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Issues of 2008
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Italian crown jewels
Her Royal Highness Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, a profoundly cultivated woman, bears the venerable name she inherited with great dignity. Respectful of this extraordinary heritage, she is now especially keen to keep the memory of her parents, His Magesty King Umberto II and Her Magesty Queen Maria Jose of Italy, alive.
To this effect she has created a foundation in their name, in which she unites everything that relates to them. The Princess organizes exhibitions as well as hosting conferences that always arouse a great To meet the not inconsiderable burden of inheritance tax pertaining to her mother’s estate, she decided to sell some of the wonderful and rare jewels that she inherited from her parents in order to preserve the remaining parts of the collection. The Royal House of Savoy can be traced to Umberto ‘the Whitehanded’ (d. 1048) who acquired Alpine territories as a feudal lord and became first Count of Savoy. His sons and the dynasty that followed progressively acquired influence and land in Piedmont, the territory east of Savoy and south of the Alps and as well as ruling Aosta, which borders Switzerland and France. Amedeo VI (d.1383) called ‘the Green Count’ for the colour he favoured, being the tincture of the liveries he gave to those who attended his tournaments, founded the Order of the Collar in 1362. Known today as the Order of the Annunciation, it survives as one of the oldest dynastic orders of chivalry. In the late fourteenth century, Amedeo’s eight year-old grandson succeeded as Amedeo VIII (d. 1451). Though devout, he was a warrior-knight, whose faithful service to the Empire earned him the title ‘Duke of Savoy’ in 1416. His descendant, Emanuele Filiberto (d. 1580) succeeded in 1553 and set about strengthening the House of Savoy’s position militarily and administratively. In 1563 he moved the capital of Savoy from Chambery to Turin. The seventeenth century witnessed a great building program in the city of Turin. The future Royal Palace was completed in 1658, the Carignano Palace in 1680, and the Madama Palace, built in the thirteenth century, was expanded and refurbished. The Holy Shroud of Christ, brought to Turin in 1578, was venerated in a chapel of the Duomo, adding to the city’s lustre as an important centre of Catholic Europe. Vittorio Amedeo II, first King of Sardinia (d.1732) ascended the throne in 1675, and though wed to a niece of Louis XIV of France and faithfully adherent to French foreign policy in the early years of his reign, he was not adverse to changing sides when political interests dictated doing so. In the latter part of the seventeenth century he withdrew loyalty from France in order to support the Spanish and Austrian
During the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Sardinia became a refuge for the House of Savoy. In 1831 the succession passed to a branch of the family descended from Tommaso Francesco, Prince of Carignano. Carlo Alberto, (d. 1849) succeeded Carlo Felice, King of Sardinia (d. 1831), his fifth cousin one generation removed, to become King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy and he in turn was succeeded in 1849 by his son Vittorio Emanuele II (d. 1878). Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Sardinia and later first King of Italy from 1861, assisted by D’Azeglio, Cavour, Crispi and Garibaldi, acquired for the House of Savoy, Sardinia’s sister states and by 1870, with the acquisition of the Papal State, the union was nearly complete. The Risorgimento was a complex and controversial movement, but its result, a united Italy was long overdue. Vittorio Emanuele Us eldest son Umberto I succeeded in 1878. He married a Savoy cousin Margherita (d.1926) and moved the Savoy Court to the Quirinale Palace in Rome and lavishly re¬furnished the Villa Reale Monza, Milan. During the nineteenth century the Royal residences included the Quirinale Palace, Moncalieri, Racconigi and Villa Reale Monza. The construction of Villa Reale Monza for Archduke Alexander, son of the Empress of Austria began in 1776, and was executed by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini, who had already collaborated with Luigi Vanvitelli on the design of Caserta. The Villa was emptied of most of its furnishings in 1859, many of which were transferred to the Palazzo Reale of Milan for the visit of Napoleon III. In 1919, King Vittorio Emanuele III (1869–1947) took the decision to transfer ownership of most of his Royal residences to the Italian State. This date also corresponds to the return of some of Monza’s furnishings to Rome, including furniture which had once come from the Quirinale, while many of the furnishings acquired by Umberto I were kept by his family. There are also frequent recorded movements of pieces between Villa Reale di Monza and the private residence of Castello di Racconigi, Turin between 1903 and 1905. With origins in the 12th Century, the palace of Racconigi in Piedmont became a Savoy-Carignano property in 1605 and was transformed into a princely residence. Later the private property of the Royal House of Savoy, Racconigi was gifted with it’s contents by King Vittorio Emanuele III (d. 1947) to his son Umberto (d.1983), Prince of Piedmont (later King Umberto II), following his marriage to Princess Maria-Jose of Belgium in 1930. The family residence of Racconigi was acquired by the Italian State in the 1970s, carefully conserved and later opened as a State Museum in 1980. Born at Racconigi, Umberto was a competent officer well groomed to succeed upon his father’s abdication. This he did in 1946, reigning briefly as Umberto II. Umberto and his wife, the adamantly anti-fascist Maria-Jose, campaigned to preserve the monarchy. In June 1946, a popular referendum decided narrowly in favour of a republic and Umberto and Marie-Jose moved to Portugal. ‘II Re di Maggio’, as Umberto was christened by the Italian press, died in Geneva in 1983 and Maria-Jose in 2001. They are both buried in the Abbey of Haute Combe on the shore of Lake Bourget, Savoy; ancestral burial ground of the Savoy family.
