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    Re: Brooch from the French Crown jewels bought by the Louvre. Archived Message

    Posted by Arthur on March 19, 2015, 8:17 pm, in reply to "Re: Brooch from the French Crown jewels bought by the Louvre."

    Wonderful, fantastic news!!! And even more fantastic, since this news was totally unexpected! I am all excited!

    Here are more pictures published on the Facebook page of the Louvre Museum:
    https://www.facebook.com/museedulouvre/posts/10152838121759926





    By the way, we can notice that the Louvre has changed again the content of this ugly small gloomy display box, which does so little justice to the splendid jewels it contains: all the jewels we can see above were made for Empress Eugénie. They have removed the emerald tiara and the ruby bracelets of the Crown jewels, which had been made in the late 1810s-early 1820s for the Duchess of Angoulême...

    : By the shape of the pearls, it looks like the
    : brooch bought by the louvre is the top right
    : one (from the original pic).

    Jgppo, I think you are wrong. The pearl and diamond top cluster of the brooch bought by the Louvre Museum has eight diamonds surrounding the pearl, so this brooch must be one of the two brooches on the left of the picture posted by Nico (the two brooches on the right have ten diamonds around the top pearl). And judging from the respective proportions of the two pearl clusters and of the drop pearls, I would say the brooch bought by the Louvre is the top left one.

    : Bulgaria --interesting provenance. Do we know
    : of any occasions when this piece adorned a
    : Bulgarian princess or queen?

    Unfortunately, I have found no picture of any Bulgarian Queen or Princess wearing this brooch.

    We know that Ferdinand I, King of the Bulgarians from 1887 to 1918, had collected several French royal heirlooms, probably as a sign of pride of his French descent (his mother, Clementine of Orleans, Duchess August of Saxe-Coburg-and-Gotha, was one of the daughters of Louis-Philippe, King of the French from 1830 to 1848). For instance, he had bought several parts of the ruins of the Château de Saint-Cloud (one of the main royal/imperial residences in the Paris suburbs, which had burnt in 1870), and had them integrated in his castle of Euxinograd. He also acquired the pair of earrings of the sapphire parure of the French Crown Jewels, which had been bought by Bapst (the former French Crown jeweller) at the auction of the Crown Jewels by the French republican government in 1887. Later, these earrings were given by King Ferdinand to Isabelle of Orleans-Braganza, Countess of Paris (1911-2003), wife of the French pretender to the throne, Henri "VI" of Orleans, Count of Paris (thus giving "back" these Crown earrings to the "de jure" Queen of France... a very noble gesture from King Ferdinand...). These earrings are now worn by Philomena, Duchess of Vendôme (the wife of the current "Dauphin").

    [Edit: as explained by Vincent, these sapphire earrings were not presented by King Ferdinand I of Bulgaria to Isabelle, Countess of Paris, in 1931, but by King Simeon II of Bulgaria to Marie-Thérèse of Wurttemberg in 1957, when she married the current Count of Paris, then Count of Clermont].

    One of the four brooches of the pearl parure of the French Crown jewels was also bought in 1887 by Bapst, like the sapphire earrings. So we can suppose it is this brooch which is now in the Louvre's collection.

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