Latona Fountain

Start with the pale figures at the top, a mother with her two children. Latona was the mother of the gods Apollo and Diana. In the story told by the Roman poet Ovid, she appealed to Jupiter after peasants in Lycia insulted her. Around the basin, their transformation into frogs and lizards is caught partway through. The sculptors Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy made the original central group. A copy now occupies the top of the fountain, while the original is protected under cover. The fountain’s arrangement changed in the 1680s when the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart placed it above a stepped marble base and turned it towards the Grand Canal. Water jets add another layer when the fountain is running, but the figures and their changing bodies can be read around the basin when the sculptures are uncovered.