Cleaned Triton

The fountain in the forecourt of the Radcliffe Infirmary is of Triton, a mythological Greek god, the messenger of the sea. He is the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, god and goddess of the sea respectively, and is herald for his father. He is usually represented as a merman, having the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, "sea-hued", according to Ovid. "his shoulders barnacled with sea-shells". Triton's special attribute was a twisted conch shell, on which he blew like a trumpet to calm or raise the waves. Its sound was such a cacophony, that when loudly blown, it put the giants to flight, who imagined it to be the roar of a dark wild beast

The story of the Argonauts places Triton's home on the coast of Libya. When the Argo was driven ashore in the Gulf of Syrtes Minor, the crew carried the vessel to the "Tritonian Lake", Lake Tritonis, whence Triton, the local deity euhemeristically rationalized by Diodorus Siculus as "then ruler over Libya", welcomed them with a guest-gift of a clod of earth and guided them through the lake's marshy outlet back to the Mediterranean. When the Argonauts were lost in the desert, he guided them to find the passage from the river back to the sea.

But this Triton's home is outside one of Oxford's old hospitals, quite near the city centre (and within a stone's throw of where we used to live). He has been restored nicely, very recently. Compare the clean version in my picture with the old, dirty Triton, who was nevertheless in full flow. Here, you may find more of the story in the Oxford Mail. The original statue was made by Victorian sculptor John Bell, and was a copy of the 17th century Fontana del Tritone in the Piazza Barberini in Rome.

To set this photograph in the context of its location, you can see in the background the Towe rof the Winds, part of the Radcliffe Observatory that I have shown in some recent Blipfoto offerings.