Maserati Servizio Sign

Bologna, 1910

They didn't plan to end up at the fountain. After Carlo's funeral, the five surviving Maserati brothers walked through Bologna's narrow medieval streets without speaking, still wearing their blacks, not ready to go home where their mother waited, and the absence would become unbearable.

Carlo had been the firstborn, the one with magic in his fingers. While other boys played, he disassembled pocket watches to understand time. At seventeen, he built his first engine, not for profit, but to see if he could.¹ He'd race his creations through Bologna's streets, laughing when mechanics twice his age asked how he'd solved problems they couldn't. His workshop on Via de' Pepoli still smelled like his tobacco, still held tools arranged in the precise order he preferred. Tuberculosis had taken him at twenty-nine ² but his genius hadn't died - it had scattered into five brothers who now had to decide what to do with it.

Alfieri was twenty-three and already the one people listened to.³ Even in grief, even in funeral blacks, he carried himself with the confidence their railway worker father had recognized - the brother who could talk to factory owners and mechanics with equal ease, who dreamed in engines but spoke in poetry. Bindo was twenty-seven, established at Isotta Fraschini in Milan.⁴ Ettore was sixteen. Ernesto was twelve. Mario was twenty, the artist who'd rather paint than build engines.⁵

Every route in Bologna spirals toward Piazza Maggiore. The city's medieval architecture conspired to lead them there.

The late afternoon sun caught the Fontana del Nettuno at an angle that made the bronze god glow against the ochre buildings. Neptune towered eleven feet above them,⁶ his muscled torso twisted mid-command, one massive hand thrust forward to still chaos, the other gripping a trident thick as a man's wrist. The three prongs splayed wide, not decoration but dominion. His bronze beard flowed like water itself, catching light differently than the smooth perfection of his carved chest.

They sat on the red marble steps. Water trickled from the mouths of bizarre wind gods, from the breasts of voluptuous Nereids carved in impossible detail, creating a whisper against stone that had echoed in this piazza since 1565.⁷ Pigeons scattered across the square. Church bells rang from San Petronio. The sound bounced off medieval walls and filled the silence the brothers couldn't.

At Neptune's feet, chaos writhed in bronze, cherubs wrestling dolphins, sea creatures thrashing, nymphs twisted in ecstasy and anguish. But the god above remained perfectly controlled, perfectly commanding, perfectly still.

Mario looked up at the god. "Che facciamo adesso?" What do we do now?

Alfieri spoke quietly. "We stay together. We never separate. We finish what Carlo started."

The answer came not as a decision but as understanding spreading between them. The racing dreams. The workshop on Via de' Pepoli where Carlo's tools waited. The single-cylinder engines he'd been perfecting.

As they made the promise, the late afternoon light shifted. Bronze caught gold. For a moment, Neptune seemed to acknowledge them. The water's trickle changed pitch. The pigeons went silent.

The god had witnessed. Perhaps he'd joined.

Bologna has always believed its fountain holds power. Il Gigante protects the city, calms chaos, grants authority to those who earn it. The brothers would spend sixteen years earning it.

They didn't know yet that the god's emblem would become theirs.

In Neptune's Shadow

December 1, 1914. Alfieri filed the paperwork to establish Società Anonima Officine Alfieri Maserati with Ettore and Ernesto.⁸ Bologna's first socialist mayor, Francesco Zanardi, approved the license: they would store Isotta Fraschini engines "with the aim of building racing cars."⁹

But racing would wait. They needed to eat first.

The workshop on Via de' Pepoli produced what Italy needed: spark plugs.¹⁰ Not glamorous. Not fast. But essential. Alfieri understood that utility came before beauty, that you proved yourself with things people needed before you chased things they desired. He arranged tools the way Carlo had taught him, wrenches by size, always within reach.

When World War I erupted just eight months later, Alfieri and Ettore were called to military service.

Sixteen-year-old Ernesto ran the workshop alone, attending evening technical classes while fulfilling military contracts. The work mattered: Alfieri invented and patented a revolutionary mica-insulated spark plug for aviation engines.¹¹ Planes flown by poet Gabriele D'Annunzio during his August 1918 propaganda flight over Vienna carried Maserati spark plugs.¹²

They were saving lives. Making flight possible.

Every day walking to the workshop, they passed Piazza Maggiore. Passed Neptune. The fountain was simply there, woven into the city's fabric like breathing. The promise was being reinforced daily by medieval streets that all led to the same bronze god, the same red marble steps, the same eternal trickling water.

By 1926, they'd built their first true racing automobile. The Tipo 26 needed only one thing: an emblem that said We are Bologna, we are brothers, we are power made elegant.

Alfieri turned to Mario. "The Marquis suggested Bologna's fountain," he said. "See what you think."¹³

The Artist Sees What the God Holds

Mario wasn't thrilled. He'd spent years at the Brera Academy in Milan perfecting his craft¹⁴ - bronze sculpture, oil painting, understanding form. His hands were stained with burnt sienna under the thumbnails, Prussian blue along the index finger. Not machine oil like his brothers, but pigments. He carried a leather sketchbook with charcoal smudges on every page, corners dog-eared from being shoved into coat pockets.

