26/07/2026
This 1924 portrait of Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain — “Queen Ena,” granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria — by Swedish painter Bernhard Österman captures her wearing a bandeau, drop earrings, and ring all set with nine rectangular-cut emeralds she inherited from her godmother, Empress Eugénie of France.
When Empress Eugénie died in 1920, she bequeathed Ena a box said to contain only a fan — but a closer inspection revealed nine rectangular emeralds totaling roughly 196 carats hidden beneath it, believed to have once adorned the empress’s own emerald tiara by Eugène Fontenay. Ena had the stones set into a necklace by Madrid jeweler Sanz, which she wore both as a sautoir and, flanked by extra diamond rivières, as this striking low bandeau — a fashionable “tiara-as-headband” style that swept European courts in the 1920s.
She layers the emeralds here with her long strand of natural pearls, another royal signature — Ena favored emeralds specifically for the contrast they struck against her pale, minimalist gowns of the era. Like her godmother before her, Ena was eventually forced into exile in 1931; three decades later, in 1961, she sold the emerald parure at auction in Bern, and stones from the set have surfaced periodically at Christie’s and Sotheby’s ever since, some reportedly finding their way into jewels made for Empress Farah of Iran.
