‘Quos ego’ in the Adriatic: a Neptune by Girolamo Campagna

Abstract

This article studies a remarkable statue of Neptune atop the public fountain of the municipal palace of Senigallia, a fortified town that was once part of the ancient Duchy of Urbino, on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Despite its high quality and prominence, this sculpture in Istrian stone has not yet sparked the interest of art historians. Instead, it has been confined within the field of local studies that have misinterpreted it as a Roman antiquity repurposed on a seventeenth-century basin. Using both published and unpublished documents related to the patronage of fountains and aqueducts in the Marches at the end of the Della Rovere duchy, this article places the Neptune in context. Stylistic comparisons and study of the artistic exchange between Venice and the Marches in the late Renaissance suggest an attribution of the Neptune to Girolamo Campagna. This artist is known to have worked for the Della Rovere, and in 1604 he was called ‘the best [sculptor] in Venice, if not the best available at present in Italy’ by one of Duke Francesco Maria II’s correspondents.