Richard Coeur de Lion (statue)
| Richard Coeur de Lion | |
|---|---|
 The sculpture in 2015 | |
 | |
| Artist | Carlo Marochetti |
| Year |
|
| Type | Equestrian statue |
| Dimensions | 9 m (30 ft) |
| Location | London, SW1 United Kingdom |
Richard Coeur de Lion is a
Although the money was duly raised and the bronze cast of the statue was finally completed in 1856, a lengthy dispute delayed its installation for several years. The original idea had been to erect the statue as a memorial to the Great Exhibition. This prompted opposition, as did proposals to place it outside
The quality of the statue's workmanship caused problems during its first half-century; the horse's tail fell off the day after it was installed at the Great Exhibition, and forty years after its installation it was discovered to be riddled with holes and to have never been properly attached to its pedestal. It narrowly escaped destruction during the
Description
The statue was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti and is located in Old Palace Yard outside the Palace of Westminster, opposite
It stands on a
The great majority of the art in and around the Houses of Parliament is of British origin, due to a policy of acquiring British art for the building. Marochetti's statue thus represents one of the few examples of a non-British artist's work being selected for the Parliamentary estate.[5]
History
Creation and display at the Great Exhibition
Marochetti was born in Italy and was ennobled by the
Marochetti was not popular with the Victorian artistic establishment;
Marochetti's creation of the clay model of the statue involved not only the sculptor himself but also the painter
Casting and dispute over location
Major General Charles Richard Fox proposed during the exhibition that a bronze cast should be made of the statue to serve as a memorial to the exhibition, marking one end of the site of the Crystal Palace with a statue of Prince Albert at the other end. A campaign got underway two years later, in May 1853, with a variety of the great and the good signing a brochure promoting a scheme to erect the statue somewhere in London. Its supporters included the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Lansdowne, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the sculptor John Henry Foley, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the ceramic manufacturer William Taylor Copeland and the Conservative MP (and future Prime Minister) Benjamin Disraeli. The Times was strongly in favour of the project due to the influence of its foreign affairs reporter Henry Reeve, who had known Marochetti since as early as 1839. The Royal Family also let it be known that they were supporters, with Queen Victoria donating £200 and Prince Albert £100.[2]
The future location of the statue was a contentious issue from the outset, with Fox's proposal of a site in Hyde Park being sidelined in favour of leaving the site open for future consideration. The appropriateness of its theme in relation to the Great Exhibition was also questioned. The Art Journal pointed out the contradiction between "the effigy of a valiant crusader" and "the great Peace congress of 1851" and asked why "a foreign sculptor alone" was being selected to commemorate a British exhibition.[2] The Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Challis, was similarly critical, declaring that the statue depicted "muscular power and the almost savage ferocity of war ..., while ... the Great Exhibition afforded an example of the cordial amity of nations."[2] His criticism was perhaps not unrelated to the fact that he was promoting a rival scheme to commemorate the Exhibition. Others criticised the statue's lack of realism. As The Times observed after the statue's installation, the sculptor "sacrificed probabilities in the close fit he has given to Richard's mail shirt, which is made to display the swelling biceps and folded mass of pectoral muscle as accurately as a knitted woollen jersey."[2]
Despite the criticism, £5,000 (equivalent to £538,000 today) was raised by private donations for a bronze version to be created. Parliament subsequently agreed to contribute £1,650 for the pedestal and a further £1,500 for two bas-reliefs to be installed on its sides. In 1854 a plaster version was placed in New Palace Yard facing west outside Westminster Hall, but Charles Barry, the architect of the palace, was opposed to its placement there. The Art Journal criticised the New Palace Yard location on the grounds that the statue was merely a novelty and, worse, depicted an unworthy subject – "a disobedient son and a bad governor". It also suffered from being lost against the architectural details of the Palace of Westminster. By early May 1854, the plaster statue had been removed.[2]
In 1856, Marochetti had the statue cast in bronze at the workshop that he had established in the early 1850s in Sydney Mews, off Fulham Road. The casting and the statue's gifting to the nation in the summer of 1856 made the question of its location all the more essential to resolve.
