"The Monument to the Indian Prince is a historical work of Florence, which also gave its name to the nearby bridge, bringing out how the city lily has always been a crossroads of peoples and thoughts.
Description
Monument to the Indian Prince consists of a domed canopy with twisted cast iron columns and in the center houses the marble bust of the young maharajah of Kolhapur. It is supported by a cubic pedestal with vegetable bands bearing the same inscription in four different languages, one for each face of the solid. The entire structure described is supported by a sculptural base decorated with serrations.
The project was conceived by the architect Charles Mant according to the Indo-Saracenic canons of oriental architecture and the bust was sculpted by Charles Francis Fuller; the sculptural canopy was worked in Fiesole and finally the cast iron part was cast in England.
Fuller's work was inspired by the prince's clothes in which he was dressed for the funeral ceremony. The bust of the young man is, in fact, dressed in a brocaded sherwani, a turban rich in reliefs and decorations and two large rows of pearls, which he wore during the funeral and which cost 50,000 francs.
Bust of the Indian prince
Bust of the Indian prince
Historic News – Criticisms
Circumstances that led to the construction of the monument to the Indian Prince
Rajaram Chuttraputti, Maharajah of Kholapur, arrived in Florence on a pleasure visit on November 25, 1870 but a sudden illness led to his death. The twenty-one year old was returning from a trip to London where he had gone to study and to greet Queen Victoria . After he died of a lung infection, the problem of the funeral ceremony arose because he had to follow the Brahminical rite. In fact, according to Indian tradition, the body of the deceased had to be cremated at the confluence of two rivers and thus the extreme point of the Cascine was chosen, where the Arno meets the Mugnone. And so it was done: the body of the elegantly dressed young man was transported by an omnibus which took him to the confluence of the two rivers where the Brahminical rite would be performed.
After the funeral rite, in 1874, the mother of the young maharajah arrived in Florence. During the official visit to organize the construction site of the mausoleum in memory of her son, commissioned by the Government of Bombay, the woman commissioned the English sculptor Charles Francis Fuller to sculpt the marble bust to be erected inside the monument, right on the place where it had been built the funeral pyre.
Monument project
On 22 November 1872 the project was completed which led to the birth of the panoramic square on which the funeral monument for the prince would be founded. On February 4, 1873 "Captain Carlo Mant is charged by the Government of Bombey [...] to erect a monument to his Highness the Prince Raja of Kolapore at the end of the Farmhouses where the cremation of the aforementioned took place".
Sculptor Charles Francis Fuller and the making of the bust of the Indian Prince
CHARLES FRANCIS FULLER
Charles Francis Fuller resigned from the British army in 1853 to go to Florence and study with the American sculptor Hiram Powers , becoming his only pupil, as Fuller himself reported in a letter dated Friday 22 May 1856. Here the sculptor he managed to enter the circle of young English artists present in the Florentine area, and thanks to this, he managed to receive this important international commission. For the realization of the sculptural bust Fuller collaborated with the architect and designer Charles Mant who directed the works and designed the entire architectural structure.
END OF THE MONUMENT
On 22 June 1874 the monument was built “The Mayor and the Council allocate the sum of three hundred and twenty-three cent lire. 34 planned [...] for the construction of a wooden gate around the mastaba of the sidewalk and the monument to the Indian Prince".
Following the long and complex ceremony that attracted the attention of the Florentine population, the Honorable Mayor Ubaldino Peruzzi commissioned the construction of a guardhouse to prevent the work of the ferrymen.
Front detail of the Monument to Indian Prince Maharaja Rajaram Chuttraputti of Kolhapur
Monument to Indian prince, Maharaja Rajaram Chuttraputti of Kolhapur
State of conservation and restoration of the funeral monument
The monument, already finished on June 22, 1874, soon began to present the conservation problems typical of outdoor sculptural groups. The disintegration caused by atmospheric agents, in fact, led to the loss of readability of the elements of the bust and gaps in the entire decorative apparatus.
On 19 September 2020, the end of the restoration works which involved the entire sculptural group of the monument was decreed. The structural organisms of the canopy have been carefully checked for static reasons, intervening in the settling of a cast iron column through the use of a carbon bandage. Furthermore, it was necessary to undertake a phase of integration of the decorative elements characterized by extensive pictorial and plastic gaps. The integrative restorations have brought shine to the marble and smoothing it and now protected by layers of biocides to delay the onset of spontaneous phenomena.
Inscriptions found at the base of the monument
Registration in Italian
MONUMENT TO THE MEMORY OF THE PRINCE / INDIAN RAJARAM CHUTTRAPUTTI, / MAHARAJAH OF KOLHAPUR. DIED IN / TWENTY-ONE YEAR IN FLORENCE ON THE XXXTH DAY / OF NOVEMBER MDCCCLXX WHEN / FROM ENGLAND RETURNING TO HOMELAND. / CHARLES MANT. CAPTAIN RE ARCHITECT.
Inscription in English
ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF HIS / HIGHNESS RAJARAM CHUTTRAPUTTI / MAHARAJAH OF KOLHAPUR. WHO DIED / AT FLORENCE ON THE 30th NOVEMBER / 1870, IN HIS 21st YEAR, WHILE / RETURNING TO INDIA FROM ENGLAND / CHARLES MANT CAPTAIN RE ARCHITECT.
Inscription in Hindi
MONUMENT TO THE MEMORY OF THE PRINCE / INDIAN RAJARAM CHUTTRAPUTTI, / MAHARAJAH OF KOLHAPUR. DIED AT / 21 YEARS OLD IN FLORENCE ON 30 / NOVEMBER 1870 WHEN / FROM ENGLAND RETURNING TO HOMELAND. / CHARLES MANT. CAPTAIN RE ARCHITECT.
Inscription in Punjabi
MONUMENT TO THE MEMORY OF THE PRINCE / INDIAN RAJARAM CHUTTRAPUTTI, / MAHARAJAH OF KOLHAPUR. DIED AT / 21 YEARS OLD IN FLORENCE ON 30 / NOVEMBER 1870 WHEN / FROM ENGLAND RETURNING TO HOMELAND. / CHARLES MANT. CAPTAIN RE ARCHITECT."
(
visit link)