Tea at Trianon: The Glittering Royal History Behind the Louvre’s Stolen Jewels

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 24, 2025

The Glittering Royal History Behind the Louvre’s Stolen Jewels

Marie-Louise poses beside an imperial crown, wearing an embroidered white gown with swan-carved throne behind.

Marie-Louise of Lorraine-Austria

From Artnet:

When Napoleon married his second wife, the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise, in 1811, he ordered two dazzling sets of jewelry from Etienne Nitot and sons, his favored jeweler. One was made in opals and diamonds, and the other in emeralds and diamonds, with both intended to remain part of the empress’s personal jewel case. This would become significant amid the political turbulence of the 1810s, when she would be forced to hand over the crown diamonds to the Bourbons, but not her personal sets.

The eldest daughter of Francis II, the Holy Roman emperor, and Maria Theresa of Naples-Sicily, Marie Louise provided Napoleon with the royal pedigree he desired and, in time, an heir. The emerald and diamond set was made by second-generation jeweler François-Régnault Nitot, with the necklace and earrings including 32 intricately cut emeralds and more than 1,000 diamonds. When Marie Louise bequeathed the set to her cousin Leopold II of Habsburg, it included a tiara, but after being sold by his descendants to the jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels more than a century later, its emerald stones were gradually sold off and replaced with turquoise ones (it’s now in the Smithsonian collection). The Louvre acquired the necklace and earring in 2004 for an estimated $4 million. (Read more.)

A secret history. From Town and Country:

It began life as a suite created by a husband for his new wife. Napoleon commissioned the emerald and diamond crown, necklace, and earrings for his second wife Marie Louise. Some believe they were a wedding gift, others a push present to the woman who bore him his long awaited heir. The necklace and earrings are among the eight pieces stolen from the Louvre in a brazen heist that took place the morning of Sunday, October 19. They had been on display in the Galerie d’Apollon, a testament to the efforts of the Friends of the Louvre society to reassemble the collection that had been sold at auction in 1887 in an attempt by the third republic to rid the country of any evidence of its imperial past. These particular pieces had, for many years, stayed within Marie Louise’s family. She had been spared Naopoleon’s exile and by treaty was allowed to keep the jewels deemed to be part of her personal collection, including these emeralds. Documentation becomes difficult to trace accurately, but at some point the emerald necklace and earrings become part of the collection of Liliane de Rothschild, a woman known for her penchant for passion for 18th century history and Marie Antoinette memorabilia. When she died in 2003, the obituary in Le Figaro lauded her taste and generosity: “She was a patron as generous as she was discreet,” said Maurice Druon, an academic and member of the Académie Française.
“How many national collections have benefited from her donations, how many important works did she put in our most beautiful galleries, how many institutions did she support with an active and constant attention,” Druon said. The New York Times obituary also noted her deep knowledge of Rothschild family history, her wit and composure, and a friendship with Greta Garbo. (Read more.)