Garden Fountain

early 17th century
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 463
Some of the forms on this fountain, such as its hourglass shape and the lion mask (kirttimukha) on its spout, can be traced to Hindu sources, but their combination with a strong architectural profile and articulated ribs places its production at one of the Muslim courts of the Deccan. The fountain was formed from seven separately cast parts soldered together in a fashion reminiscent of contemporary cannon construction. Water would have been forced up through the pipe that projects from the base of the fountain, and would have trickled down the outside from the circular well at the top.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Garden Fountain
  • Date: early 17th century
  • Geography: Made in India, Deccan
  • Medium: Brass; cast in sections, joined and engraved
  • Dimensions: H. 38 7/16 in. (97.7 cm)
    W. 26 5/8 in. (67.6 cm)
    L. 36 11/16 in. (93.2 cm)
    Wt. 223 lbs. (101.2 cm)
  • Classification: Metal
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997
  • Object Number: 1997.150
  • Curatorial Department: Islamic Art

Audio

Cover Image for 6735. Garden Fountain

6735. Garden Fountain

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MARIKA SARDAR: This fountain comes from a garden in India, so it probably would've stood in the middle of a large pool and the spout you see at the bottom is actually where the water would've been fed into the fountain. Picture the water trickling down from the ring at the top rather than spouting up from it. …Metal work from the Deccan region of India is particularly distinctive because it combines ribbed forms and fantastic animal elements and just has a very strong architectural presence… We have a lot of palace architecture from the Deccan but one thing that we don't really have preserved are the gardens of the period that really were just as important a part of courtly life as the buildings themselves… We don't know so much in the Deccan what form they took, but there's a lot of poetry about gardens and the different types of plants and the scents and how this all played into the experience of the gardens.

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