Duchess of Braganza diamond and emerald corsage brooch Archived Message
Posted by Cristina  on February 7, 2014, 3:13 pm, in reply to "Dom Duarte e Dona Francisca - duques de Bragança"
Thank you Jorge, this is one of the rare coloured pictures of Dona Maria Francisca wearing her jewels I know of. I know only one more!! At the greek weding of Ps Sofia and Pc Juan Carlos.
This is actually one of the jewels I was referring to on one of the earlier threads as a piece owned by Dona Maria Francisca and never worn by Dona Isabel.
In my notes I have this impressive corsage brooch as being of diamond and emerald, but I also thought at some time it could be aquamarine, but these stones are much darker shaded than the aquamarines. The late Duchess earrings are also of diamond and emeralds and again never worn by Dona Isabel. These are the only earrings (apart from the aquamarine ones) that I ever saw Dona Maria Francisca wear!
In her early years as Duchess of Braganza she was portraited wearing these jewels. The portrait hangs on one of the living rooms of Dom Duarte's house in Sintra. This pic (not very clear sorry) is scanned from Caras magazine. The center stone looks lighter here.
Not sure it will help much but here's the black and white version of that photo. I always thought a bit strange that these oficial pics with jewelry were taken in such a sunny day, but I think the aim of this is that they are highly symbolic, could that be the Castle of Guimarães? (The city of Guimarães is considered the cradle of the portuguese nation)
Some years ago a fellow poster (I apologize I don't remember who, perhaps Ademar or Francisco Luís) posted a magazine scanned pic of an exibition of the Braganza jewels that took place sometime after the royal wedding. In it we can see the Dom Luís diadem and other Diamond jewelry and also this impressive brooch, confirming that it remains in the royal vaults. I have enlarged it and the center stone looks definatelly like an emerald, an aquamarine would not look that dark green.
 
So we know that this piece is still in the Braganza vaults, most likely the diamond and emerald long earrings also (I assume they are, at least I never read anything on the late Duke or the present one having sold any jewels). There's at least another piece from the late Duchess that Dona Isabel never wore, but we will discuss that one in a future thread.
Why has Dona Isabel never wore these pieces? We can consider several hypothesis: she does not like them, or finds the corsage brooch perhaps too ostentatious to wear in Portugal and too precious to wear abroad...
But I also remembered something we often forget here. Dom Duarte has two younger brothers.
I never read anything on the dividence of the jewels of Dona Maria Francisca. The family is so discrete that I am sure nothing of it was published...
But what if these pieces (and some other) were inherited by Dom Duarte's brothers? We don't know if Dona Maria Francisca left a will, or perhaps during her lifetime she could have expressed the wish that a certain piece would be in future times worn by the future wife of one of her 3 sons... Then they would not be directly "available" for Dona Isabel to wear, although her 2 brothers in law are unmarried... Perhaps she didn't want to "borrow" them, altough I think she has a very good relation with her brothers in law...
Again many hypothesis raised here... Most likely we will never know for sure.
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: Dona Francisca is wearing an unknown
: (aquamarine ?) brooch
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