It was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti, an Italian sculptor whose works were popular with European royalty and the nobility, though often less well regarded by critics and the artistic establishment.

It was well received at the time and two years later Queen Victoria and Prince Albert headed a list of illustrious subscribers to a fund that aimed to raise money for the casting of the statue in bronze.

Although the money was duly raised and the bronze cast of the statue was finally completed in 1856, a lengthy dispute delayed its installation for several years.

It narrowly escaped destruction during the Second World War when a German bomb dropped during the Blitz landed a few metres away and peppered it with shrapnel.

[2] Bas-relief panels showing Crusaders fighting the Saracens at the Battle of Ascalon and Richard on his deathbed pardoning Bertran de Gourdon, the archer who fatally shot him in 1199, were added to the east and west sides of the pedestal in 1866–67.

[3] As the statue cannot be accessed by the general public – the area around it is used as the House of Lords car park – the west-side scene showing Richard and Bertran is the only one visible from the street.

Marochetti was probably aware that the Belgian sculptor Eugène Simonis intended to show his statue of Godfrey de Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade, which King Leopold I of Belgium had commissioned.

The two men had a number of connections; they shared the same bronze founder, Soyer of Paris, and Simonis was influenced by Marochetti's earlier acclaimed statue of the Duke of Savoy, Emanuele Filiberto.

[2] Marochetti's creation of the clay model of the statue involved not only the sculptor himself but also the painter Victor Mottez, King Louis Philippe's personal physician Henri Gueneau de Mussy and the singers Mario and Garcia, all of whom contributed manual input.

[3] It came to be regarded as one of the more popular items in the exhibition and Prince Albert personally took King Leopold to see it and the statue by Simonis, which now stands in the Grand-Place of Brussels.

A campaign got underway two years later, in May 1853, with a variety of the great and the good signing a brochure promoting a scheme to erect the statue somewhere in London.

The Times was strongly in favour of the project due to the influence of its foreign affairs reporter Henry Reeve, who had known Marochetti since as early as 1839.

The Art Journal pointed out the contradiction between "the effigy of a valiant crusader" and "the great Peace congress of 1851" and asked why "a foreign sculptor alone" was being selected to commemorate a British exhibition.

[2] The Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Challis, was similarly critical, declaring that the statue depicted "muscular power and the almost savage ferocity of war ..., while ... the Great Exhibition afforded an example of the cordial amity of nations.

As The Times observed after the statue's installation, the sculptor "sacrificed probabilities in the close fit he has given to Richard's mail shirt, which is made to display the swelling biceps and folded mass of pectoral muscle as accurately as a knitted woollen jersey.

The Art Journal criticised the New Palace Yard location on the grounds that the statue was merely a novelty and, worse, depicted an unworthy subject – "a disobedient son and a bad governor".

His idea was considered by the Fine Arts Commission for the Palace of Westminster and was deemed acceptable, although Sir Charles Barry again opposed it.

The dispute continued until 1859 when the Commissioner of Works, Lord John Manners, finally agreed to install the statue in Marochetti's favoured location.

The Art Journal criticised the deathbed scene as being excessively stretched lengthways and noted similarities with a painting displayed in the Houses of Parliament, created by John Cross, that depicted the same subject.

[2] Marochetti also pursued an abortive project to install a second giant equestrian statue in Old Palace Yard, this time portraying Edward, the Black Prince.

[2] They appear to have been designed at the same time as his Richard I, demonstrating their common origins; models of the two statues almost certainly would have co-existed in his workshop and Marochetti probably intended to seek a commission from Prince Albert.

Vincent Massey, the High Commissioner for Canada, argued that the sword should be left unrepaired, as it symbolised "the strength of democracy which will bend but not break under attack.