Name Carlo Marochetti | Role Sculptor | |
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Died December 26, 1867, Passy, Paris, France | ||
Baron Carlo (Charles) Marochetti RA (4 January 1805 – 29 December 1867) was an Italian-born French sculptor.
Life
Carlo Marochetti was born in Turin but brought up in Paris as a French citizen. His first teachers were François Joseph Bosio and Antoine-Jean Gros in Paris. There his statue of A Young Girl playing with a Dog won a medal in 1829, and his Fallen Angel was exhibited in 1831. Between 1822 and 1830 he studied chiefly in Rome. From 1832 to 1848 he lived in France.
In Paris, he made a panel representing the Battle of Jemappes for the Arc de Triomphe, the altar in the Church of the Madeleine and the tomb of Vincenzo Bellini in Père Lachaise Cemetery. While living in Paris, he also created the equestrian monument of Emmanuel Philibert which stands in a central piazza in Turin.
He followed the French king Louis-Philippe into exile in the United Kingdom after the fall of the July monarchy in 1848.
He spent the greater part of his time from then until his death in London. He lived in Onslow Square, and had a large studio, and his own foundry, nearby in Sydney Mews. Among his chief works were statues of Queen Victoria, Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde (erected 1867 in Waterloo Place), and King Richard the Lionheart. The Richard Coeur de Lion (statue) was displayed in the Great Exhibition, and a bronze copy was made in 1860 to be displayed in front of the Palace of Westminster, where it has remained ever since.
His statue of Robert Stephenson (installed 1871) still stands in the forecourt of Euston Station. He made a bust of William Makepeace Thackeray for Westminster Abbey. He also created the marble recumbent effigies for the tomb of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore in Windsor Great Park and the statue on the Duke of Wellington Commemorative Column outside Stratfield Saye House.
From 1864 he collaborated with Sir Edwin Landseer on the four bronze lions to be placed around the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, and cast them at his foundry.
As a favourite sculptor of Queen Victoria, he was commissioned to make the seated figure of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. However the first version was rejected by the architect of the monument, Sir George Gilbert Scott, and Marochetti died before a satisfactory second version could be completed. He designed Queen Victoria's memorial to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom (d. 1840) and a bust of Prince Albert at Newport Minster on the Isle of Wight.
Marochetti was created a baron by the King of Sardinia and was also a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy 1861 and a full academician in 1866.