There are some strange choices but brilliant statues in the palace of Westminster, the home of the Parliament. Strange because one of them is Oliver Cromwell, a man who dissolved Parliament when he didn’t agree with it and replaced it with a military dictatorship led by himself and the other is Richard the Lionheart, a King who spent most of his time abroad fighting crusades or being held to ransom in Germany. Whatever the facts their statues are both wonderful examples of Bronze work and the story behind Richard Coeur de Lion. Richard is on Horseback and it’s a fine example of a Bronze Horse sculpture that is continued in fine form by the work of for some excellent examples of the art. Let’s have a look at the tale of this statue and its travels to get to the Palace.
Originally the statue was not cast in Bronze. It was made in the more traditional terracotta clay for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was sculptured by the grandly titled Baron Carlo Marochetti a sculptor from Italy. The good Baron was well in with the European nobility and he was very popular getting lots of commissions to do work for them. He wasn’t so popular with the critics who were a bit sniffy about his reproductions in terms of their artistic merit but as they didn’t have the money he wasn’t too bothered. Richard Coeur de Lion was a big hit with the visitors to the Great Exhibition and two of its biggest fans were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This was good news for the Baron because as they were the head of the realm and very rich they could certainly further his career. And so, it turned out to be as 2 years later it was decided that a Bronze version was to be made thanks in part to the Queen and the Prince stumping up some cash for it to happen.
When it was finished in 1856 there was then a bit of a kerfuffle about where it was going to go. It wasn’t supposed to be in the Palace of Westminster. The plan was to put it back where it had sat for the Great exhibition as a memorial to the special event. There were several dissenters to this so the other option was to put it outside the newly built Palace of Westminster. Marochetti really wanted it to be in the Palace and eventually he got his wish.
It wasn’t the best work ever done. It lost its tail the day after it was put in to the site and it degraded quickly showing that the bronze used was not of the best quality. To top it all the entire statue wasn’t attached properly to its pedestal, so it could have been knocked over at any point. Its good a job it was fixed later as a German Bomb almost did for it. It ended up covered in shrapnel, bending the sword in the process. In a strange irony the tail fell off again.