Triton, Blowing on a Trumpet Shell

Entry

This Triton, Blowing on a Trumpet Shell is one of three related sea creatures once adorning the stone basin of a large bronze fountain installed in 1620 in the forecourt of the Danish royal castle Frederiksborg. The castle and fountain were built at the behest of the Danish king Christian IV (1577-1648), who undertook this enterprise as an illustrious manifestation of his monarchical ambitions. The castle’s architectural and decorative programme centred entirely on the glorification of Christian IV and his dominion over the Baltic Sea arising from the Danes’ 1613 victory over the Swedes, bringing the so-called Kalmar War to an end. To realize his project, the king engaged a large number of foreign artists, many of whom came from the Northern and Southern Netherlands.¹⁰ Adriaen de Vries (1556-1626), the Dutch sculptor active in Prague, was appointed the task of designing the grand-scale fountain. All who approached the castle passed by this monumental sculptural ensemble, with Neptune at the fountain’s apex surrounded by a wide array of sea creatures executed in bronze: three river gods, three putti with water-spouting creatures, three naiads, three tritons and three allegorical personifications: Victoria, Fama and Mercury.

Plans for building a fountain were first drawn up in the immediate aftermath of Denmark’s victory in 1613. Christian IV considered the outcome of this two-year warfare – with the dominium maris baltici at stake – as a major personal triumph, which he commemorated in artworks such as a series of wall tapestries made by Karel van Mander in Delft. In this context, the Neptune fountain was to be seen above all as an allegory of victory, in which Christian IV glorified himself as ruler of the seas in the form of the sea god Neptune.

The first mention of Danish plans to build a fountain occurs in a letter dated 25 December 1613, written by the Augsburg patrician Philipp Hainhofer and addressed to Duke August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg. The letter conveys that Hainhofer had learned of the king’s intentions from Corbinian Saur, a goldsmith working for the Danish royal court ‘and that he is having a beautiful fountain built there, with Adriaen producing the figures and statues’.¹¹ In April 1614, Christian IV sent Nicolaus Schwabe, the royal mint-master, to find a suitable sculptor in southern Germany. A logical choice, as this region was the centre of bronze casting north of the Alps. Hainhofer’s letter indeed suggests that Adriaen de Vries was meant to make the sculptures for the fountain, but it appears Schwabe initially looked elsewhere. His first choice was in fact the German sculptor Hans Reichle. Although he had never produced a fountain on his own, Reichle had been trained in Giambologna’s studio in Florence and produced monumental bronze sculptures in Augsburg and Munich.¹² His promise to come to Denmark, however, was never fulfilled. In May 1615, the royal mint-master was therefore sent to Prague to solicit De Vries’s services in realising the fountain. This time, Schwabe was successful: in June of that same year, De Vries committed himself to the design of the fountain and the production of the accompanying bronze sculptures. Stonecutters were to build the fountain basin and the column at its centre in accordance with the sculptor’s design.¹³ The design had to have been completed not much later than the fall of 1615: the stonecutter Hans Brochmand departed for Embden (Germany) in January 1616 to begin carving the stonework, to be delivered to Denmark upon its completion in September 1618.¹⁴

When Schwabe visited De Vries a second time in October 1616, the four largest sculptures – the Neptune and the three Tritons, including the Amsterdam bronze – had already been cast and the models for the three naiads almost completed: ‘On the 16th of October in Prague, the four large sculptures are beautifully cast by Herrn Adrian de Friss [sic] and the three are almost finished […]’.¹⁵ Schwabe’s annotation corroborates the year 1617 inscribed on the Neptune, which still had to be chased and polished. The remaining bronzes were probably completed at some point in the next year, presumably explaining the third payment instalment made in 1618 for the amount of 2,000 Reichsthalers.¹⁶ The actual construction of the fountain in the castle’s forecourt, overseen by the Netherlandish-Flemish-Danish court architect Hans van Steenwinckel, was likely undertaken in 1620, followed by the installation of the water system in the two ensuing years.¹⁷ Work on the fountain is certain to have been completed by early 1623, as conveyed in Prince Christian von Anhalt’s journal entry made during a visit to Frederiksborg in March of that year: ‘[...] in the middle of the square is a beautiful fountain with 9 metal life-size sculptures, decorated, and cast in Prague, which has been paid with 10,000 Reichsthalers’.¹⁸ Contrary to the contractual agreement, De Vries was not personally present to oversee the sculptures’ installation in Denmark. By that time, the sculptor’s focus had shifted to a new important patron, Count Ernst von Holstein-Schaumburg. In the end, the fountain stood in the castle’s forecourt for less than forty years: in 1659, it was dismantled by Swedish troops. The fountain sculptures were carted off to Sweden, while the stonework remained in place until 1685.¹⁹

