Baron Carlo Marochetti Italian, 1805-1868

Early in 1861 plans were put forward for a monumental equestrian statue of The Black Prince, destined to form a pendant to Marochetti’s famous statue of Richard the Lion Heart outside the House of Lord.  This exceptional large presentation bronze is the only known record of Marochetti’s proposal for this prestigious commission.  Complete with its original plinth, mounted with relief decorations, it is a unique scale model of the unrealised monument.  It is in itself a work of immense grandeur and was cast by the sculptor himself with great care and precision in his own foundry in Sydney Mews, London.

Baron Carlo Marochetti was one of the most flamboyant and accomplished sculptors of the mid-19^th century.  He arrived in England in 1848 with Louis-Philippe as a mature sculptor. Marochetti had already distinguished himself with one of the most impressive equestrian statues in Europe, the theatrical bronze statue of Emanuele Filiberto in Turin (1838).  Faced with considerable resentment and jealousy from elements of the English artistic and sculptural establishment, Marochetti’s royal and  aristocratic connections combined with his highly accomplished technique and original mind assured him a constant stream of high profile commissions.

The statue of The Black Prince has strong royal connections as it was certainly as a result of the energy and vision of Prince Albert that both this and the Richard the Lion Heart were conceived and erected.  Although £3,000 had been raised by subscription towards the costs of erecting The Black Prince by the summer of 1861, the death of Prince Albert in that year must have lead to the abandonment of the project.  Without the determined backing of his royal sponsor, the vocal opposition to Marochetti in the art establishment turned the tide against the project.  There was some compensation for the sculptor, however, as he immediately turned his attention to the greatest public memorial to Prince Albert, the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, but himself died in 1867 before completing the central portrait figure.

In The Black Prince Marochetti paid greater attention to the accuracy of the costume than in the anachronistic details of Richard the Lion Hart.  The armour is historically consistent with the 14^th century.  The narrative scenes on the base represent the Prince serving food to his vanquished opponent, King John of France, after the Battle of Poitiers on one side; and on the other a battle scene, either the battle of Poitiers or Crecy, depicting the Prince in the centre of the composition at the head of his troops, protecting a soldier whilst wielding a mace. The reliefs are designed with great clarity and a flattering degree of historical imagination. 

Only one other bronze cast of the equestrian group, without the base, but of smaller dimensions is known to have been made.  This is preserved in the Royal Collections, Buckingham Palace.  A variant silver cast of the same dimensions as the present bronze, but again without the base, was purchased by Lord Townsend from Aspery and used as the symbol for Anglia Television in the 1970s.  While the origins of the silver cast is not known, however, it is marked with the date 1849.  This provides a terminus ante quem for the model of The Black Prince and suggests that Marochetti was working on the original model at the same time as his Richard the Lion Heart.  With the abandonment of the project to erect the monument to The Black Prince London was deprived of what would surely have been one of its most famous historic statues.