Sweden: New info about the Brazilian / Braganca tiaraArchived Message
Posted by Boris on November 14, 2012, 11:32 am
Trond N. Isaksen has posted an entry on his blog about the Brazilian tiara in the Bernadotte collection, including some fascinating new information about this grandest piece in the Swedish royal vaults. Link: http://trondni.blogspot.de/2012/11/royal-jewels-brazilian-tiara.html
Excerpts: “The Brazilian author Claudia Thome Witte, who is writing a biography of Empress Amélie, has recently revealed that the tiara was a wedding present to her from her husband, Emperor Pedro I, in 1829. The diamonds had originally belonged to the Emperor’s first wife, Leopoldina, née Archduchess of Austria, and been inherited by their children following the Empress’s death in 1826. Pedro acquired the diamonds by assuming a debt in bonds as compensation to the children and presented the tiara to his new bride, who first wore it for the hand-kissing ceremony following her wedding. Empress Amélie wrote to her mother, Dowager Duchess Auguste Amalie of Leuchtenberg, that “the tiara [was set] with the best Brazilian diamonds in various sizes and [of] so pure clarity that [they] seemed made of water”.
In the inventory of Queen Josefina of Sweden and Norway “which was drawn up after her death in 1876, the tiara and a matching necklace, a brooch and a pair of earrings are valued at 248,000 SEK, making it by far the most expensive parure in the inventory – the so-called Leuchtenberg sapphires are, for comparison, valued at 69,500 SEK, and the emerald parure now in Norway at 41,000 SEK.”