Creation and display at the Great Exhibition (1851) Marochetti was born in Italy and was ennobled by the
Kingdom of Sardinia but lived and worked in France, creating a number of prestigious works for the
royalist French government in the 1830s. He made his name by creating equestrian statues; one, of the
Duke of Wellington, was erected in
Glasgow in 1840. Marochetti was not popular with the Victorian artistic establishment;
Punch referred to him derisively as "Count Marrowfatty", It was certainly true that he benefited from the patronage of
Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert. His courtly manners impressed Victoria on their first meeting in 1849, and soon afterwards he became involved with the Prince Consort's plans for what became
The Great Exhibition of 1851. Several countries planned to display sculptures of romantic historical figures in their contributions to the exhibition. The genre was common in mainland Europe but relatively rare in England at the time. Marochetti was probably aware that the Belgian sculptor
Eugène Simonis intended to show his statue of
Godfrey de Bouillon, the leader of the
First Crusade, which King
Leopold I of Belgium had commissioned. The two men had a number of connections; they shared the same bronze founder, Soyer of Paris, and Simonis was influenced by Marochetti's earlier acclaimed statue of the Duke of Savoy,
Emanuele Filiberto. The Italian sculptor was probably motivated by a sense of competition with the Belgian in designing his
Richard I. It came to be regarded as one of the more popular items in the exhibition and Prince Albert personally took King Leopold to see it and the statue by Simonis, which now stands in the
Grand-Place of
Brussels. 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 ..." It was said to have been particularly appreciated by London's cabbies, who tethered their horses nearby. 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. 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. The upper part of the sword was bent and the tail of the horse suffered several holes from pieces of shrapnel.
Vincent Massey, the
High Commissioner for Canada, argued that the sword should be left unrepaired, as it symbolised "the strength of democracy which will bend but not break under attack." The sword was replaced in 1947, and other repair work was also done. 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. ==See also==