Qualla: Richard Coeur de Lion Statue

Richard Coeur de Lion Statue: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mattbuck (talk · contribs), CC BY-SA 4.0. On the day after Carlo Marochetti first unveiled his giant clay statue at the Great Exhibition in 1851, the horse's tail fell off. It would not be the last indignity. Forty years on, when someone bothered to investigate properly, the bronze that had eventually replaced the clay turned out to be riddled with holes - and never properly bolted to its pedestal. Then in the Blitz, a Luftwaffe bomb landed a few metres away and bent the king's raised sword. Yet Richard the Lionheart still sits his horse in Old Palace Yard, sword in the air, looking permanently as though he is about to charge at the entrance to the House of Lords. He is the most travelled, most damaged, and most argued-over statue on the parliamentary estate.

Image: Mattbuck (talk · contribs) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Coeur de Lion Statue: The Italian Outsider

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jitze Couperus from Los Altos Hills, California, USA, CC BY 2.0. Carlo Marochetti was born in Turin, ennobled by the Kingdom of Sardinia, and built his career in Paris during the July Monarchy of the 1830s. By the time he met Queen Victoria in 1849, he had a reputation for grand equestrian statues - including a much-praised Duke of Wellington ...

Image: Jitze Couperus from Los Altos Hills, California, USA | CC BY 2.0

Richard Coeur de Lion Statue: From Clay to Bronze

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roland Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. The original 1851 statue was clay, placed outside the west entrance to the Crystal Palace, and it was popular enough that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert headed the subscription list to have it cast in bronze. The cast was completed in 1856. Then the arguments started. A memoria...

Image: Roland Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Richard Coeur de Lion Statue: The Bent Sword

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0. A few months after installation, in 1861, the statue was reported to be swaying in strong winds. Marochetti pronounced it sound. He promised to strengthen the legs if necessary. Then in the Second World War, a German bomb dropped during the Blitz exploded close enough to pepper t...

Image: Diego Delso | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Coeur de Lion Statue: Ghiberti at the Plinth

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Misterzee, CC BY 3.0. The two bas-reliefs on the pedestal are the better part of the work. On one side, the army of crusaders taking the coastal city of Ascalon - figures pressed forward in stone, ladders against walls, the kind of compressed Renaissance crowd Marochetti had studied in Florence. On th...

Image: Misterzee | CC BY 3.0

Richard Coeur de Lion Statue: What He Stands For Now

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. Marochetti always insisted that his figure was inspired by Richard I rather than accurate to the twelfth century. The crowned helmet, the chainmail and surcoat, the rearing horse - these are nineteenth-century romance, not medieval reality. Richard the Lionheart was a king who ba...

Image: User:Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0