Fountain of Monte di Pietà

A “Mount of Piety” to combat usury

Invented and spread by the friars of the mendicant orders with the aim of combating usury and granting pawn credit on favorable terms, the institution of the Monte di Pietà (Mount of Piety) charity arrived in papal Rome about a century later than in other Italian cities. Actually, the Monte (renamed Monte dei Pegni in 1935) was founded in the first half of the 16th century by the Franciscan Giovanni da Calvi and with the approval of Paul III Farnese. Nonetheless, it did find its definitive seat only 1603, when Clement VIII Aldobrandini purchased the palace in the Rione Regola that Ottaviano Mascherino had built only a few years earlier for the Santacroce family. The success of the initiative was such that work was immediately needed to enlarge the palace, which continued for over a century until the purchase, in 1759, of the adjacent Palazzo Barberini ai Giubbonari, connected to the main building by an overpass.

The eagle and the dragon of the Borghese family

The white façade of the palace overlooking the piazza of the same name (the oldest part of the complex) is dominated by the coats of arms of Paul III and Clement VIII and the image of Christ rising from the tomb, an iconography known as the Imago Pietatis. The work of Carlo Maderno, the marble aedicule is so majestic that it overshadows the small fountain below, the design of which is generally attributed to Maderno himself. Made entirely of travertine, the fountain was commissioned by Pope Paul V Borghese. It depicts the heraldic elements of the noble family of the pontiff, elected to the throne of Peter in 1605: the eagle and the dragon, which we find repeated hundreds of times in the city's palaces, fountains and villas.

A fountain with an imperfect charm

The material execution of the fountain, however, was probably entrusted to a mediocre artist and is therefore on the whole rather crude. Emerging from the valve of a heavy and massive shell walled into the façade of the building, a squat eagle with open wings rests its claw-like legs on two small plinths. The mouth of a mascaron placed immediately below pours (drinking) water into a very simple basin with rounded edges. On either side of the mascaron, the heads of two fanciful and improbable little dragons emerge from the volutes, casting thin gushes into the basin from their jaws. Although far from the perfection and beauty of other, much more monumental examples, the small fountain is not lacking in expressive vivacity and charm, also due to the originality of its composition.

Photo: Redazione Turismo Roma