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Archives for October 2019
Princess Elisabeth’s Birthday Jewels
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On Friday, the Duchess of Brabant celebrated her eighteenth birthday in Brussels. Princess Elisabeth will one day succeed her father, King Philippe, as Queen of the Belgians.
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The royal family gathered at the Royal Palace in Brussels on Friday for a celebration to mark the occasion, and we’ve got a look at all the jewels!
Belgian Royal Palace |
Two days before Elisabeth’s birthday, the royal family released three new portraits of the princess in honor of her birthday. This casual photograph shows her looking through a photo album, which is open to a picture of her father, King Philippe, and his siblings, Princess Astrid and Prince Laurent.
Belgian Royal Palace |
This image, which emphasizes the continuity of the succession in Belgium, features Elisabeth posing beside her father. King Philippe ascended to the Belgian throne in 2013, following the abdication of his father, King Albert II.
Belgian Royal Palace |
The third portrait is a glamorous image of Elisabeth in gala dress. All three pictures feature earrings borrowed from her mother, Queen Mathilde.
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The grand throne room of the Royal Palace was packed on Friday for the official birthday celebrations.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
Numerous members of the royal family attended, including King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, King Albert II and Queen Paola, Princess Astrid, Prince Amedeo, and Prince Laurent and Princess Claire.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
Elisabeth’s siblings were also in attendance. Sixteen-year-old Prince Gabriel sat beside Queen Mathilde, with Prince Emmanuel (who recently turned 14) and Princess Eleanore (who is 11) to his right.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
Elisabeth’s paternal grandparents, King Albert II and Queen Paola, sat on the left side of King Philippe.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
During the celebration, Elisabeth made a speech. Royal journalist Wim Dehandschutter posted a video of the speech, as well as several excerpts of the text. Elisabeth expressed gratitude for the opportunities she’s received and for the support of her parents and siblings. She also addressed several of her former teachers who were in attendance, as well as patients from the Princess Elisabeth Children’s Hospital (which was named for her in 2011). Notably, she signaled her commitment to making a difference regarding climate change. In the final moments of the speech, she emphasized that Belgium can rely on her both now and in her future role.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
The moment was clearly quite emotional for Elisabeth’s parents.
BENOIT DOPPAGNE/Belga/AFP via Getty Images |
Lots of hugs were shared after she finished her speech.
Belgian Royal Palace |
During the ceremony, King Philippe invested Elisabeth with Belgium’s highest chivalric order: the Order of Leopold. The order is named after Elisabeth’s ancestor, King Leopold I, who become the first monarch of independent Belgium in 1831. Leopold is Elisabeth’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. Thanks to a change in the laws of succcession before her birth, Elisabeth will one day succeed as the first female monarch of Belgium.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
King Philippe pinned the small ribbon of the order to Elisabeth’s dress during the ceremony. She’ll now be able to wear the sash and star of the order at gala events. I know many of us were hoping that she would receive a tiara as one of her birthday gifts, but according to Wim Dehandschutter, she didn’t receive one. (Instead, the Belgian nobles gave her a necklace, but no photos of the jewel have been released.) Perhaps a small sparkler like the Wolfers Tiara will be earmarked for her use?
BENOIT DOPPAGNE/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images |
The future queen kept her jewelry simple but interesting for the festivities. With her white coat dress, she wore a pair of intricate gold and diamond stud earrings.
BENOIT DOPPAGNE/Belga/AFP via Getty Images |
Here’s another view of the earrings.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
And here’s a close-up view.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
And here’s a look at Elisabeth’s complete outfit, including her new Order of Leopold ribbon. The dress was designed for Elisabeth by Edouard Vermeulen of Natan, a favorite couturier of the Benelux royals.
BENOIT DOPPAGNE/Belga/AFP via Getty Images |
Queen Mathilde chose her lovely aquamarine drop earrings for her daughter’s birthday celebration.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
And Elisabeth’s grandmother, Queen Paola, selected golden jewelry, including earrings and a stack of bracelets.
Belgian Royal Palace |
After the birthday celebration, the royal family gathered to pose for a new set of formal portraits. Seated from left to right are Queen Paola, Queen Mathilde, King Philippe, and King Albert II. Standing from left to right are Prince Amedeo, Prince Laurent, Princess Claire, Countess Anna Maria d’Udekem d’Acoz (mother of Queen Mathilde), Prince Gabriel, Princess Eleonore, Prince Emmanuel, Princess Elisabeth, and Princess Astrid.
Belgian Royal Palace |
Several smaller group photos were also released. This one, which features Elisabeth with her three surviving grandparents, is particularly nice. (Queen Mathilde’s father, Count Patrick d’Udekem d’Acoz, passed away in 2008.)
Belgian Royal Palace |
This “three generations” portrait features King Albert, II, King Philippe, and the future Queen Elisabeth.
