Jewels of two empires: an exhibition at Malmaison of jewellery of the First and Second Empires is a poignant as well as an engrossing experience

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Diana Scarisbrick

It is always a pleasure to visit Malmaison, where the principal actors on the stage of the First Empire, Napoleon and Josephine, seem to haunt the rooms, which have been restored to their original state. However, to celebrate the bicentenary of the coronation of Napoleon as emperor at Notre Dame in 1804, Claudette Joannis has added to the chateau's charms with an exhibition of jewellery and personal souvenirs associated with him and many other personalities from the First and Second Empires.

A collector and authority on French regional jewellery, Mme Joannis has concentrated on displaying pieces chosen not so much for their intrinsic worth but for their personal and sentimental significance. Instead of diamonds, demonstrating imperial glory and grandeur, she shows jet, cut steel, coral and the hair of beloved individuals, living and dead. Thus she evokes the tragedy of General Charles de la Bedoyere (1786-1815), sentenced to death by Louis XVIII for welcoming Napoleon to Grenoble on his escape from Elba, and thereby turning the tide in his favour. The La Bedoyere group includes miniatures of Charles and his wife, Georgine, as well as items he wore on 19 August, 1815 as he faced the firing squad: a watch, a cravat pin containing a lock of Georgine's hair inscribed with the date of their marriage, 13 November 1813, and a ring, inscribed VALEUR FIDELITE, enclosing some hair of their son. Afterwards, Georgine placed hair cut from his head in a silver locket inscribed PLUS DE BONHEUR QU'AVEC LUI: this she wore every day until her own death, in 1871. As the family was staunchly Bonapartist, in the next generation the Comtesse de La Bedoyere was one of the thirteen ladies in waiting appointed by the Empress Eugenie, who gave her a very fine watch and chatelaine bearing the crowned imperial cipher.

A handsome mahogany, ebony and cut-steel box made for the Empress Josephine by Martin-Guillaume Biennais once contained her wonderful collection of jewellery, long since vanished. Although, therefore, inevitably small, the surviving group on view is both interesting and well provenanced. There is her enamelled watch and chatelaine, a graduated string of amethyst beads, and a locket containing her hair, its cover painted with her miniature, veiled like a Roman Empress, simulating a cameo portrait. Her taste for classical art is further represented by a tortoiseshell comb surmounted by two medallions bearing her cipher, J, on each side of an onyx cameo depicting The tears of Achilles, a subject she would have enjoyed discussing with her scholarly friend Dominique-Vivant Denon. Similarly, the red jasper necklace with matching earrings she gave her six-year-old goddaughter Josephine Van Hee, while taking the waters at Plombieres in 1805, illustrates her liking for hardstones, whether engraved or not.

Two rings recall Josephine's early life with Napoleon: one, which bears his cipher, NB, is inscribed amour sincere; the other, with her cipher, JB, depicts Cupid about to make mischief as he fires his arrow. More controversial is her ruby coronation ring: the unimpressive quality is in sharp contrast to the proud declaration on the box: BAGUE DU COURONNEMENT DE L'EMPEREUR NAPOLEON ET DE L'IMPERATRICE JOSEPHINE BENIE PAR LE PAPE PIE VII A PARIS LE 2 XBRE 1804.

A faceted jet all-round crown belonging to the Queen of Holland, Hortense de Beauharnais, was part of a suite reserved for court mourning. Hortense's own sorrows are echoed by a gold and mother-of-pearl bracelet clasp enclosing a sheaf of wheat made from hair, perhaps that of the two sons, Napoleon-Charles (1802-1807) and Napoleon-Louis (1804-31), who predeceased her. The wheatsheaf alludes to the comforting words of Psalm 126: 'those who went sowing in tears ... came back singing, carrying their sheaves'.

Hortense, who wrote frequently to her mother, Josephine, must have sealed some of those letters with the various seals on show, including a revolving group of seven, for the different days of the week. More esoteric are the Islamic seals engraved with texts from the Koran she gave as amulets to friends, including General Cassagne, when he set out to fight in the Napoleonic campaigns. Although not, strictly speaking, Empire jewellery, the exhibition also includes the gothic-style enamelled chain she gave her niece Amelie de Leuchtenburg on her wedding to the future Emperor Pedro I of Brazil; this is shown with a lively portrait by K.J. Stieler of the young bride wearing it across her velvet bodice.

The Empress Marie-Louise is represented by a micromosaic suite sent to Vienna in the casket offered by Napoleon when he made his proposal of marriage; and their son, the King of Rome, by the string of coral beads found among Napoleon's possessions on St Helena after his death. Descendants of his devoted Polish mistress, Marie Walewska, have lent the etui for the wax she used to seal her many letters to Napoleon and the ring with a scarab wrought from shrapnel that killed his horse during the battle of Dresden in 1813.