There were a few benefits to marrying the Emperor Napoleon,
if you loved jewelry, that is! The Marie-Louise diadem, now part of the
Smithsonian Collection, was a wedding gift from Napoleon I to his second wife,
Empress Marie-Louise in 1810. The diadem was originally part of a set that also
included a necklace, comb, belt buckle, and earrings, all made of emeralds and
diamonds set in silver and gold. They were all made by French Jeweler Etienne
Nitot et Fils of Paris.
In the original diadem, there were 22 large and 57 small
emeralds, along with 1002 brilliant-cut and 66 rose-cut diamonds. The central
emerald weighed 12 carats. After the fall of the Emperor, Marie-Louise fled to
Vienna and took her personal jewelry with her, including the diadem and other
pieces that were made as part of a set, including a necklace, a pair of
earrings and a comb.
Empress Marie-Louise left the diadem to her Hapsburg aunt,
Archduchess Elise. Archduke Karl Stefan Hapsburg of Sweden, a descendent of the
Archduchess sold the set to Van Cleef & Arpels in 1953. Between May 1954
and June 1956, the emeralds were removed and sold individually in pieces of
jewelry as emeralds "from the historic Napoleon Tiara."
Between 1956 and 1962, Van Cleef & Arpels mounted turquoise
cabochons into the diadem. In 1962, the diadem was displayed in the Louvre in
Paris with the necklace, earrings, and comb in an exhibit about Empress
Marie-Louise. In 1971, Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal
fortune, purchased the diadem for the Smithsonian Institution.
There are 1,006
mine-cut diamonds weighing a total of 700 carats and 79 Persian turquoise
stones weighing a total of 540 carats. In one respect, it’s a shame that the
original piece was dismantled to sell off the emeralds. Yet the diadem, reset
with the turquoise cabochons is equally beautiful and made even more
distinctive with the use of the less valuable turquoise.
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