The Marie Louise Diadem is a diamond and turquoise diadem on permanent display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.. It is named for Marie Louise of Austria, the wife of Emperor Napoleon of France.
Description The design of the diadem's shell is very typical of Marie-Étienne Nitot's work from the period. A closed circle in shape, the diadem is left-right symmetrical, broadest in the front and narrowing towards the rear. Nitot made elaborate use of scrollwork, medallions, as well as palmettes and other floral motifs, rendered in silver and gold. In this it is similar to diadems and tiaras he produced for Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême and Princess Augusta of Bavaria. The centrepiece at the front of the diadem was originally a single large square-cut emerald, aligned with one of its diagonals along the median line, which weighed 12 carats (2.4 g). A smaller oval-cut emerald was placed directly below the largest stone, and was in turn framed by five smaller rose-cut emeralds. Surrounding the centrepiece is a single layer of rose-cut white diamonds. Twenty large emeralds were set into the symmetrical floral and scrollwork decorations, cut in oval and briolette forms, and fifty-two smaller rose-cut and square-cut emeralds, also framed by a mix of rose-cut and brilliant-cut diamonds. The band that forms the base of the diadem is decorated with an unbroken single row of rose-cut diamonds. In total, the Marie Louise Diadem held seventy-nine Colombian emeralds 'of the highest quality', sourced from the mines of Muzo, along with 1,002 brilliant-cut and 264 rose-cut diamonds of various sizes totalling more than 700 carats (140 g) in weight. The seventy-nine emeralds were later removed and replaced with the same number of Iranian turquoise stones, cut as cabochons rather than faceted like the original emeralds. The turquoise replacement stones weigh a total of 540 carats (108 g).
Provenance
Marie Louise Tradition dictated that a royal bride coming to France must keep nothing of her homeland, especially her clothes. Accordingly, when Marie Louise of Austria arrived in France to marry Emperor Napoleon, she was stripped of her dress, corset, stockings, and chemise, leaving her completely naked. Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, then made the nude teenager take a bath. She was then redressed in only the clothes and jewels purchased for her by her new husband. As such, with no jewelry of her own, Marie Louise needed an entire new set produced for her. Among these were a pair of parures, one in diamond and opal, one in diamond and emerald. It is to the latter set that the later-named Marie Louise Diadem belonged. Both sets were given to Marie Louise to keep as part of her personal collection. As such, when she left Paris for Vienna after Napoleon's exile, she took the diadem and its associated jewelry pieces with her, where the crown jewels were left behind. The diadem was designed by Marie-Étienne Nitot, the official court jeweler of Emperor Napoleon, and produced by his company in Paris, The House of Chaumet. Nitot had been commissioned to create several other pieces for the Emperor in the past, including Napoleon's papal tiara, his coronation crown, his ceremonial sword and the wedding jewels of his first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais. In this case, the commissioned diadem was to be the centrepiece of a parure for Napoleon's second wife, Marie Louise of Austria. The parure also included matching earrings, a necklace, a comb tiara and a belt buckle, all designed in silver and gold, decorated with emeralds and diamonds, and using the same stylistic flourishes. Marie Louise wore the set on several state occasions. There is some disagreement over the exact date the diadem was presented to Marie Louise. The jewelers Van Cleef & Arpels, who purchased the diadem in the mid 20th century, reported to Life magazine that Napoleon had gifted the diamond and emerald parure to her in celebration of the birth of her son, Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte, in 1811. Both the Smithsonian Institution and the Louvre, who later owned pieces from the parure, put the gift as being presented on the day of the imperial wedding in 1810. Of mixed use as circumstantial evidence of the latter theory, a portrait of Marie Louise wearing a diadem of the design was painted by Jean-Baptiste Isabey in 1810 (see right). However, the painter may not have been working from life, as the painting depicts the diadem as holding rubies instead of emeralds.
Habsburgs Upon Marie Louise's death in 1847, her jewels were divided among her Habsburg relatives, her son having pre-deceased her. There is some disagreement over the exact path down the family tree that the diadem and its parure took:
The Smithsonian Institution trace the inheritance of the diamond and emerald parure through Marie Louise's aunt, Princess Elisabeth of Savoy. Elisabeth died just nine years later in 1856, and passed the jewelry to her son, Archduke Leopold Ludwig of Austria. Leopold had no children of his own, so upon his death in 1897 the diadem went to his cousin, Archduke Karl Albrecht of Austria. The Louvre state that the parure went to Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who passed it on to his descendants until it eventually reached Karl Albrecht. The reason for the unclear provenance between Marie Louise and Albrecht lies in the loss of the family's papers and documentation when Albrecht and his family fled Poland after being interned by Nazi Germany in World War II. After his death in Stockholm in 1951, Albrecht's widow (Alice Habsburg) and son (Archduke Karl Stefan of Austria) began the process of selling the family jewels, including the diadem, to various jewelers. However, with the documentation for the jewels lost during the flight from Poland, finding buyers proved difficult.
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