Fontaine de Léda

Luxembourg Garden

The Fontaine de Léda, also sometimes referred to as the Fontaine du Regard, is a

Luxembourg Garden

, where it remains.

History

The Fontaine de Léda was one of fifteen new Paris fountains commissioned by

Napoleon Bonaparte in his decree of Saint Cloud on May 2, 1806. It was the project of the engineer responsible for the water supply of Paris, François-Jean Bralle, and the young sculptor Achille Valois (1785–1862). It was built against the wall of a private garden.^[1]

The fountain is composed of a bas-relief sculpture raised on a pedestal, between two pilasters with a pediment on top. An eagle, wings outspread and holding a crown of laurel, once decorated the pediment; it represented Napoleon's empire. The pilasters are decorated with sculptures of two intertwined dolphins: the one on the right around a ship's help, and the one on the left around a trident.

The bas-relief itself shows Leda and the swan surrounded by roses. In one corner, Cupid shoots an arrow from his bow. Leda holds the swan on her knees and the water flows from the beak of the swan, which is made of bronze. The water falls into a semi-elliptical basin at the foot of the fountain.

The fountain was condemned by the critic Amaury Duval in 1812 because of the subject of the bas-relief,

Jupiter transforming himself into a swan to seduce Leda. He said, "Because of the ideas it calls to the imagination, this is hardly a suitable subject for a monument placed before the eyes of the public.".^[2] Nonetheless, the fountain was popular with the public. Its major failure was a lack of abundant water. Like all of the Paris fountains built before the completion of the canals and aqueducts commanded by Napoleon, it lacked water pressure; the water could only trickle in a thin stream from the Swan's beak.^[3]

In the late 1850s, during Emperor

naiades by the sculptor Jean-Baptiste-Jules Klagmann [fr], and three bronze masquerons, or spouts in the form of masks, at the bottom. It appears that another sculptor modified the pediment of the fountain to eliminate the eagle, the symbol of Napoleon's empire.^[5]

Bibliography

Paris et ses fontaines, de la Renaissance à nos jours, texts assembled by Dominque Massounie, Pauline-Prevost-Marcilhacy and Daniel Rabreau, Délegation a l'action artistique de la Ville de Paris. From the Collection Paris et son Patrimoine, directed by Beatrice de Andia. Paris, 1995.

Notes and Sources

^ Katia Frey, L'Enterprise napoléonienne, in Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 115.
^ Katya Frey, Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 115.
^ For discussion of the water problems of Paris fountains, see Fountains in Paris.
^ The 1864 date is given by Poisson (1999), in his entry "Fontaine du Regard" on p. 209. He also mentions that the Klagmann sculptures were installed at the same time.
^ See Home Page of the French Senate, http://www.senat.fr/visite/fontaine/orientale.html, the owner of the Gardens. This site has a picture of the fountain as it looked before it was moved to the Luxembourg Gardens. Gisors and Klagmann both died before the fall of Napoleon III in 1870.

Poisson, Michel (1999). Paris Buildings and Monuments, p. 209. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
ISBN 9780810943551
.

48°50′53″N 2°20′21″E / 48.8480°N 2.3393°E / 48.8480; 2.3393

[1] Katia Frey, L'Enterprise napoléonienne, in Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 115.

[2] Katya Frey, Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 115.

[3] For discussion of the water problems of Paris fountains, see Fountains in Paris.

[4] The 1864 date is given by Poisson (1999), in his entry "Fontaine du Regard" on p. 209. He also mentions that the Klagmann sculptures were installed at the same time.

[5] See Home Page of the French Senate, http://www.senat.fr/visite/fontaine/orientale.html, the owner of the Gardens. This site has a picture of the fountain as it looked before it was moved to the Luxembourg Gardens. Gisors and Klagmann both died before the fall of Napoleon III in 1870.

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