Medici Fountain, Renaissance fountain in Jardin du Luxembourg, France.
The Medici Fountain stands at the end of a long basin in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Its facade, 14 metres high and 12 wide, has a central round-arched niche holding Auguste Ottin's group: the bronze cyclops Polyphemus crouching over the white marble lovers Acis and Galatea. Tuscan columns flank the arch, with a faun and a huntress in side niches, and the Medici coat of arms above.
Marie de' Medici, widow of Henri IV and regent for Louis XIII, commissioned the fountain around 1630 for her Palais des Medicis, modelled on the Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens. Tommaso Francini built the 14-metre grotto facade. In 1862 Alphonse de Gisors moved it about thirty metres for the rue de Médicis and added a fifty-metre basin. It was restored in 2020-2021.
The fountain's name comes from Marie de' Medici, who had it built as the grotto of her Palais des Médicis. In the central niche, Auguste Ottin's 1860s group shows the bronze cyclops Polyphemus crouching over the white marble lovers Acis and Galatea. Two side niches hold a faun and a huntress, with masks of comedy and tragedy above them.
The fountain is accessible daily through the main entrances of the gardens and can be visited at any time of year. Early mornings provide the best light for viewing and photography, with fewer crowds to navigate around.
A separate sculpture called the Fountain of Léda sits at the back of the monument, relocated here in the 1860s during Haussmann's urban redesign of Paris. Few visitors notice this hidden element, which represents a different artistic period altogether.
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