The Bassin de Latone sits at the top of the garden's main axis, at the foot of the great terrace, and was one of the first fountains to be completed, in the 1670s. The central sculptural group, by the Marsy brothers, shows Latona (mother of Apollo and Diana) surrounded by Lycian peasants in various stages of transformation into frogs and lizards — bodies half human, half amphibian, mouths open in mid-croaking.
When the fountains run, jets of water spray from the half-transformed figures upward toward the goddess, and from the surrounding basins outward in a low, flat spray. The effect is chaotic and a little grotesque — deliberately so. The myth was a favourite of Louis XIV precisely because of its subtext about royal revenge.
The fountain marks the point where the formal parterres give way to the longer garden perspective, and from here you can look both up toward the palace and down the long allée past the Apollo fountain to the distant glitter of the Grand Canal. It is the best single viewpoint in the gardens.