«Maria Jose, Queen of turquoises» — this title was given to Queen Maria Jose of Savoy by the journalist Anna Maria Cutolo in an article written 15 years after the Queen had left Italy following the 1946 referendum which abolished the monarchy. In the article Anna Maria describes her meeting back in 1934 in Naples with the then Crown Princess Maria of Piedmont: «The lady who stood in front of me was beautiful, with great allure and her slender figure was enhanced by a tight blue Savoy lace dress. She was always very elegant and her favourite colour was light blue... In the evening, she often wore a splendid parure of clusters of diamonds and turquoises which reflected the colour of her eyes». Maria Jose was born in Ostend on 4 August 1906 to Albert I King of Belgium (son of Philippe, Count of Flanders and Princess Maria of Hohenzollern) and Princess Elizabeth Duchess in Bavaria (niece and goddaughter of Empress Elizabeth of Austria). At the age of eight the young princess was brought to safety in England following the German invasion of Belgium. She stayed first at Hackwood Park in Hampshire, at that time inhabited by Lord Curzon, and later attended an Ursuline convent in Essex. In 1917, fearful of the proximity of war just across the Channel, Queen Elizabeth of Belgium moved her daughter once more, this rime to the Collegio della Santissima Annunziata, Poggio Imperiale in Florence, where she remained until July 1919. She then continued her studies in Brussels at the Institute of the Nuns of the Sacred Heart. On 8th January, 1930 Maria Jose married the Crown Prince of Italy, Umberto Prince of Piedmont in Rome in the Paolina Chapel of the Royal Palace of the Quirinale. For her wedding their Majesties of Belgium give their daughter an important parure of diamonds and turquoises which had belonged to her grandmother, the Countess of Flanders and which Maria Jose wore for the pre¬nuptial reception on 6th January: the necklace mounted as a bandeau on her forehead as was the fashion of the time. Other precious wedding presents included a diamond bow brooch given to her by her ÒÁrents-in-law and which had belonged to the first Queen of Italy, Margherita of Savoy. The brooch was designed by the court jeweller Musy of Turin, creator of the splendid Crown Jewels. Maria Jose, the last Queen of Italy, was a fascinating and highly cultivated woman. She shared Á love of art and music with her mother Queen Elizabeth and set up a Foundation for Music bearing her name. She also shared her father’s passion for more physical disciplines such as mountaineering and skiing and above all big sense of liberality and justice which gradually led her to oppose the ideology of fascism and the Italian regime in the final years of World War II . Her fondness for learning led her to be a brilliant exponent of the contemporary cultural figures. She became a well-known historian in her own right; writing a number of important books on the history of the Savoy family during her time in exile. She herself did not attach great importance to fashion, and private photographs highlight a love of simplicity, but Maria Jose’s great beauty and allure is captured in official pictures showing her wearing sumptuous gowns and splendid jewels in keeping with her position as Crown Princess, and later Queen, at State events. Such was her elegance she became identified as a symbol of Italian fashion. The unique collection of jewels we see here are bound by a common thread: from the rare and magnificent Faberge tiara to the simple bar brooch they represent the long and fascinating history of the royal families of Europe and bear silent witness to times gone by.
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