Diamond crown of Empress Elisabeth of Austria
The diamond crown of Empress Elisabeth of Austria was made or reworked for her in 1867 .
description
The crown is made of gold , silver , diamonds and pearls . Eight prongs in the form of lilies and four crown brackets rise above the richly decorated crown circlet. The circlet has rows of pearls on the upper and lower edge, with large and small pearls alternating. The ring itself is adorned with an ornament of diamond rosettes and small X-shaped crosses made of five diamonds. On the front there is a particularly large rosette, which is surrounded by other diamonds like a flower. The lily-shaped prongs grow out of the frost. Each lily has four large diamonds, three in the leaves and one in the center, all of which are surrounded by smaller diamonds . The base of the lilies on the hoop is also set with small diamonds. On the tips of the lilies there are large pear pearls, the ones on the four lilies from which the brackets rise are slightly larger than the pearls on the lilies without brackets. The four brackets rise up behind the lilies like a volute and slightly dent at the vertex, with a cross at the vertex . The temples are decorated with various diamond rosettes. The bars of the cross are made of diamonds and are surrounded by a string of tiny pearls. Pearls sit on the tips of the bars and in the corners of the crossing point.
history
The crown was made in the form described in 1867 for the Hungarian royal coronation of Franz Joseph I and his wife Elisabeth . The template was the already existing diamond crown of Maria Ludovika Beatrix of Modena , the third wife of Francis I , which had been made for her Bohemian coronation in 1808 . The stones probably come from a house crown of Maria Theresa . Zita von Bourbon-Parma wore it to the coronation of her husband Charles I on December 30, 1916. Until 1918 the crown was kept in the treasury of the Vienna Hofburg . She was then taken to the headquarters of the Habsburgs in Switzerland . In 1925 it was worn by the drunken Baron Steiner during a feast. The crown has been lost since then.
literature
- Heinz Biehn : The crowns of Europe and their fate . Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1957.