A shiny gold prince
London’s most elaborate monument honours Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–61). Cast in bronze and gilded, the husband of Queen Victoria is enthroned in Kensington Gardens beneath a 54-metre-high Gothic canopy. Seated in a pensive pose, his head slightly turned to the left, he looks towards the South Kensington museums rather than the Royal Albert Hall opposite. One hand holds the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, in which he played a leading role. In the Crystal Palace, a huge structure made of iron and glass, this first-ever world fair presented the triumphs of Western civilisation and above all of Great Britain, the world’s leading industrial and colonial power. The profits from the Great Exhibition were used to found the institutions now known as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.
The monument, unveiled in 1876 by Queen Victoria, embodies his faith in progress. Groups of white marble figures on the plinth symbolise industry, commerce, engineering and agriculture. Beneath these stand 169 life-size relief carvings of European writers, painters, composers, architects and engineers, including a solitary woman, Nitocritis of Babylon. A magnificent gilded fence keeps visitors at a distance, but around it sculptural allegories of the four continents can be admired from close up. For all the exotic garments of the human figures, the animals steal the scene: Asia is represented by a friendly-looking elephant, America by an imposing buffalo, Africa by a camel wrinkling its nose. Europe sits on her bull, holding a sceptre as a sign of authority, next to Britannia with a trident, the symbol of sea power. During his lifetime, Albert rejected the idea of being commemorated by a monument, fearing an »artistic monstrosity«. In fact the architect, George Gilbert Scott, and the sculptors created a masterpiece.
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Address Kensington Gardens, south side, SW7 2AP | Public Transport Knightsbridge (Piccadilly Line) | Tip The Cast Court of the Victoria & Albert Museum (daily 10am–5.45pm,Fri until 10pm) is a kind of Disneyland for sculpture, a collection of plaster casts of great works, including Trajan’s Column from Rome, cathedral doors and monumental tombs.
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