The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Saturday Sparkler: The Leuchtenberg Sapphire Tiara

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If you’re on the lookout today for jewels that belonged to members of the imperial family of France, you’d best look not only in the Louvre but also in the family foundation of the Bernadottes, the royal family of Sweden. Like many of their grandest pieces, the gorgeous sapphires in their collection started out in nineteenth-century France.

The parure’s first owner was Princess Augusta of Bavaria, the wife of Eugène de Beauharnais, the only son of Empress Joséphine. Augusta received the sapphires as a wedding present in 1806, and many think that the gifter was Eugène’s adopted father, Napoleon Bonaparte. If that’s the case, the set was almost certainly made by Marie-Étienne Nitot, Napoleon’s court jeweler. (The cameo parure, also owned by the Bernadottes, is also attributed to Nitot.) Augusta’s father, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, bestowed the Leuchtenberg ducal title on his new son-in-law, hence the tiara’s name.

The parure includes a number of impressive sapphire and diamond pieces, including the tiara, a necklace, a pair of earrings, a brooch, and a set of hair ornaments. The tiara features diamond floral motifs topped by eleven sapphires. We’ve talked about the inflexibility of some tiaras, but this one is the polar opposite. The base is so flexible that the tiara lays completely flat when stored, making it both easy to transport and easy to wear.

Queen Silvia talks about the sapphire parure, including the flexibility of the tiara, in this excellent documentary on royal jewels. The sapphires on the tiara can also be removed, and some believe that they were at one time interchanged for a set of large, pear-shaped pearls.

Josephine of Leuchtenberg
The Leuchtenbergs had several children, many of whom made successful dynastic marriages. One of their daughters, Amélie, became Empress of Brazil, and inherited her mother’s diamonds and emeralds. The eldest, Joséphine, married the future King Oscar I of Sweden, eventually becoming Queen Josefina. She’s the one who inherited her mother’s sapphires, and they’ve resided in the Swedish royal vaults ever since. For several generations, the gems passed through the hands of various Bernadotte family members. Josefina’s son, King Oscar II, inherited them from his mother in 1876. Five years later, Oscar and his wife, Queen Sofia, gave the parure to their new daughter-in-law, Victoria of Baden.

Victoria of Baden
Victoria wore the set regularly as crown princess and as queen, and she was photographed in the tiara and the rest of the parure. But rather than leaving the sapphires to any of her children or their spouses, Queen Victoria decided to preserve the set by bequeathing it to the family’s jewel foundation on her death in 1930. This is good for a couple of reasons — the main one is that the sapphires cannot be sold, but their presence in the foundation means that they are also available for more than one member of the family to wear.

Even though they are theoretically available to all of the Bernadotte ladies, the sapphires have largely continued to be worn by Swedish queens. Queen Louise, the second wife of King Gustaf VI Adolf, made the sapphire tiara one of her signature pieces. But after her death in 1965, the country was without a queen for more than a decade. During that time, the sapphires were worn by Princess Sibylla, the mother of the current king, who served as first lady for her father-in-law. The set was also worn by Princess Birgitta at the wedding of the present king and queen in 1976.

Since then, however, the sapphires have been used exclusively by Queen Silvia. The set is majestic, beautiful, easy to wear, versatile, and historic, so it’s easy to understand why it has become one of her most-used tiaras. I think we’ll be seeing this one on Silvia at major royal occasions for years to come! [9]

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Queen Silvia wears the sapphires at the Nobel Prize Ceremony on December 10, 1978.
2. Queen Silvia wears the sapphires at the Palace of Versailles on June 17, 1980.
3. Queen Silvia wears the sapphires at the Nobel Prize Ceremony on December 10, 2006.
4. Queen Silvia wears the sapphires at the Nobel Prize Ceremony on December 10, 2001.
5. Queen Josefina wears the sapphires in a portrait available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
6. Queen Victoria wears the sapphires in a photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
7. Queen Louise (then crown princess) wears the sapphires during the celebrations of King Gustaf V of Sweden’s 80th birthday in 1938; the man sitting beside her is King Haakon VII of Norway.
8. Queen Silvia wears the sapphires at a state banquet in Stockholm on April 14, 2008.
9. A version of this post originally appeared at A Tiara a Day in December 2013.

Jewel History: Authenticity of the Tiara (1903)

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Detail of the Tiara of Saitapharnes [1]
“Authenticity of the Tiara”
(originally appeared in the Washington Post, 26 Mar 1903)

The present argument on the subject of the authenticity of the “Tiara Saitapharnes” [2] of the Louvre collection of antiquities is a renewal of the discussion which has been going on at intervals during the last seven years with more or less virulence. The tiara occupies a small window in a case in the Salle des Bijoux, being one of hundreds of ornaments shown. Owing to the doubts long existing, the ordinary guide books say that the authenticity of the tiara is disputed.

The recent charges have emphasized these doubts, which promised to cast discredit on the entire collection, and the fine arts minister accordingly ordered an investigation for the purpose of protecting the good name of the Louvre. This has brought on a fierce controversy among the scientists concerning the tiara’s authenticity, which some of the leading newspapers treat as being more amusing than serious.

This evening M. Heron de Villefosse, the curator of the Louvre, published a letter denying having had dealings with Hochmam, a Vienna dealer, who was alleged to have sold the tiara to the Louvre. Theodore Reinach, who furnished the funds to buy the tiara, has also written a letter declaring that the doubts recently expressed are only reiterations of former aspersions, which do not affect his belief in the genuineness of the tiara.

Le Figaro ridicules the controversy, pointing out that whether it is real or false the tiara is of trifling historical value. The result of the investigation is being awaited with interest, owing to the charges of the disputants that the fabrication of “antiquities” is being conducted systematically.

Note: The Louvre was indeed duped — the “ancient” headdress was a fake! It was made in 1894 by Israel Rouchomovsky, a goldsmith from Odessa (in present-day Ukraine), who was told by the men who had commissioned the piece that the headdress was intended to be a gift for an archaeologist. The tiara still in storage in the Louvre today, but it is taken out and exhibited occasionally as a part of retrospectives on Rouchomovsky’s work. Rouchomovsky was an incredibly talented artist in his own right, and he’s the one who revealed to the Louvre that the work was not authentic after he learned that the men who had commissioned it had passed it off as a a genuine ancient piece to the museum.

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped version of an image available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
2. Saitapharnes was king of Scythia around the third century BCE. Scholars know about him largely because he is mentioned in the famous decree of Protogenes. The decree states that the people of Olbia had to pacify Saitapharnes with elaborate gifts; this “artifact” was thought to be concrete, material proof of the veracity of this ancient narrative. (It wasn’t.)