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Updated: June 12, 2025
In the large basin in the center of the Court of Abundance is Robert Aitken's "Fountain of Earth." While plainly out of keeping with the spirit of the court, this is in itself one of the most powerful and most interesting sculptural compositions at the Exposition. It is deeply intellectual, and more than any other group it requires an explanation of the symbolism before one can appreciate it.
The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating arms in temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of employing them as the subjects of sculptural ornament: thenceforward, this abuse has been chiefly characteristic of classical architecture, whether true or Renaissance.
Perhaps it is better, though, to take a first view of the sculptural decoration at the entrance at either the north or the south end, where almost everything is shown that appears in the more complicated main vestibule. The three clerestory windows make three arches with four piers.
Even the exterior of this handsome building, erected in the style of the Italian renaissance after the design of Miss Sophia G. Hayden of Boston with its exquisite sculptural decorations executed by Miss Alice Rideout of St. Francisco bore testimony to the fact, that women are entitled to enter into competition with their male colleagues.
One of the most pleasing features of Rome is its numerous beautiful fountains, generally to be found in the piazzas, sometimes surrounded by fine architectural and sculptural groupings. It seems as if the great men of every age in this city "have found no better way of immortalizing their memories than by the shifting, indestructible, ever-new, ever-changing upgush and downfall of water.
And I, I feel myself diminished, cut back, returned through the cycles of time to the little that I am. Up there, borne by the flag-draped rostrum, a man is speaking. He lifts a sculptural head aloft, whose hair is white as marble. At my distance I can hardly hear him. But the wind carries me some phrases, louder shouted, of his peroration.
The great charm of this finest of all the towers in the Exposition is its wonderful rhythmic feeling. The graceful flow of line from the base toward the top is never interrupted, in spite of the many sculptural adornments used on all sides. In front of the tower are two very ornate illuminating shafts, showing Leo Lentelli's diabolical cleverness in making ornament out of human figures.
I was even more struck by the skill and ingenuity of the French in arranging these sculptural remains, than by the value of the sculptures themselves.
Coysevox is chiefly Puget exaggerated, and his pupil, Coustou, who comes down to nearly the middle of the eighteenth century, contributed nothing to French sculptural tradition. But Clodion is a distinct break. He is as different from Coysevox and Coustou as Watteau is from Lebrun. He is the essence of what we mean by Louis Quinze. His work is clever beyond characterization.
While the mundane splendour of Venice gave body and fulness to Sansovino's paganism, he missed the self-restraint and purity of taste peculiar to the studious shades of Florence. In his style, both architectural and sculptural, the neo-pagan sensuality of Italy expanded all its bloom. For the artist at this period a Greek myth and a Christian legend were all one.
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