In the edition of the magazine Connaissance des Arts that I mentioned in the previous thread, published in April 1962 in relation with the forthcoming exhibition "Ten centuries of French Jewellery" in the Louvre Museum in Paris in May 1962, other interesting pictures of French royal and imperial jewels (besides the fringe tiara which is very probably not the 'Russian Tiara') were published:
- this picture of the tiara of the ruby and diamond parure of the Crown jewels, made in 1816 by the court jeweller Ménière and his son-in-law Bapst on King Louis XVIII's request for Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême:
The Duchess of Angoulême was the daughter of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, the sister of the unfortunate Louis XVII, the niece of Louis XVIII, and the wife of her first cousin Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (himself the son of her other uncle, the future King Charles X). As both Louis XVIII and Charles X were widowed, and Louis XVIII was childless, the Duchess of Angoulême acted 'de facto' as France's First Lady under the 'Restoration' (the monarchical regime of France between 1814 and 1830) and was allowed to use the Crown jewels.
The ruby parure was the first parure made for the Duchess after the change of regime in 1814-1815. It was slightly altered in 1825, and was worn by the Duchess for Charles X's coronation in Reims that year. It then remained unchanged, and was known to be a favourite of Empress Eugénie, who wore the parure frequently (she wore it for the first time for the official dinner at the Tuileries Palace, on the evening of her wedding day).Here is the full parure, photographed in the 1880s: http://diamantsdelacouronne.free.fr/Diamants%20de%20la%20Couronne/Parure%20de%20rubis/slides/Parure%20de%20rubis.html
Most of the elements of the parure still exist, with the exception of the belt, which was dismantled. The largest necklace of the parure still exists (it appeared several times at auctions in the last decades). The pair of bracelets is in the Louvre Museum.
The tiara was bought at the 1887 auction by a certain Mr Haas, but was soon acquired by the American millionnaire Bradley Martin. It was given to Martin's daughter, Cornelia, Countess of Craven. The tiara was sold at auction in 1961, after the Countess of Craven's death. It is rumoured to be now in the possession of the Niarchos family, but so far we have no conclusive element to proove this assertion.
Here are two more pictures, the first one during the sale of the Countess of Craven's estate in 1961, and the second one during the exhibition "Ten centuries of French jewellery" at the Louvre Museum in May 1962 (these two pictures were not published in Connaissance des Arts, but I think you will not mind about that... ):
- the edition of Connaissance des Arts of April 1962 also published this interesting picture of a ruby and diamond floral spray brooch, said to have belonged to Empress Eugénie and to be, at the time of the publication, in a private collection.
I have no other information about this brooch, and I do not even know if the attribution to Empress Eugénie is reliable. The only sure fact is that it was not part of the Crown Jewels. So, if it was a jewel of Empress Eugénie, it was part of her private collection. None of the jewels of the exiled Empress auctioned off in 1872 in London matches with this jewel, but of course the Empress could have kept it longer, possibly until her death. Anyway, it is beautiful. I would be happy to see this brooch again.
We can also notice that Empress Eugénie had other ruby and diamond jewels in her private collection:
on October 13, 2014, 4:26 pm
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