The problems of meaning and use of the puer mingens motif in fountain design 1400–1700

Abstract

A small girl stands at the door to a walled garden (Figure 1). In her right hand, she holds a basket of flowers she has just picked while she holds out her left hand on which a butterfly has just alighted. She stares into the eyes of the viewer. Over her shoulder we see through an archway into the garden beyond and in the distance a fountain can clearly be made out. It is a figure of a urinating boy, standing in a large black stone basin (Figure 2). The figure is an example of a Puer Mingens, a urinating boy. There is no reason to believe that the fountain did not indeed exist in the garden in 1606 or at least that it is depicted because it was a desirable object to have in such a position at the time. While fountains became a common feature of seventeenth and early eighteenth century British gardens, those depicted in the works of Knyff and Kipp are almost universally non-figurative simple jet fountains. It appears that figurative garden fountains had fallen out of fashion in Britain by the end of the seventeenth century. On the continent they were, however, common and had been since the Renaissance. Judging by images in literature the Puer Mingens was a popular motif, but there are few surviving examples. Perhaps the most famous figurative fountain in this form, still operating today is the Manneken Pis in Brussels.