This remarkable collection of three separately-issued prints—all apparently contemporary to one another—offer great insight into the monumental unveiling of GianLorenzo Bernini’s iconic Fountain of the Four Rivers. Surmounted by the Pamphili obelisk and the family’s heraldic dove motif, this remarkable feat of Baroque sculpture sits at the heart of Rome’s majestic Piazza Navona, exemplifying the majesty of the papal Pamphili family. Taking as its subject matter the four great rivers of the world—Africa’s Nile, Europe’s Danube, Asia’s Ganges, and the Americas’s Río de la Plata—Bernini’s fountain represents the global reach of the Roman Catholic faith as it had begun to reach the four corners of the world, its evangelical message flowing as surely and steadily as four of the world’s mightiest rivers.

All three of these engravings were commissioned, designed, and apparently printed in the same year as the fountain’s inauguration portraying it function as a municipal monument and a major public attraction and amenity. Their respective engravers and publishers clearly wished to capitalize on the excitement that hung in the air, right up to the moment it was first fully revealed on June 12, 1651. They offer a snapshot not just of the fountain, but of the bustle of urban life amid the monumentality of the Eternal City itself.

The position and pose of each of the anthropomorphic representations of the four rivers is not merely artistic; they also reflect each continent’s unique reception of the Christian faith. On the east side, the ancient river gods of the Nile and Ganges gaze across the plaza, unfazed by the light of Christianity. On the west, the figure of the Rio de la Plata—whose ambiguous, but distinctly racialized physiognomy stands in stark contrast to his neighboring classical figures—shields his eyes from the powerful blinding light, perhaps caught in the moment of conversion. The Danube, the river cutting through the center of Europe, is neither unimpressed nor overpowered by the light of Christian faith, confidently holding up the papal arms in a posture of deference to the Pamphili dove that seconds as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

The Pamphili obelisk is so named because Innocent X commissioned the fountain upon which it rests in his family neighborhood around the Piazza Navona, where the pope’s family palace, the Palazzo Pamphili, was situated just south of the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone. The central position of the obelisk within the fountain stands as yet another symbol of Christian triumph over paganism. Following its seizure from Egypt as war booty, the obelisk was associated with the emperor Domitian, who may have had it erected either at ancient Rome’s Serapeum, or near the Temple of the Gens Flavia on the Quirinal Hill. It was later removed to the Circus of Maxentius on the Via Appia in the fourth century.

Bernini’s incorporation of the obelisk within his Baroque fountain followed a keen interest within Renaissance and Baroque Rome in reproducing and reclaiming the art and monumental legacy of classical antiquity. The gesture leaned heavily on the ideas of Athanasius Kircher, Europe’s foremost Egyptologist. It was Kircher who helped Bernini “restore” the worn and damaged hieroglyphic inscriptions along the obelisk’s sides, believing falsely that he had discovered how to decipher hieroglyphs a century-and-a-half before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the achievement of that skill by Jean-François Champollion in 1822. Kircher also helped to develop the theory, reflected in the Fountain, that all the earth’s rivers originated from reservoirs beneath mountains, a theory that he would cultivate more fully in his fascinating illustrated book Mundus Subterraneus (1678), a copy of which is held by Johns Hopkins.

These engravings were each issued separately, but printed by rivals in the Rossi print dynasty: Giovanni Battista Rossi printed Pedrignani’s engraving from his shop in the Piazza Navona, while Giovanni Giacomo Rossi printed Rouhier’s two engravings depicting the east and west facades of the fountain separately just one street to the west in the Piazza della Pace. Both sold them as souvenirs to tourists and pilgrims after the 1650 Jubilee year. Despite potential tension between the printers, the engravers may have had more direct influence on each other. It is possible that Pedrignani actually borrowed from Rouhier, as his print claims to depict the east side, but actually pictures both, suggesting that he may have added Rouhier’s engraving of the western façade. Even so, they remain unique; Rouhier illustrates the buildings in the background to situate the fountain in its position on the Piazza, while Pedrignani’s replaces the buildings with views of each side of the obelisk.