But family was family. And the promise from Carlo's funeral sixteen years earlier still held, even for the brother who chose art.

He walked through Bologna on a spring afternoon in 1926, probably a bit annoyed, thinking about other assignments he'd rather be working on. His route took him through Piazza Maggiore because every route in Bologna eventually does.

He stopped. Looked up. Really looked.

Neptune stood exactly as he had at Carlo's funeral. The same commanding twist of torso. The same hand thrust forward, calming, in control. The same trident gripped in bronze fingers, but now Mario saw it through an artist's eyes trained by Brera masters to see negative space, to understand that what you don't draw is as important as what you do.

The Fontana del Nettuno was created in 1565 by Flemish sculptor Giambologna for Pope Pius IV.¹⁵ Il Gigante. Neptune was also worshipped as Neptunus Equester, god of horses, making the emblem doubly appropriate for machines measured in horsepower.¹⁶

But what Mario saw was this: sixteen years ago, he'd sat on those steps and asked, "Che facciamo adesso?"

The fountain had been answering all along.

Controlled power. Chaos mastered at the god's feet while he remained perfectly, eternally commanding. The three-pronged trident wasn't asking for respect. It simply held authority.

Neptune didn't just stand there. The god gave it. The trident passed from bronze fingers to charcoal-stained hands. Mario felt it - the weight, the authority, the blessing.

He didn't believe in such things, of course. He was the sensible one, an artist, a student of form and technique. But his hand moved across the page as if guided.

Mario extracted the instrument from the fountain's context and transformed it with artistic sensibility. He embellished the drawing with triple lines separating the prongs from their base, three as the symbol of perfection and harmony, and rendered it in red against blue, the colors of Bologna's civic banner.¹⁷

The trident that witnessed their promise in 1910 became theirs in 1926.

Neptune Takes the Circuit

The Tipo 26 sat in their workshop like a promise kept. Hand-hammered aluminum bodywork, each panel shaped by brothers' hands, still carried the heat of final adjustments. The smell of fresh racing red paint mixed with machine oil and new leather seat covers.

When Alfieri started the straight-eight engine, it roared with a sound that made ancient stone walls vibrate, a mechanical scream that somehow contained music. The engine block sat exposed and thick like Neptune's bronze chest. The bodywork twisted around it, muscled metal containing barely-controlled chaos beneath. Ernesto had timed the engine the way Carlo timed pocket watches, listening for rhythm, not just speed.

This wasn't a car. This was Neptune in automotive form, twisted torso of metal, power at the brink of chaos, commanding the circuit like the god commanded seas.

April 25, 1926. Alfieri drove the Tipo 26, numbered 25, at the Targa Florio in Sicily.¹⁸ Mario's trident marked the hood. The car won its 1500cc class and finished eighth overall, beating two Bugattis.¹⁹

The god's emblem, commanding Mediterranean waves for decades, now commanded racing circuits.

Victory baptized the symbol in Sicilian dust and engine heat and glory.

When the Heart Stopped

Coppa Messina, Sicily. May 8, 1927. First lap. Alfieri lost control. The Maserati hit a ditch and overturned.²⁰

Emergency surgery saved his life but damaged one kidney irreparably. He continued working for five years, racing occasionally, receiving the title Cavaliere after victory at Tripoli in 1930. The charisma never dimmed. The confidence never wavered.

Until March 3, 1932. Ospedale Maggiore in Bologna. A "poorly executed surgery" on his remaining kidney.²¹

Alfieri Maserati died at forty-four.²²

Racing legends came to Bologna: Tazio Nuvolari, Enzo Ferrari, Felice Nazzaro, Baconin Borzacchini, Giuseppe Campari.²³ The Marquis de Sterlich, who'd suggested they use Bologna's symbol. An enormous crowd filled the streets.

Four brothers stood at another funeral - fewer now, grayer now, the suits they wore cut from better fabric than they'd afforded in 1910 but feeling just as heavy. The same church. The same priest, older. The same walk through Bologna's medieval streets afterward, feet carrying them to the same piazza without discussion.

Neptune stood exactly as he had twenty-two years earlier. They sat on the same red marble steps, warm from the afternoon sun. The water trickled the same eternal whisper. The pigeons scattered. The church bells rang from San Petronio.

But there were four of them now, not five.

The workshop on Via de' Pepoli fell silent. Workers moved through the space not knowing if the company would survive, if the promise could hold without Alfieri's heart driving them forward.

And they understood: one by one, the fountain would outlast them all.

The Trident Passes

In Milan, Bindo had watched from a distance for twenty-two years.²⁴ Secure employment at Isotta Fraschini. Steady salary. Comfortable life. He'd kept the promise by staying separate, by not risking what Carlo and Alfieri had built with his own ambitions.

