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Title:
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Prince Albert
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Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
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This bust was commissioned by the Queen for presentation to the Hôtel de Ville at Paris, in 1856, the year after the royal couple had visited the city to attend the International Exhibition there. During this visit they had been entertained at a ball in the Hôtel de Ville, and the Prince is represented in the full dress uniform he had worn at the ball. Some small alterations were made to this bust, which, along with a companion bust of the Queen was completed and ready for despatch on 4th Dec. 1856. Apart from the costume, the bust of Albert replicates the one which Marochetti had created between 1848 and 1849.
In a letter of 27 December 1856 (The National Archives, FO 519/238), Colonel Phipps, Keeper of the Queen's Privy Purse, wrote to Lord Cowley, the British Ambassador in Paris, to tell him that the Queen has commanded him to forward the bust of Prince Albert and herself to him, "and to request that you will be good enough to take the necessary steps for their presentation to the Prefect of the Seine". he went on, "Baron Marochetti, who has executed them, goes to Paris today, and would be very happy., should it be desired, to superintend their unpacking, and being placed in their destined situations."
The busts of the Queen and Prince Albert, later joined by a bust of Victor Emmanuel, also by Marochetti, were placed in the "première des salles des délibérations" in the Hôtel de Ville, where they formed part of a series of busts of sovereigns and princes of royal families who had paid visits to the building. These busts might have shared the fate of the building, destroyed during the shelling of Paris from Versailles in 1871. They had however been removed to a storage place for works of art by the authorities of the Commune, and so were saved from destruction. Today both the bust of Prince Albert and that of Victor Emmanuel are stored in the Dépôt des Oeuvres d'Art de la Ville de Paris, at Ivry-sur-Seine. The bust of Queen Victoria is kept in the office of the secretary of the Commission du Vieux Paris.
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Material(s): |
Marble
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Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
- |
Technique: |
Carved |
Genre: |
Portrait Bust
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Location: |
Ivry-sur-Seine, Dépot des Oeuvres d'Art de la Ville de Paris, , ,
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Colours: |
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Year: |
1856 |
Height: |
0.76 metres |
Width: |
0.55 metres |
Depth: |
0.32 metres |
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Key: |
2160 |
Acc. No.: |
2160 |
Col. No.: |
2160 |
Number of views: |
3451 |
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