Queen Victoria's recumbent effigy

Glass plate negative of Queen Victoria's recumbent statue (or a plaster model of it), created by Baron Carlo Marochetti (1805-67). The queen's figure is shown as if in eternal slumber, her head and shoulders resting on covered cushions. She appears to wear a long cloak and William IV's diadem, her hands crossed on her stomach holding the coronation sceptre. Her head is slightly turned towards the side, possibly designed so that she faces Prince Albert's effigy placed nearby. The photograph was probably taken in Marochetti's studio.

Within a few weeks of Prince Albert's death in 1861, Queen Victoria commissioned Marochetti, a favourite sculptor of the royal couple, to execute figures of both herself and her husband. This was in spite of the fact that she outlive the prince by some forty years.

The glass plate negative has been photographed showing the coated side and therefore the image appears laterally reversed. Prints from this negative do not seem to exist in the Collection.