But the morning after Alfieri's death, Bindo's supervisor said something: "Security is comfortable. But comfortable men don't build legacies."

Bindo packed his desk on Friday. Arrived in Bologna on Monday.

He stood in front of the fountain. Neptune's outstretched hand had steadied chaos for hundreds of years. The god never looked comfortable.

The workshop on Via de' Pepoli needed a hand thrust forward, not folded safely. The trident needed someone willing to grip it. Bindo reorganized: he handled administration, Ettore managed projects, Ernesto, abandoning his own racing career, oversaw testing and engineering.²⁵

The promise held.

By 1937, financial pressures forced a decision. Journalist Corrado Filippini introduced them to Adolfo Orsi, a Modena industrialist who had risen from poverty, from a butcher's assistant, scrap metal collector, to steelworks and foundries and spark plug manufacturing.²⁶

On May 1, 1937, Orsi purchased both Officine Alfieri Maserati and Fabbrica Candele Maserati.²⁷ The spark plug business was what Orsi truly wanted. The racing cars were publicity. The three brothers signed ten-year contracts as engineering consultants.

In late 1939, operations relocated to Modena. The new plant at Viale Ciro Menotti opened January 1, 1940²⁸ - still Maserati's headquarters today.

Bologna wept to lose them. But Neptune traveled too, not in bronze, but in something older. The Romans believed gods were omnipresent. The trident appeared on every Maserati hood in Modena. Perhaps the god had simply moved workshops. Italians aren't superstitious, of course. But just in case.

During World War II, the factories produced spark plugs, batteries, machine tools. In 1947, the division was formally incorporated as Società Anonima Fabbrica Candele Accumulatori Maserati at Via Generale Paolucci 165, Modena.²⁹

That same year, thirty-seven years after Carlo's funeral, Bindo, Ettore, and Ernesto left Maserati.

Together. As they'd sworn.

They returned near Bologna and founded OSCA, producing small racing cars. An OSCA won the 1954 12 Hours of Sebring with Stirling Moss driving.³⁰

The promise was fulfilled.

Beyond the Grave

The Orsi family empire was divided in the early 1950s among siblings. Adolfo's sister, Ida Orsi, received the spark plug and battery division, and due to a notary's oversight, retained rights to both the Maserati name and Neptune's trident.³¹

Ida wore deep racing red lipstick the day she took control, not bold but precise, the kind of detail that announced confidence without shouting. She navigated Modena's cobblestones in heels that would have defeated lesser women, carrying ledgers under one arm and vision under the other. In 1950s Italy, a woman running an automotive manufacturing company was revolutionary.

Ida didn't apologize. She pivoted. Facing declining demand for electrical components, she acquired Italmoto of Bologna in 1953 and began manufacturing motorcycles under the Maserati name, eventually producing fifteen models exported worldwide.³²

By 1958, competition overwhelmed her. In 1960, production ceased. The company was liquidated.³³

But Neptune's emblem survived.

The Orsi family sold the automobile company to Citroën in 1968. Then De Tomaso in 1975. Then Fiat in 1993. Ferrari took operational control in 1997. Stellantis acquired it in 2021.³⁴

Citroën, De Tomaso, Fiat, Ferrari, Stellantis - corporations came and went like tides. But Neptune's blessing doesn't expire with contracts. The god who commanded the seas for five centuries wasn't troubled by quarterly earnings.

The remaining four Maserati brothers lived many more years passing beneath the Neptune. Bindo died at ninety-seven. Ettore at ninety-six. Mario at ninety-one. Ernesto at seventy-seven.³⁵

The six brothers are buried together at the Certosa di Bologna. The promise kept even in death.

Today's Maseratis still carry Neptune's authority. The latest supercar engine is named Nettuno.³⁶ The headquarters remains on the site Orsi opened in 1940.

What Italian Luxury Truly Means

Start with spark plugs soldiers need. Make them better than anyone else. Prove excellence through racing victories. Then elevate the entire enterprise to art by connecting it to five centuries of Renaissance identity.

That's not German precision engineering. That's not American mass production. That's Italian luxury as philosophy: the belief that what you build must serve a purpose, achieve perfection, and, perhaps most importantly, touch the soul.

The Trident witnessed the promise in 1910. It became the promise in 1926. It survived when the brothers couldn't.

In Bologna's Piazza Maggiore, Neptune still stands with hand outstretched, calming chaos, gripping his three-pronged emblem. The fountain runs every day. The water trickles from bronze cherubs and outlandish wind gods, just as it did when five brothers sat there grieving, swearing, promising.

The god watches. The authority endures.

Five brothers made a promise. A god lent them his weapon. And now, 115 years later, fragments of that promise survive in porcelain and enamel, in racing victories and supercar engines, in every collector who understands that a symbol isn't decoration - it's identity.

That's Italian luxury. That's Maserati. That's what the Trident truly means.