Marie Louise Diadem
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
[4][5] 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).
[5] It was with these new stones that the diadem was put on display in the Louvre in 1962, alongside the necklace, earrings and comb tiara from the original parure, as part of the 'Dix Siecles de Joaillerie Francaise' exhibition, celebrating French jewelry from the past millennium.
They lent it out to Marjorie Merriweather Post to wear to a fundraising ball for the Red Cross in Palm Beach, Florida in 1967, where it received a great amount of acclaim.
[8] When the firm later wrote to Post in 1971 offering her the opportunity to buy the diadem through a private sale before they began looking for clients, she donated the requested funds to the Smithsonian Institution to allow them to purchase it at the stated price.
The Smithsonian Institution have had the diadem on display in the National Museum of Natural History ever since, in the Janet Hooker Hall of Gems and Geology.
It was temporarily removed from its shared display alongside the Napoleon Diamond Necklace for several months in the 1990s while the diadem was passed to a conservator-restorer for restoration.
