Victoria Memorial, London

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This article is about the Victoria Memorial in London. For the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, India, see Victoria Memorial (India).

Victoria Memorial

The Victoria Memorial is a sculpture in London, placed at the centre of Queen's Gardens in front of Buckingham Palace and dedicated to Queen Victoria.

The Memorial was dedicated in 1911 by George V and his first cousin, Wilhelm II of Germany, the two senior grandsons of Victoria. The sculptor was Sir Thomas Brock. It was completed with the installation of the final bronze statues in 1914.

The surround was constructed by the architect Sir Aston Webb, from 2,300 tons of white marble. It is a Grade I listed building.

It has a large statue of Queen Victoria facing north-eastwards towards The Mall. The other sides of the monument feature dark patinated bronze statues of the Angel of Justice (facing north-westwards toward Green Park), the Angel of Truth (facing south-eastwards) and Charity facing Buckingham Palace. On the pinnacle is a statue of unclear entitlement and arguably relating both to 'Peace' and to 'Victory', with two seated figures (the subsidiary figures were given by the people of New Zealand), this being a design which is evidently intended to be related to both the Greek Winged Victory and to the Russian 19th Cent. Alexander Column (the latter being itself related, after the Napoleonic wars, to other 19th Cent. monuments within France) as confirmed within the official records of her change of name upon accession to the throne, the name provided immediately below the statue being VICTORIA in one line followed by REGINA IMPERATRIX (see photograph of front of memorial within the Gallery in this article).^[1].

The whole sculpture has a nautical theme, much like the rest of the mall (Admiralty Arch etc.). This can be seen in the mermaids, mermen and a hippogriff, all of which are suggestive of the United Kingdom's naval power.

There is a similar memorial to her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort outside the Royal Albert Hall.

[edit] References

^ Since the text is evidently Latin the word 'Victoria' could also be understood, historically, as referring to the original Greek goddess Nike; for what was presumably the related intention at the time of the creation of the memorial see the document under Ref. 34 in Queen Victoria official documents prepared on the first day of her reign described her as Alexandrina Victoria, but the first name was withdrawn at her own wish and not used again and for the possible signficance of this admittedly difficult and complicated ambiguity on an historical basis in connection with current (late 2011) events at a governmental and international level including the United Nations vide the Olympic Games (the ultimate historical element remaining that of the recreation or renewal at the end of the 19th Cent. of the Games supposedly in the interest of world peace, as at present but followed at the time, unfortunately, by almost completely unique series of elements in world history in the form of the two 'world wars'). This particular 'Victoria Memorial' was it seems not completed until after the First World War and it seems that the suggested historical element can also be traced in war memorials, the name (or Latin word?) 'Victoria' having been, for instance, included in the exterior architecture of the Scottish National War Memorial but without any other explanations in the form of text and therefore without any reference to its possible relationship with either 'Nike' or this particular London memorial or both, but coinciding in the date of its opening with the date of the 'Victory Parade' in Paris (14 July) and therefore with particular connections with the Paris Arc de Triomphe, and having been opened by the Prince of Wales with, on the same date, the direct involvement in relation to the architecture of the shrine of the King and Queen, involving the presentation of the central casket with the phrase 'Their Name Liveth' for inclusion at the highest point of the 'Castle Hill', within the Shrine, as created by the architect to be added to what formerly had been a 19th Century barrack and which before that (when Scotland was presumably independent) had been a Church.