Library
Simplicity-Focus-Range
The book of the fountains in Rome is a simple picture book with all of the different fountains. The book covers these fountains with one picture of the fountain, spread over the whole page. At the bottom, on every page, there is a small text, naming the fountain by the full name and where it can be found in the old city of Rome. This simple and plain concept is stringent in Giovanni Battista Falda’s picture book. It is a library for inspiration and a lookup table for every architect who has to build a fountain on a big marketplace or any other public place. The variety of different fountains is mesmerizing. It is kind of a heritage for all the fountains, because not all of them survived to this day. Some can only be found in Falda’s book as an image. In terms of structure, the book is also very simple, considering that only one of the double pages has an image and the other page remains pure white. The focus of the double page is clearly on the big image, the text under the picture with the location is very small, so the viewer eyes are on the beautiful drawing of Falda without a distraction in sight. In addition to that comes a clear outline of the drawing, which is on majority of the pages the same height and width, with some exceptions for long fountains. Those examples show, that the fountains are the main attraction and every page is made for them with a maximum focus on them. The outlines on the drawings give the book more structure and it makes it easy to read or just examine part of the fountains that look interesting. Furthermore we can not only find majestic wells but also more details in his drawings. For example parks and wonderful nature in the background of his images. Most of his drawings feature also humans and animals, like people trading goods or enjoying the city of Rome. The book shows part of the culture of Rome in long gone times. This is the sideshow of Battista Falda’s drawings of fountains. The book features more than a hundred fountains, all situated in the capital city of Italy. The fascinating and tremendous part of the book is that it is so much content, even though it only considers fountains with the statues, buildings and the people around it. The range of fountains is overwhelming.