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The Latona Fountain in the Gardens of Versailles
Photos by Charles Reeza, October 2021
The fountain illustrates a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Latona, mother of Apollo and Diana and mistress of Jupiter, was forced to wander the earth due to the jealousy of her rival Juno. One day, after arriving at the border of Lycia in present-day Turkey, she approached a pool in a marsh to drink the water. Local peasants prevented her and her children from quenching their thirst. In her fury, she transformed them into frogs. The sculptures on the fountain were executed by the Marsy brothers, Gaspard and Balthazar, from 1669 to 1670.
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