Fontana del Nettuno (detail)

The sixteenth-century public fountains in Italy were not constructed in Florence but in other towns, above all at Messina, and the Messina fountains served as a stimulus for the fountain in Florence, not surprisingly because their sculptor was a Florentine, Montorsoli.

Montorsoli’s second outstanding work in Messina, after the Fountain of Orion (1550-50) is the marble Fountain of Neptune (1553-57) at the harbour. This consists of a colossal statue of Neptune on a high socle above a basin from which rise the fettered Scylla and Charybdis, the sea monsters of the Straits of Messina.