Those of you who know me know of my passion for fountain grotesques and mascarons, which I see as contemporary genii locorum (“spirits of the place”). When we look into their stony, goblinesque eyes, we are — if only for a moment — drawn upwards into the world of imagination. New thoughts then rush into our mind like gusts of mountain air. The Ancient Romans rightly called this time of inspiration afflatus.
The fountain sculpture above, which is located in the village of Ponteix, shows a diminutive and wyvern-shaped spirit coiled around the cross of Christ. The body is gaunt but the face is plump and bearded, like classical depictions of Socrates or Silenus. It’s clearly the visage of a faun. And just beneath our Serpent-Tailed Water Faun (as I’ll call him), there are what appear to be relief carvings of ivy leaves, symbols not just of eternity, but also of Dionysus, a Greek god who had dominion over the strange mysteries of nature and the human soul.
All in all a very interesting sculpture, which, despite its 19th-century provenance, conjures up mythic symbols that date back to the earliest days of civilisation.
