Richard Coeur de Lion is a Grade II listed equestrian statue of the 12th-century English monarch Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, who reigned from 1189 to 1199. It stands on a granite pedestal in Old Palace Yard outside the Palace of Westminster in London, facing south towards the entrance to the House of Lords. It was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti, an Italian sculptor whose works were popular with European royalty and the nobility, though often less well regarded by critics and the artistic establishment. The statue was first produced in clay and displayed at The Great Exhibition in 1851, where it was located outside the west entrance to the Crystal Palace. It was well received at the time and two years later Queen Victoria and Prince Albert headed a list of illustrious subscribers to a fund that aimed to raise money for the casting of the statue in bronze. 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 Charles Barry's newly completed Palace of Westminster. Various other locations to display the statue were initially considered before agreement was reached that it would be placed in Old Palace Yard, Marochetti's preferred location. It was installed in October 1860, though it was not until March 1867 that it was finally completed with the addition of bronze bas-reliefs on either side of the pedestal. 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 Second World War when a German bomb dropped during the Blitz landed a few metres away and peppered it with shrapnel. The pedestal and the horse's tail were damaged and Richard's sword was bent by the blast. In 2009, the Parliamentary authorities undertook a project to conserve and restore the statue.
Description The statue was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti and is located in Old Palace Yard outside the Palace of Westminster, opposite Westminster Abbey in London. With its pedestal, it stands 9 metres (30 ft) high, showing King Richard I on horseback. The king is depicted wearing a crowned helmet and a chainmail shirt with a surcoat, and lifting a sword into the air. The horse paws the ground, as if preparing for a charge into battle. Marochetti described his work as being inspired by Richard I rather than accurately depicting a 12th-century knight. It stands on a granite pedestal also designed by Marochetti and made by Freeman & Co. of Penryn, Cornwall. Bas-relief panels showing Crusaders fighting the Saracens at the Battle of Ascalon and Richard on his deathbed pardoning Bertran de Gourdon, the archer who fatally shot him in 1199, were added to the east and west sides of the pedestal in 1866–67. As the statue cannot be accessed by the general public – the area around it is used as the House of Lords car park – the west-side scene showing Richard and Bertran is the only one visible from the street. According to Marochetti, the two bas-reliefs were designed in the style of Lorenzo Ghiberti's doors at the Florence Baptistry. Bronze letters on the front of the pedestal bear the inscription RICHARD I CŒUR DE LION / 1189–1199. 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.
History
Creation and display at the Great Exhibition
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. By the 1840s, however, his popularity in continental Europe was in decline. The French Revolution of 1848, which saw the final overthrow of the French monarchy, prompted him to resettle in London and seek new patrons among the British elite. Marochetti was not popular with the Victorian artistic establishment; Punch referred to him derisively as "Count Marrowfatty", while John Timbs wrote that he "owed more of his success in life to royal and noble patrons than artistic merit." 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 of 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.
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