Mascaron Or Fountain Mask

made of terracotta, depicting the face of Poseidon (in ancient Greece) or Neptune (in the Roman world), crowned with reeds, with a stern gaze directed to the right.
A Louis XIV-style piece in the classical French tradition, modeled after an antique architectural fountain ornament, grotto, or outdoor decoration.
Height: 38.5 cm / Width: 24.5 cm / Depth: 10 cm
(a small section of a chip on a leaf has been repaired)

In antiquity, Neptune, god of the seas, also “rules” over all the earth’s springs and waterways *. 
Depicted in various ways depending on the region and era, ornamental artists and sculptors created realistic, character-driven, fantastical, or strange faces—composed, adorned, and crowned with various marine attributes.
They exist in bronze, lead, marble, stone… and terracotta, designed to adorn the outlet of the water conduit from the basin they overlook.
Initiated by Louis XIII, the 17th and 18th centuries saw a proliferation of fountains—both public and private—following the example set by Louis XIV at Versailles.
Often indispensable to the ornamentation of these structures, these representations transport our minds to the thresholds or mysteries of mythology, to tales of the struggles and enduring influences of the gods…

* There are, of course, other gods of the seas and rivers depending on the civilization: the West, the Mediterranean basin…