Bust of Queen Victoria

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The youthful Queen Victoria is shown here as an idealized figure, in contrast with other, more lifelike portraits of her. She is dressed in a version of classical robes and wears a wreath of roses in place of the laurel wreath of a Roman hero or emperor. Queen Victoria is associated with Britain's great age of industrial expansion, economic progress, and predominantly, empire. At her death, it was said that Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.  In the early part of her reign, she was influenced by two men: her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and then her husband, Prince Albert, whom she married in 1840. Both men taught her much about how to be a ruler in a 'constitutional monarchy' in which the monarch had very few powers but could use much influence. Carved in London by Johann Jacob Flatters (born in Krefeld, Germany, 1786, died in Paris, 1845)