Design
The design of the arch is based on that of the Arch of Constantine in Rome and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in Paris. It was originally intended to carry a programme of sculpture celebrating British victories during the Napoleonic Wars. An architectural model, made in around 1826 and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, shows it with a continuous relief of the Battle of Waterloo on one side and scenes of naval engagements on the other.
John Flaxman was chosen to make the commemorative sculpture. After his death in 1826 the commission was divided between Sir Richard Westmacott, Edward Hodges Baily and J.C.F.Rossi. In 1829, a bronze equestrian statue of George IV was commissioned from Sir Francis Chantrey, with the intention of placing it on top of the arch.
Read more about this topic: Marble Arch
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“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)