These figures are of boys in the most beautiful period of adolescence, their sinuous bodies lean against the swelling stem of the cup, one slender leg of each figure pushed backward so that the foot rests on the toes, preserving the balance, while the other leg, lifted high and bent at the knee, presses its foot upon the head of a bronze dolphin. The torsos lean toward each other in couples, each supporting itself on its elbow so that the right shoulder of the one and the left shoulder of the other come rather close together. The hands of these supporting arms grasp the tails of the dolphins, while the other arms, raised high above the head, push upward with open palms and outspread fingers four bronze tortoises which clamber over the rim of the cup in haste to plunge into the water. Projecting from the under surface of the rim are carved in marble heads of cherubs, so placed that the water which they spout falls in a steady stream between the figures of the boys and is received into the lowest basin. The composition of these figures of boys and water-creatures is quite lovely; and the water, rising in a central jet from the drinking-cup, gushing from the mouths of the dolphins and slipping in slender runnels from the cunningly curved lips of the huge shells enhances, as it should, the joyous naturalness of the entire conception. [Illustration: Fountain of the Tartarughe.] The popular appreciation of the beauty of the Tartarughe is shown by the wide-spread impression that it was designed by Raphael. It is painful to give up that belief, and in the face of facts which prove the hopelessness of such a contention the enthusiastic admirer can only assert that had Raphael designed a fountain this is the fountain he would have designed. There is assuredly some excuse for this assertion. Raphael depicted often, and with peculiar tenderness, the gracious figures of youths. There is, also, a whimsicality in this conceit, a certain sympathy seems to unite the boys with the water-creatures; it is as if they were all joining in the sport of their own free will, and might at any moment break away from each other only to reunite in some fresh prank in splashing water under happy skies. All this is highly reminiscent of the art of Raphael. By virtue of it the Tartarughe belongs not to the end of the sixteenth century but to that great period of the High Renaissance when “for Leo X Raphael filled rooms, galleries, and chapels with the ideal forms of human beauty and the pure expression of existence.”