The Albert Memorial: The Prince Consort National Memorial: its History, Contexts, and Conservation

The Albert Memorial is one of the most famous British monuments, the product of a richly creative architectural period (the international Gothic Revival) and the masterpiece of a great architect, George Gilbert Scott. This lavishly illustrated book tells the history and the symbolism and gives an account of the recent restoration of this nineteenth-century monument.Leading authorities in the field discuss the public life of Prince Albert and how he was depicted; Scott’s conception of the Memorial; its design, construction, sculpture, decoration, and symbolism; the Memorial’s setting in South Kensington; its history since first being built; and the massive restoration program of the 1990s. The Memorial’s design combined structural innovation with a brilliantly inventive handling of Gothic precedents. Its building and decoration brought together architecture, fine art, applied art, and craft in a way that exemplified the creative unity the Victorians found in the Gothic tradition. Its sculptural program, more ambitious than any other monument of the century, is the culmination of the public statuary in which mid-Victorian British sculptors led Europe. In commemorating Prince Albert, the Memorial exemplified the age, its material achievements, its cultural inheritance, and its intellectual and spiritual aspirations.