Fountain in the courtyard of Mirbach Palace

The original simple cylinder evoked a well that was lost during reconstruction of the palace. The bronze cast of the sculpture Triton and Nymph depicts Triton, son of the god Poseidon, abducting a sea nymph.

The fountain was created as part works that took place during the 1960s and 1970s to restore and adapt Mirbach Palace to meet the needs of the Bratislava City Gallery. The restoration also involved the inner courtyard, into which the authors collective (Peter Brtko, Virgil Droppa, Juraj Hlavica, Ľudovít Režucha) sited a simple fountain with a low circular stone basin that is still in place today. The basin featured a wide, austere cylinder with a spout from which a low stream of water sprayed. The shape of the cylinder was chosen deliberately – symbolically resembling the well that once stood in the courtyard. In the 1980s, this minimalist object was replaced with a bronze cast of the historic sculpture. The sculpture Triton and Nymph was created by the neo-Baroque sculptor Viktor Tilgner. The fountain sculpture, installed in place of the cylinder, is one of three castings of this design (the oldest casting is part of a fountain in Vienna's Volksgarten, another casting belongs to the SNG collections, and this casting from 1981 is held in the collections of the Bratislava City Gallery). Dating to 1875–1877, the two-metre plaster model of the sculpture belongs among the artist's early works, which expressed his immediate impressions from a study trip to Italy. In 1883, the model was showcased at an exhibition in Bratislava. Following the exhibition, the artist donated it, along with twenty other works, to his hometown. Tilgner's rendering of a mythological scene depicting the half-fish, half-human Triton carrying off a sea nymph in slightly larger-than-life size impresses with its dynamic composition and movement and is enhanced by flowing water. Positioning of the sculpture as the fountain’s central feature emphasises the importance of water in this ancient story.