Neptune and Triton (c1623). Marble. 182. Neptune and Triton is an early sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It is housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum of London and was executed c. 1622-1623. Carved from marble, it stands 182.2 cm in height. The marble sculpture group was originally commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Damascenti-Peretti Montalto in 1620, and executed March 1622 to February 1623, serving as a fountain to decorate the pond in the garden of his Villa Peretti Montalto on the Viminal Hill in Rome. The group was placed in the pre-existing oval pool, designed by Domenico Fontana in 1579-81. It was purchased by the Englishman Thomas Jenkins in 1786, from whom it was purchased later that year by the painter Joshua Reynolds. The work had been called Neptune and Glaucus following Filippo Baldinucci's biography of the artist, but appears as Nettvno, e Tritone in Domenico de' Rossi's engraving, and also later corrected to Neptune and Triton following Reynolds' notes. After Reynolds's death in 1792 it was sold to Charles Anderson-Pelham, 1st Baron Yarborough, who kept it in the garden of his home in Chelsea, London, Walpole House. His descendants moved it in 1906 to their country house, Brocklesby Park, Lincolnshire. It was bought from the family by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1950, although it had appeared at an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1938. The scene is thought to be making loose allusions to Neptune and Triton aiding Trojan ships as described, by Virgil, or Ovid or both, together with additional material. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Neptune bids Triton to blow his shell to calm the waves, In Virgil's Aeneid, Neptune calms the waves and afterwards, the nereid Cymothoe and Triton dislodge Aeneas's ships, helped in the effort by Neptune using the trident. But neither passages precisely match and the artist must have patched together a version using other sources. The composition of Bernini's Neptune and Triton consists of Neptune standing astride over Triton; Triton lies in sort of a crouching position; the two figures mounted on a large half-shell, which serves as socle. Neptune aims his trident sea-wards, while Triton is blowing his conch. The conch was designed to spurt out gushing water, in order that the sculpture could serve as a fountain. The posture of Neptune's stance, the filling-in of the reverse-V-shaped negative space by another figure, were radical departures from for Bernini, as it was his first work in which the silhouette is broken, and his achievement of full Baroque freedom, in the words of Rudolf Wittkower. However, Wittkower also qualified that Bernini was yet to attain the dynamism in his subsequent works. The Neptune and Triton is Bernini's Neptune is represented as a mature bearded, muscular figure of male authority, twisting his torso as he is about to thrust his trident in downward motion towards water. Neptune sports a cloak, but is otherwise naked. His touseled hair and beard, suggests the storminess in this scene. Wittkower who subscribed to the view this was a reenactment of Virgil, was satisfied that this gesture was Neptune, with an angry look towards the water, calming the waves with his trident. John Pope-Hennessy pointed out the defect that Bernini did not include the nereid if he was reenacting Virgil's passage, and suggested a quote from Ovid as basis; it was then counter-argued that this Ovid passage too was defective in failing to mention the trident explicitly. Collier pointed out it was peculiar that Neptune should wear a wrathful expression calming the sea, and suggested a different passage from Ovid where Neptune was in wrath, but this too was flawed as it did not mention Trident. Collier also remarked that if Virgil was the source, Neptune might not have been waving the trident at the sea, but rather using the instrument to dislodge the ships from the rocks, as stated in the poem. But since Bernini's work failed to hint at any presence of ships, this proposition seemed untenable to him. As a side-note, it has also been noticed that ends of Neptune's drapery are made to look like a dolphin's head. It has been suggested this pays homage to the classical writing by Ovid, at a different passage that mentions the Neptune and dolphins, as well as to the general Ovidian theme of transformations in the Metamorphosis and other works. Barrow on the other hand perceived light-heartedness in the artistic touch here, which was evocative of the spirit of Hellenistic Rococo. Triton, Neptune's son, is positioned below Neptune's legs, thrusting himself forward to blow the conch shell. He is noticeably younger, maybe a teenage boy, though also with defined musculature.