Marochetti proposed to install it in Old Palace Yard outside the south window of Westminster Hall. His idea was considered by the Fine Arts Commission for the Palace of Westminster and was deemed acceptable, although Sir Charles Barry again opposed it. His reasoning was that Old Palace Yard was "too limited in area, and too irregular and unsymmetrical in its form and approaches, to give due effect to it, as a work of art ..."[2] For his part, Marochetti positively preferred the location's irregularity to the symmetry of a formally laid-out square. The dispute continued until 1859 when the Commissioner of Works, Lord John Manners, finally agreed to install the statue in Marochetti's favoured location. By this time Sir Charles Barry was seriously ill (and died on 12 May 1860) so was no longer in a position to offer opposition.[2]
Installation and subsequent history
Parliament voted to fund a pedestal for the statue, carved from Cornish granite, but transportation delays meant that it was not until 26 October 1860 that the statue was placed on its pedestal and unveiled to the public. It was completely undecorated at first but a bronze shield was placed on the front end of the pedestal shortly after the installation.[2] The Times (probably its pro-Marochetti reporter Henry Reeve) declared that with the installation of the statue "a great reproach had been removed from London", which now finally had a great equestrian monument which displayed a "combination of life and picturesqueness".[2] It claimed that Marochetti's Richard I ranked "with the few great statues of that class in Europe". Not all critics were as fulsome; the British critic and poet Francis Turner Palgrave castigated it as "an essentially vulgar and low-class work precisely on the grounds that call forth the wonder of uncultivated spectators."[10] It was said to have been particularly appreciated by London's cabbies, who tethered their horses nearby.[11]
Marochetti also intended to add bas-reliefs to either side of the pedestal and had provisioned it with "sunk panels" ready for the reliefs to be installed. He proposed to create four "alto relievos in the style of the Ghiberti doors on the Battisterio at Florence", depicting the coronation of Richard in Westminster Abbey, the taking of Ascalon, Richard as a prisoner of the Saracens and Richard on his deathbed. He quoted £2,500 for all four, but Parliament voted instead to grant him £1,500 for two scenes – Ascalon and the death of Richard.[2]
Marochetti accepted the commission and created plaster models of the reliefs. He installed one of the models in his château in France, where it remains today, while the other was set into the wall of a gardener's cottage adjoining his French estate. The bronze relief of the deathbed scene was added to the pedestal in August 1866, while the Taking of Ascalon was installed in March 1867. The Art Journal criticised the deathbed scene as being excessively stretched lengthways and noted similarities with a painting displayed in the Houses of Parliament, created by John Cross, that depicted the same subject.[2]
Marochetti also pursued an abortive project to install a second giant equestrian statue in Old Palace Yard, this time portraying
The statue has required repair work on several occasions to fix damage and defects. Only a few months after it was installed, it was reported to be oscillating in strong gusts of wind. Marochetti pronounced it sound but promised to strengthen the legs if necessary.[2] During the winter of 1908–09, frost damaged one of the forelegs of the horse part of the statue.[3] It was found that between 60 and 80 leaks were letting water into the interior of the statue and causing further damage when it froze. It was also discovered that the statue had never been properly attached to the pedestal but was merely resting under its own weight on the two ends of its base. Repair work took place to remedy these problems.[2]
The statue was damaged during the Second World War when a large German bomb hit Old Palace Yard on 26 September 1940, during the Blitz. The bomb exploded only a few metres away from the statue and reportedly lifted it bodily off the ground.
In the summer of 2009, the Parliamentary authorities undertook a three-week conservation project to repair and restore the statue. It consisted of removing accumulated dirt and an old coating of black wax, repatinating the bronze surface to return it to its original colour and treating it with a clear wax as protection from pollution and the elements. The bas reliefs on the pedestal were also cleaned and treated, as was the pedestal itself.[16]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Marochetti's Coeur de Lion". The Times. No. 23771. 7 November 1860. p. 7.
- ^ ISBN 9781846316623.
- ^ a b c d e f "Richard Coeur de Lion conservation work". Parliament.uk. Archived from the original on 15 June 2010. Retrieved 17 September 2011.
- ^ ISBN 9780747807988.
- ^ Hay, Malcolm; Riding, Jacqueline (1996). Art in Parliament: The Permanent Collection of the House of Commons : a Descriptive Catalogue. Palace Jarrold Publishing. p. 85.
- ^ ISBN 9780951429600.
- ^ Timbs, John (1868). Year Book of Facts in Science and Art. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Company. p. 277.
- ISBN 9780099558477.
- ^ "A resting-place for Richard Cœur de Lion". Punch. 29 August 1857. p. 91.
- ISBN 9780826423801.
- ^ a b Harrison, John (Autumn 2004). "The Prince, the Baron and the Knight: Baron Carlo Marochetti and the 'Black Prince'". The British Art Journal. 5 (2): 62–68.
- Royal Collection Trust. Inventory no. 2121.
- OCLC 1296415.
- OCLC 1555724.
- ^ Historic England. "Statue of Richard I (1225624)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
- ^ "Conservation of Richard the Lionheart's statue". Houses of Parliament. 17 August 2009. Archived from the original on 23 February 2015. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
Further reading
- "New Statue to change Iconic View of House of Lords". 3rd Dimension. Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. 25 July 2014. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
External links
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