Precisely when the fountain sculptures were placed in the garden at Drottningholm Palace outside Stockholm remains uncertain. Their presence in the palace garden, however, can be traced back to around 1690.²⁰ It was possibly at this point that the Triton in the Rijksmuseum embarked on a journey of its own, eventually ending up at Karlberg Palace, then owned by Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (1622-1686) from 1669 on. It was De la Gardie who hired the French architect Jean de la Vallée to renovate the palace, transforming it into one of the most beautiful baroque palaces in Sweden. With all of his power and capital diminished, however, the Swedish statesman was forced to sell Karlberg Palace in 1683, at which time it entered the possession of the Swedish field marshal Count Johan Gabriel Stenbock (1640-1705). Five years later, Stenbock in turn sold Karlberg Palace to King Charles XI of Sweden, from which time the palace remained the chief residence of the Swedish royal family until 1754. In all likelihood, the Amsterdam Triton had already arrived at Karlberg (from Drottningholm?) before 1726, the year in which only two of the tritons were recorded at Drottningholm.²¹ The Amsterdam Triton was possibly again moved to a new, unknown location in 1796, at which time Karlberg Palace was converted into a military academy. Certain is that in the nineteenth century the bronze ended up at Heleneborg, a country estate on the island of Södermalm in Stockholm, owned since 1874 by Captain Johan Adolf Berg (1827-1884), a soldier, engineer and art collector. Berg’s daughter, Margaretha (Gretha), married Baron Claes Ludvig Lagerfelt (1878-1965). In 1923, the couple acquired the nearby country estate Duseborg, where a copy of the Amsterdam bronze was eventually placed that still stands today.²² In 1950, the original at Heleneborg was donated to the Swedish Nationalmuseum, which also oversees De Vries’s other fountain bronzes. In 1977, the museum presented the original Triton to the Rijksmuseum on the basis of a long-term loan.

Today, only a general idea of Neptune fountain’s original form can be devised, along with the positioning of the tritons on the stone basin. The most important source is an extensive contemporaneous description from 1646, made by the court steward Johann Adam Berg.²³ His account relates that the basin was made of polished black marble and hexagonal in form. Seated bronze tritons, alternating with personifications of Fame accompanied by a lion, adorned the basin’s projecting corners. Standing in the middle of the basin was a three-sided, marble column. Seated at each corner of the column’s base was a bronze naiad, interspersed with a bronze putto holding a bird or snake in front of each of the column’s sides. Mounted above these, standing on projections, were three smaller river gods, also cast in bronze. The column was crowned by a larger than life-size statue of Neptune.²⁴ The fountain’s overall height measured approximately 6 meters, the basin’s diameter circa 10 meters.²⁵ The entire fountain rested on a raised platform measuring several steps in height. The result is a well-balanced ensemble of fairly slender proportions. The black of the fountain’s marble and the reddish-brown and yellowish-gold patinas of the sculptures were visually predominant, and therefore in accordance with the colours found on King Christian IV’s coat of arms, likewise incorporated in the castle’s architecture.²⁶

De Vries chose to depict Neptune in a dynamic pose. In doing so, he clearly distanced himself from its most immediate precursor, Giambologna’s Neptune fountain in Bologna. Giambologna’s sea god is compositionally static and presented in a thoughtfully conceived contrapposto, whereas De Vries captures his Neptune when in full motion, presented with a single, primary view. A comparison of the two works clearly highlights the distinction between mannerist sculpture of the sixteenth century, with its formulas of elegance, balance and all-sidedness, and the drama and theatricality of early baroque sculpture. With his right arm raised – a traditional gesture for ruling figures – De Vries’s Neptune calms the seas, ensuring peace and prosperity through his dominion over the waters.

At the basin’s edge, the fountain’s two realms merge: the mythological world of Neptune and the political symbolism of Christian IV. The three Tritons sound the sea god’s praise on their shell-trumpets seated with one leg hanging over the basin’s edge, thus creating a direct connection between the fountain and its surroundings. Through their exquisite, upward-spiralling serpentinata, the Tritons – positioned at every corner of the fountain’s basin – function, as it were, as pivoting points that lead the beholder around the waterwork’s perimeter. In this aspect, De Vries had adopted an idea invented by Bartolomeo Ammannati and applied in the latter’s Neptune fountain of 1565 on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. On De Vries’s fountain, the extraordinary realism of the Tritons’ bodies inspired the following comment made in 1646 by court steward Adam Berg: ‘… their veins and sinews can not only be seen, but also understood and felt’.²⁷ This tactile quality reinforces the Tritons’ function as a coupling element between the beholder and the fountain.

As with the other sculptures from De Vries’s fountain, copies of the Tritons were cast by the Stockholm firm of Faustman & Östberg in the years 1886-1888, made to create a – fantastical, but unreliable – reconstruction of the original fountain that stood in the forecourt of Frederiksborg Castle. Three other copies made from two of the tritons ultimately found their way to destinations elsewhere: one at the Dutch embassy in Stockholm; a second, identical copy is kept at the Drents Museum in Assen (The Netherlands), in the museum’s garden since 1966; and the third, divergent cast, mentioned above, was made directly from the Amsterdam Triton and stands in front of the Duseborg country house near Stockholm. Unclear is whether these copies were also made in the years 1886-1888 or perhaps cast at some later point by another foundry.²⁸

Frits Scholten, 2025