The monument was recreated as a donation by Baltic Germans to celebrate Riga’s 800th jubilee in 2001.
Author: The sculpture was created after photographs by the sculptors Oskars Mikāns and Aigars Zemītis. Copies of the canopy and pedestal were made by the Kalums V LTD supervised by the blacksmith Jānis Vaivods.
Date: 2001
Material: Copper
Bishop Albert – Albert von Bukshevden (German: Albrecht von Buxthoeven, Latin: Adalbertus Canonicus Rigensis; born about 1165, died January 17, 1229) is the Founder of the city of Riga and the Riga Cathedral. Bishop Albert was the third bishop of Livonia (Ikšķile) and the first bishop of Riga.
On July 25, 1211, in a solemn ceremony, Bishop Albert, together with the people and the clergy, went outside the city walls of Riga and consecrated the land for the construction of the Riga Cathedral. Bishop Albert is the author of the ambitious Riga Dome and cloister Ensemble.
In 1897, during preparations for Riga’s 700th jubilee, the sculpture of Bishop Albert, was erected by the south wall of the Cathedral. The sculptor was Kassel Art Academy Professor Karl Bernewitz (1858–1934). The pedestal and canopy were designed by the architect Wilhelm Neumann (1849–1919). The Bishop’s figure and canopy was cast in copper after the model in Frankfurt-am-Main. Vasalemma marble and Arensburg limestone was used for the console-shaped pedestal.
Bishop Albert is shown with bishop’s sceptre in one hand and a model of a Gothic two-towered church in the other. At the end of the 19th century, art historians and architects believed that Bishop Albert’s original plan was to build the Riga Cathedral similar to other Western European cathedrals with two western towers. Indirect evidence for this hypothesis was obtained in the archaeological excavations of 2004.
At the beginning of World War I, the monument was dismantled and taken to St. Petersburg in 1915. It has been lost since then.