The Lady Godiva Statue | |
52°24′29″N1°30′37″W / 52.40801°N 1.51041°W | |
Location | Coventry, United Kingdom |
---|---|
Designer | Sir William Reid Dick |
Type | Equestrian statue |
Material | Bronze and Portland stone |
Beginning date | 1936 |
Completion date | 1949 |
Opening date | 1949 |
Dedicated to | Lady Godiva and the people of Coventry |
Self Sacrifice, better known as the Lady Godiva statue is an equestrian statue of Lady Godiva in Broadgate, Coventry. The statue is bronze, on a plinth of Portland stone. [1]
The statue was initially commissioned in 1936 by William Bassett-Green, a wealthy local businessman but it was 1940 before a scale model had been produced by the sculptor, Sir William Reid Dick. [2] Reid Dick worked through the Second World War to produce a full scale model of the statue. After the war the statue was cast and placed on a plinth influenced by Sir Edwin Lutyens, before finally being unveiled by Peggy Z. Douglas on the 22nd of October 1949. [3] The statue was adorned with the flags of the United Kingdom and the United States as Mrs Douglas was the wife of the American Ambassador, Lewis Williams Douglas. The statue was initially installed facing south, but was rotated to face west in 1989 during the construction of the Cathedral Lanes Shopping Centre. [1] A canopy was erected over the statue at the same time, which was removed in 2008. [2]
The statue depicts Lady Godiva on her naked ride through the city to protest her husband’s oppressive taxes. The plinth is inscribed with passages from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Godiva along with a dedication from William Bassett-Green to Lady Godiva and the people of Coventry. [4]
Thomas Woolner was an English sculptor and poet who was one of the founder-members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was the only sculptor among the original members.
Lady Godiva, in Old English Godgifu, was a late Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who is relatively well documented as the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and a patron of various churches and monasteries.
The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics is a popular anthology of English poetry, originally selected for publication by Francis Turner Palgrave in 1861. It was considerably revised, with input from Tennyson, about three decades later. Palgrave excluded all poems by poets then still alive.
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Events from the year 1949 in art.
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Lady Godiva is a 1911 American silent historical drama film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and produced by Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn, New York. Its scenario is based on a legendary incident in the life of Godiva, Countess of Mercia, who lived in England during the mid-11th century. Allegedly, the Anglo-Saxon noblewoman rode naked—covered only by her long hair—through the streets of Coventry to protest and abolish an oppressive tax imposed on that town's residents by her husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia. The film, copies of which survive today, stars Julia Swayne Gordon in the title role with a supporting cast including Robert Maillard, Harold Wilson, and Kate Price.
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