An imperial jewel... and a small mystery - ruby, diamond, and pearl brooch, circa 1850s

 

After France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second Empire in 1871, the Empress Eugénie fled to England, where she subsequently sold many of her jewels. This particular brooch was bought by Harry Emanuel, a London jeweler; his firm provided the purple velvet case in which the piece is still kept. Later, Mrs. Ernest Raphael, née Flora Cecilia Sassoon, acquired the piece and wore it when her portrait was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1905.

Of French make, the brooch is set throughout with round-cut rubies and old mine-cut and pear-shaped diamonds, terminating in three pear-shaped natural pearl drops. The setting is silver and gold.

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Flora Cecilia Sassoon, the daughter of Kate Ezekiel and Reuben Sassoon; she married Ernest Raphael, a London financier, in May of 1893.

Even as described by Sargent's gloriously impressionistic brushwork, the Empress' brooch is easily identifiable.

Both the brooch and the painting remained in the Raphael family until 1983, at which point they were offered for sale at Christie's. The brooch was purchased by a private collector in South Carolina; in 2017, the piece was once again sold at auction.

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The "mystery" is this. This ruby, diamond, and pearl brooch. Frequently found in online searches and always identified as the brooch formerly belonging to the Empress, the very same brooch that is featured in this post, but... it is not. It's all very, very similar but, when one observes it closely, it's clear that it isn't the same piece. So what is this, this very close copy? How did it come to be, when and for whom?

Marineros y otros - photographs by Gregorio Prieto and Eduardo Chicharro Briones, circa 1929-31

 

Marineros.

The two young Spaniards, Prieto and Chicharro Briones, met as colleagues at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, became friends, and collaborated on a series of experimental photographs. Prieto devised the scenes and was the primary model for the images, while Chicharro Briones worked the camera and handled the technical side of the endeavor. Prieto had a particular fascination with sailors at the time, apparently identifying so strongly with the archetype that he wandered the streets and towns of Italy dressed as one.

Deukalion.

El péndulo.

Recuerdo de Roma.

Marinero durmiendo.

Herida por la belleza clásica.

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Gregorio Prieto Muñoz (2 May 1897, Valdepeñas - 14 November 1992, Valdepeñas), Spanish painter associated with the Generation of '27, an influential group of avant-garde Spanish poets and artists that gradually formed between 1923 and 1927. The eighth son of a cabinet-maker, he started drawing and then painting at the age of four. When he was seven, the family moved to Madrid. At eighteen he entered the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and, after being awarded several scholarships, he moved to Paris in 1925 where he had his first contact with Cubism and the Surrealists. Three years later, he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome - Real Academia de España en Roma - where he remained until 1932.

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Eduardo Chicharro Briones (13 June 1905, Madrid - 15 March 1964, Madrid), Spanish painter and poet, founder and one of the main theorists of Postism, an avant-garde movement that emerged in Spain in the mid-1940s. The son of Eduardo Chicharro y Agüera, who had been court painter to King Alfonso XIII, when he was seven his family moved to Rome; he remained there until the age of twenty. In 1925, after completing his military service in Spain, he returned to Rome on a scholarship granted by the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. He remained there until 1935.

Rome, 1929. Depending on the source, this portrait is captioned as being Prieto and Chicharro Briones, or merely the former and an amigo. 

Die young, live forever - Marcus Claudius Marcellus as Hermes Logios, circa 20 BC

 

Marcellus as Hermes Logios - formerly known as Germanicus - is a life-sized marble funerary monument and portrait of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, nephew of the Roman emperor Augustus. Created some three years after the model's death, Marcellus is portrayed as Hermes Logios, the god of eloquence.

The pose of the idealized figure exemplifies what later became known as the Hermes Ludovisi type, and was based on a popular and much copied 5th century BC Greek prototype, with the addition of a portrait head. 

The statue is signed - carved into the figure of a tortoise at the base of the cloak - "Cleomenes (Kleomenes) the Athenian."

The tortoise on the plinth below the drapery alludes to Hermes' invention of the lyre, for which the tortoise shell served as sounding board. Hermes/Marcellus appears to hold a plectrum in his right hand, a plectrum being a small, flat tool used for the plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument.

By 1590 the statue was in the collection of the Villa Montalto-Negroni, Pope Sixtus V's villa on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. It was purchased from the papal collections by Louis XIV in 1664 and placed in the gardens of Versailles; later it was moved to the château itself and installed in the galerie des Glaces. Napoléon had it transferred to the Louvre in 1802, where it remains to this day.

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Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42–23 BC), the eldest son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia the Younger, sister of Augustus. He was educated with his cousin Tiberius and traveled with him to Hispania where they served under Augustus in the Cantabrian Wars. In 25 BC he returned to Rome where he married his cousin Julia, the emperor's daughter. As Augustus' nephew and closest male relative, he would enjoy an accelerated political career. Marcellus and Augustus' general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa were the two popular choices as heir to the empire. In 23 BC an unidentified illness spread through Rome and both Augustus and Marcellus were infected. Augustus barely survived, but the illness proved fatal to Marcellus; he was only twenty years-old. He would be the first member of the imperial family to have his ashes placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus.