Empress Marie Louise’s Emerald Tiara 

Today markers the 40th Anniversary of the Death of Alice Habsburg, Princess of Altenburg, who passed away on this day in 1985, 40 years ago! The Swedish Aristocrat who married a Polish Count and later an Archduke of Austria-Teschen, the Princess was the last wearer of Empress Marie Louise’s magnificent Emerald Tiara and Parure!

When Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria arrived in France to marry Emperor Napoleon, she received this magnificent Emerald and Diamond Parure created by the celebrated Marie-Étienne Nitot, with a Necklace, a pair of Earrings, a Comb, several Brooches, and a Tiara or ‘Diadem’ containing seventy-nine Colombian emeralds ‘of the highest quality’.

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.

Empress Marie Louise was depicted wearing the Tiara and Parure in a portrait by Jean-Baptiste Isabey in 1810, which shows Rubies instead of the Emeralds. Following Napoléon’s exile and the end of the French First Empire, the Emerald Parure remained the personal property of Empress Marie Louise, who became the Sovereign Duchess of Parma.

Following Empress Marie Louise’s death in 1847, her Diamond Scroll Tiara and Topaz Parure were inherited by her cousin, Archduke Karl Salvator, the Napoléon Diamond Necklace by her sister-in-law, and the Emerald Tiara and Parure was inherited by her cousin, Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and passed down the family line to his great-grandson, Archduke Karl Albrecht of Austria-Teschen, who had morganatically married Swedish-born Countess Alice Badeni, the Princess of Altenburg, who wore the Emerald Tiara and Parure for some portraits in the 1930s, and seems to have made another Tiara from some of the larger Emeralds.

After being interned by Nazi Germany in World War II, the family had to flee Poland and lost their family estates, eventually settling in Sweden, and tried unsuccessfully for many years to sell off the Emerald Tiara and Parure until the Tiara and a belt buckle were purchased by Van Cleef & Arpels in 1953.

After putting them on display in New York, Van Cleef & Arpels removed the emeralds and set them into two sets of earrings, a bracelet, a ring, a clip, and a necklace, as well as several smaller pieces of jewellery, advertised as ‘emeralds from the historic Napoleon Tiara’, which soon sold out as they said to the press.

In 24 hours, we were sold out of emeralds. And we are still flooded with orders…letters and telegrams from all over the country

The Emeralds were replaced in the Tiara by Turquoises sourced from Iran, which the Curator of the U.S. National Gem and Mineral Collection speculates was chosen as it was relatively inexpensive and easy to shape to match the original settings, while the Louvre claim it was done by request of Marjorie Merriweather Post.

The rest of the Emerald Parure was sold off by the Princess of Altenburg in separate sales, but the necklace, earrings and a comb were displayed alongside the Turquoise Tiara at the Louvre in 1961, for a ‘Dix Siecles de Joaillerie Francaise’ Exhibition.

The Louvre acquired the Necklace and Earrings for €3.7m, the highest price ever paid by a museum for individual pieces of jewelry, in 2004, putting them on display in the Galerie d’Apollon, where they were stolen last month and have yet to be recovered.

Van Cleef & Arpels loaned the Turquoise Tiara to Marjorie Merriweather Post for a Ball in Palm Beach in 1967, and four years later, after being approved to purchase the piece before it came on the open market, she donated the requested funds to the Smithsonian Institution to allow them to purchase the ‘Diadem’.

While the emerald necklace and earrings were stolen from the Louvre last month, Empress Marie Louise’s ‘Diadem’ remains on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., alongside the Napoléon Diamond Necklace.

Empress Marie Louise’s Emerald Tiara

Napoléon Diamond Necklace

Topaz Parure

Diamond Scroll Tiara

Empress Eugénie’s Pearl Tiara