Buza Péter: Spring and Fountains - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

Rézi Fischer, who moved domicile twice, has been observing Kristóf

TÉR AND ITS ENVIRONS FOR A FEW YEARS

and dolphins with a banderole over them. One of the two female figures supports a pitcher on her head and holds another in her hand, while the other, down on one knee, is filling her jug with water.

Are these stone women Naiads or Nereids? Both versions betray a lack of familiarity with classical mythology: the two figures are indisputably Danaids, i.e. women condemned to futilely carrying water in bottomless pitchers forever because they had murdered their husbands. Guide books published in recent times refer to these ladies as Nereids and their fountain the Nereids’ Well, while it was called the Well of Naiads when it was first built. There is no great difference between the two appellations: the latter is a synonym for water nymphs, whereas the former is the name of the sea god’s daughters, helpers of navigators, in classical Greek mythology. Contemporary citizens cherished these figures as flesh-and-blood girls; the decidedly mediocre artist earned his popularity with an unsophisticated public precisely through his apparent inability to

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