Prince Albert. Baron Carlo Marochetti (1805-1867). Parian war copy, 1862, of the original marble bust of 1849; made at Stoke-on-Trent, and shown by Minton at the London International Exhibition of 1862 (see "Prince Albert"). Now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, museum number: 7888-1862, in the British Galleries, Room 123, case 1.
Parian ware or statuary porcelain was developed in the 1840s, either by Minton or Copeland (both claimed to have discovered it), and named after the Greek island of Paros. It was very popular because it kept its colour well, and was less delicate and more affordable than bone china. As Benedict Read says, "the whole industry of this kind of replication "was clearly geared to a market which could not afford or could not fit in to domestic premises of limited-scale original works by the sculptors" (65). Minton showed this, and its companion portrait of the Queen, at the London International Exhibition of 1862, just as Marochetti had shown the original at the Royal Academy in 1851.
Bibliography
"Baron Carlo Marochetti (1805-67): Prince Albert 1849." . Web. 22 April 2020.
"Prince Albert." Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 22 April 2020.
Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press (for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art). 1982.
Created 22 April 2020