The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) said it has acquired one of Queen Victoria’s most important jewels. The sapphire and diamond coronet designed by Prince Albert in 1840, the royal couple’s wedding year. The historically significant jewel was gifted to the V&A by William Bollinger.
The coronet is scheduled to go on display in 2019, the bicentenary year of the birth of both Victoria and Albert, and will serve as the centerpiece of the museum’s renovated William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery, which tells the story of jewelry in Europe from the ancient world to the present day.
The design of the coronet was based on the Saxon Rautenkranz, or circlet of rue, which is set diagonally across the shield in Prince Albert’s coat of arms, museum officials said. It was made by Joseph Kitching, a partner at Kitching and Abud, who were appointed “Jewellers to the Queen” in 1837. In 1842, the coronet was featured in the first and most renowned portrait of the Queen painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.
“The painting depicts Victoria as a figure of youth and beauty, regal, but free of the crown and scepter, the traditional emblems of monarchy,” the museum said. “The image became instantly famous and was shared throughout Europe and the British Empire in a series of replicas, copies and engravings.”
The coronet also represents a symbol of enduring love. In 1866, on the first occasion when Victoria felt able to attend the state opening of Parliament following Albert’s death in 1861, she chose to wear the coronet instead of her crown, which was carried on a cushion.
“Representing both the passion of the young royal couple, and a powerful symbol of the widowed queen, it will be of deep fascination to visitors and scholars alike,” said Tristram Hunt, V&A director. “It will instantly become part of the identity of the museum itself.”
The day before their wedding on Feb. 10, 1840, Albert gifted Victoria a sapphire brooch. The couple then arranged Victoria’s collection of sapphires into a suite of jewels, of which the coronet became the centerpiece, according to the museum.
The coronet was inherited by King Edward VII and then by King George V and Queen Mary, who gifted it to their daughter, Princess Mary, on her marriage to Viscount Lascelles in 1922. It was then sold into private hands, and in 2015 became the subject of an application to export it from the UK. This was later withdrawn.
Museum officials say it is appropriate that the coronet would find a home at the V&A, which is inextricably linked to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The museum’s origins lie in the Great Exhibition of 1851, devised and championed by Albert. Following the exhibition, Albert ensured its profits were used to create a cultural district of museums and colleges in South Kensington devoted to art and science education. The Museum of Ornamental Art, installed in Marlborough House in 1852, was moved to become part of the South Kensington Museum, opened to the public by Victoria and Albert in 1857.
In 1899, Queen Victoria proposed that it should be re-named the Albert Museum to commemorate his role in its establishment, but conceded in naming it the Victoria and Albert Museum instead.
