the grotesque style so popular in the Mannerist gardens of the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: depicting deformed or monstrous subjects with great refinement reacted to idyllic Renaissance-style idealism, rediscovering the sense of fantasy, caricature and satire.
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