26 Facts About Carlo Marochetti

Baron Pietro Carlo Giovanni Battista Marochetti was an Italian-born French sculptor who worked in France, Italy and Britain.

Carlo Marochetti completed many public sculptures, often in a neo-classical style, plus reliefs, memorials and large equestrian monuments in bronze and marble.

In 1848, Marochetti settled in England, where he received commissions from Queen Victoria.

Carlo Marochetti received great recognition during his lifetime, being made a baron in Italy and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government.

Carlo Marochetti was born in Turin, where his father, Vincenzo, a former priest, was a local government official and professor of eloquence at Turin University, but after the family moved to Paris, Carlo was brought up as a French citizen.

Carlo Marochetti studied at the Lycee Napoleon and then studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where his teachers were Francois Joseph Bosio and Antoine-Jean Gros.

Between 1822 and 1830 Carlo Marochetti frequently spent long periods in Rome where his mother was resident and where he collaborated with Francois-Joseph Duret and Antoine Etex and worked briefly at the studio of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

From 1832 to 1848 Carlo Marochetti lived in Paris and largely adopted a neo-classical Romantic style of sculpture.

Carlo Marochetti married Camille de Maussion in 1835 and together they had two sons and a daughter.

Carlo Marochetti delayed completing the altar group to create a monumental equestrian statue of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy which he donated to the city of Turin.

When his father died, Carlo Marochetti inherited the family chateau at Vaux-sur-Seine outside of Paris and served as mayor of the town there from 1846.

Carlo Marochetti spent the greater part of his time from 1848 until his death, in London.

Carlo Marochetti lived on Onslow Square, and maintained a large studio and his own foundry in the adjacent Sydney Mews.

Carlo Marochetti experimented with the use of new materials and the creation of multi-coloured, or polychromic, sculptures.

Between 1853 and 1855 Carlo Marochetti created three life-size statues, plus busts and garden ornaments, for the Kingston Lacy country mansion in Dorset.

Works featuring mourning angels by Carlo Marochetti include the monument in St Paul's Cathedral to Viscounts William and Frederick Melbourne, the Crimean War memorial at the Haydarpasa Cemetery in Istanbul, dating from 1856 to 1858, and his Angel of the Resurrection for the Cawnpore memorial in India from 1862 to 1865.

From 1864 Carlo Marochetti collaborated with Sir Edwin Landseer on the four bronze lions to be placed at the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, and cast them at his Sydney Mews foundry.

Carlo Marochetti experimented in using coloured marble following the work of John Gibson and a coloured statuette of Queen Victoria was exhibited at a London studio but is lost.

Carlo Marochetti's proposed design for the tomb of the Duke of Wellington was rejected.

That year Queen Victoria commissioned Carlo Marochetti to produce a portrait bust of herself as a birthday gift for Prince Albert and that too was reproduced by Mintons for the retail market.

Carlo Marochetti designed Victoria's memorial to Princess Elizabeth and a bust of Prince Albert at Newport Minster on the Isle of Wight.

Carlo Marochetti created the marble recumbent effigies for the tomb of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore in Windsor Great Park.

Carlo Marochetti was commissioned to make the seated figure of 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 Carlo Marochetti died before a satisfactory second version could be completed.

Carlo Marochetti was elected an associate of the Royal Academy 1861 and a full academician in 1866.

Carlo Marochetti died, suddenly, at Passy in Paris and was buried at the Vaux-sur-Seine cemetery.