Belgian Royal Palace |
But I think my favorite from the session is this photograph of Elisabeth with her brothers and sister.
Olivier Matthys/Getty Images |
In recent years, we’ve seen Elisabeth participate in several public engagements, including a recent trip to Africa with her mother. But it will likely be some time before the Duchess of Brabant starts working as a full-time royal. She’s currently enrolled in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme at the United World College of the Atlantic, a residential sixth-form college in Wales. She’s due to finish her studies there in May 2020, with further education likely on the horizon.
Chaumet in Majesty: Napoleonic Jewels
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
I’ve got a major treat for all of you today! Royal Warren(t), one of our readers here at The Court Jeweller, recently visited the grand Chaumet exhibition in Monaco, and she’s offered to share some of her photos with us! The splendor is so great that we’ll be dividing the bounty into two posts. Today’s post features jewelry and other items associated with the reign of Napoleon I.
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Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of France in 1804. He emphasized his rise from modest noble roots to imperial domination through the splendor of his court, including magnificent portraits like Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s 1806 painting, which depicted him in his coronation robes. Another easy way to add a little magnificent splendor to your world is, of course, to employ a court jeweler to drape precious stones on both you and the women in your life. Napoleon turned to Marie-Étienne Nitot, a former apprentice of Marie Antoinette’s court jeweler, to do the job, appointing him court jeweler in 1802. (Nitot’s firm would eventually become the present-day house of Chaumet.)
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The woman at the center of Napoleon’s imperial world in 1802 was, of course, his wife, Josephine de Beauharnais. Marie-Etienne Nitot and his son, Francois-Regnault Nitot, created numerous pieces of jewelry for Josephine during her marriage to Napoleon. Above, Josephine is depicted wearing fashionable jewels and clothing from the period in a portrait completed by François Gérard in 1801. (If you haven’t yet, I’d highly recommend reading Anne Theriault’s fantastic historical articles on Josephine, which are part of her ongoing “Queens of Infamy” series. You’ll find the first one here!)
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
At the start of their relationship, however, the jewelry that Napoleon offered to Josephine was a bit humbler. The Chaumet exhibition in Monaco featured this small gold and enamel ring, which features the initials JNB (for Josephine Napoleon Bonaparte) and the inscription “amour sincere” (French for “true love”). The maker of the ring is unknown, but we know that it was presented to Josephine by Napoleon in 1796, the year they married.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
The exhibition also included Napoleon and Josephine’s marriage certificate. He married the elegant older widow, whose first husband had been executed during the Terror, in March 1796, much to the dismay of his mother and sisters.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
Following the custom of the day, Napoleon had a grand wedding basket made for his new wife. The basket, which is made of silk, silver, copper, and papier mâché, was part of the Chaumet exhibition as well, on loan from the museum at Malmaison.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
The wedding basket, or corbeille de mariage, was part of a tradition that dated to the 17th century. The groom’s gifts to his bride were placed in the basket and then presented to her. Notes from the exhibition explained that the basket and gifts were then “exhibited from the morning of the signature of the wedding contract until the day of the ceremony.” The maker of Josephine’s wedding basket is sadly not known.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
We do know, however, the maker of these fantastic acrostic bracelets, which also belonged to Empress Josephine. Francois-Regnault Nitot made them for Josephine in 1806, the year that her son, Eugene de Beauharnais, was officially adopted by Napoleon (and was married off to Princess Augusta of Bavaria). The bracelets use gems to spell out the names of Josephine’s children. The bottom bracelet in the exhibition display spells out “Eugene” using an emerald, an uniaxial crystal (a crystal with a unique axial structure that does not show light), a garnet, an emerald, a nicolo (which is a blue-hued intaglio), and an emerald. The top bracelet spells out the name “Hortense,” for Josephine’s daughter, using a hessonite, an opal, a ruby, a turquoise, an emerald, a nicolo, a sapphire, and an emerald. The year 1806 was also significant for Hortense de Beauharnais; she had agreed to marry Napoleon’s brother, Louis, in 1802, and four years later, he appointed them King and Queen of Holland. (It didn’t last; Louis abdicated in 1810.)
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1810 turned out to be a pivotal year for the entire French imperial court. That January, Napoleon divorced Josephine, who had been unable to provide him with an heir. He subsequently married Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria (a great-niece of Marie Antoinette), first by proxy in Vienna, and then in a civil ceremony in Paris, and then in a grand religious ceremony held in the chapel of the Louvre. The scene was documented by the French painter Georges Rouget, in a painting that now hangs in the Palace of Versailles.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
Napoleon’s marshals and their wives wore their finest attire for the imperial wedding ceremony. The Chaumet exhibition featured the gown worn at the wedding by Maréchale Davout, Princess of Eckmühl. Born Aimée Leclerc, she was the sister of General Leclerc, who had been married to Napoleon’s sister, Pauline, until his death in 1802. Aimée became the second wife of Louis-Nicolas Davout, one of Napoleon’s most dedicated marshals, in 1801.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
Although Aimée was known for her thriftiness, she agreed to be dressed by the Parisian couturier Louis-Hippolyte Leroy for the royal wedding in 1810. Leroy produced a remarkable gown of tulle and ivory silk satin embroidered with gold and platinum thread for Aimée. The gown’s permanent home is the Musée d’Eckmühl in Auxerre, having been donated to the city by Aimée’s daughter, the Marquise de Blocqueville.
