It was 1886 and the wedding between the future King Carlos I of Portugal and Princess Amélia of Orleans was promised.
D. Amelia of Orleans, the French daughter of the Counts of Paris, was the personal choice of the future king, who fell in love with the princess.
As used to be the case, it was up to the groom's parents to give the bride a present. This is what King Luís and Queen Maria Pia did.
The kings intended to offer a set of jewellery made by Portuguese artists. They turned to the already recognised Crown Jewellers, Leitão & Irmão, in a vote of confidence in obtaining pieces of high aesthetic, material and artistic quality.
After meeting with the jewellers, the kings were presented with a set of jewels with a Renaissance aesthetic:
Nowadays, only the Tiara remains, which was recently featured at the wedding of Dona Maria Francisca de Bragança, who, at the age of 26, married Duarte de Sousa Araújo Martins on Saturday 7th October.
The piece was also worn at the wedding of her parents, Isabel de Herédia and Duarte Pio de Bragança. Duarte Pio de Bragança, who have now invited their daughter to wear the tiara at their wedding.
Like many other Leitão & Irmão pieces, the Renaissance-style tiara has a dual function: it can be worn closed, like a crown, or open as a tiara.
With two rows of diamonds, one smaller and the other larger, it has around 800 brilliants set into it.
The piece goes together with the necklace given on the same occasion, but which currently has no known location. We retain the records and sketches kept in the House's archive at the Gulbenkian.
Queen Dona Amélia quickly became a loyal customer of Leitão & Irmão.
In our records we find several references to the queen, who visited Casa Leitão frequently to create jewellery, restore or alter her jewellery. A well-known lover of the arts, she found the perfect partnership with the jewellers at Leitão & Irmão to expand her creativity. Many of the pieces commissioned by the queen had her own signature, which she, like us, practised several times until the signature was perfect and replicated on the piece.
Find more references at:
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Bairro Alto
+351 213 424 107
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Estoril, Cascais
+351 211 349 608
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