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Napoleon’s court jewelers were tasked with supplying regal jewelry to the new Empress Marie-Louise, who often wore complete bejeweled parures in fantastic court portraits. Paintings like this one, completed by Joseph Franque in 1811, emphasized her new status as the emperor’s wife — and, very quickly, as the mother of his child. Napoleon and Marie-Louise’s son, Napoleon II, was born in March 1811, less than a year after his parents’ marriage.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
Marie-Louise’s grand jewelry box contained some fascinating pieces. The Chaumet exhibition included this Gothic belt, made by Francois-Regnault Nitot around 1813 for Marie-Louise. (He became Napoleon’s court jeweler when his father, Marie-Etienne Nitot, died in 1809.) The belt, which reflects the era’s growing interest in neo-Gothic art and design, was made of gold, pearls, and onyx. The long portion of the belt is designed to drop from the waist to the bottom of the wearer’s gown, echoing medieval clothing styles.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
The buckle portion of the Gothic belt features a lovely antique cameo. The cameo had been a gift to Marie-Louise from her sister-in-law, Pauline Bonaparte, who was living in Rome with her second husband, Camillo Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
The exhibition also featured jewels worn by courtiers during Napoleon’s second marriage. This amethyst and diamond suite, which features a necklace and coordinating earrings set in silver and gold, belonged to the Comtesse Vilain XIII. The set was made around 1810; no information on the maker is available.
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The amethysts belonged to Sophie de Felz, one of Empress Marie-Louise’s ladies-in-waiting. She was the wife of the Comte Vilain XIIII, a wealthy Belgian aristocrat and statesman. Sophie was so close to the imperial couple that she held Napoleon and Marie-Louise’s son during his baptism at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in 1811. The remarkable portrait of Sophie above, which also features her daughter Louise, was painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1816. The painting, done after the fall of Napoleon, was completed in Brussels, where both Sophie and David had taken refuge. Sophie later went on to serve as lady-in-waiting to another royal woman: Queen Louise, wife of King Leopold I of Belgium.
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The reign of Napoleon coincided with a passion for jeweled parures: complete matching sets of jewelry that featured tiaras, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, brooches, and even hair combs and small coronets. In this portrait, painted by Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin around 1812, Marie-Louise wears a complete parure of diamond and topaz jewels.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
In 1811, the Nitot workshop produced a fantastic complete ruby and diamond parure for the Empress. The set included a tiara, a comb, and a small crown as well as a necklace, bracelets, earrings, and even a jeweled belt. This original drawing of the design for the parure was included in the exhibition.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
Also included in the exhibition were replicas of some of the pieces from the parure. The notes accompanying these jewels in the exhibition state that the pieces were “made in the Nitot et Fils ateliers in memory of the ruby and diamond parure commission delivered to Empress Marie-Louise on January 16, 1811.” Instead of diamonds and rubies, these gold and silver replicas are set with white sapphires, zircons, and garnets.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
Here’s a closer look at the replica tiara and comb. The rubies are represented by garnets in these replica jewels.
Photo generously provided by Royal Warren(t); do not reproduce |
And here you’ll see the necklace, girandole earrings, and bracelets. (The garnets look very dark, almost black, in photographs — but if you look closely at the top bracelet, you’ll see the red color of the stone coming to life.) Nearly the entirety of the real diamond and ruby parure has been lost, having been first completely remodeled and then sold at auction in 1887, but two pieces survive: the diamond and ruby bracelets.
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Marie-Louise’s tenure as Empress of France ended in 1814 with Napoleon’s abdication at Fontainebleau. She left the country with her son, settling first in her native Austria and then in Italy, where she ruled as Duchess of Parma. (Francois-Regnault Nitot also left France at the end of Napoleon’s reign, selling his jewelry business to Jean-Baptiste Fossin.) Meanwhile, Marie-Louise’s diamond and ruby set remained back in France. The bracelets from the suite were renovated for the use of another royal woman: Madame Royale, the only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. She married her first cousin, the Duke of Angoulême, in 1799. She was technically Queen of France for twenty minutes on August 2, 1830 — the time that elapsed between the abdication of her father-in-law, King Charles X, and her husband’s subsequent abdication.
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Today, the diamond and ruby bracelets worn by Empress Marie-Louise and the Duchess of Angoulême still reside in a French palace: the Louvre Museum. The bracelets are on display alongside the grand emerald tiara also from the Duchess’s collection.
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