Queen Victoria Eugenie’s Diamond Rivière

Today marks the 55^th Anniversary of the Death of Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain, who passed away on this day in 1969! Queen Ena had a splendid jewellery collection, full of family heirlooms and contemporary acquisitions and commissions. Many of her jewels remain with the Spanish Royal Family, and are now worn by Queen Sofia and Queen Letizia, such as her spectacular Diamond Rivière, which we are featuring today!

On the occasion of the marriage of the British-born Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906, the groom commissioned Ansorena, the Court Jewellers in Madrid, a selection of pearl and diamond jewels to incorporate the bride’s splendid corbeille de marriage. The lot comprised, among others, a pair of Diamond Solitaire Earrings with a matching Diamond Rivière Necklace, made of 30 large collet-set diamonds of remarkable quality.

Queen Victoria wore the Diamond Necklace for some of the soirées that took place during the wedding festivities. The Queen also paired it with the Diamond Fleur de Lys Tiara, and some of her other wedding gifts, for her first official pictures in her new role as Queen of Spain.

Soon after, King Alfonso established the tradition of buying a pair of diamond collets for her wife every Christmas. Those new stones were meant to increase the length of the original 30-stone Rivière Necklace. Additionally, perhaps when ideas run out, the King would also offer to Queen Ena some extra collets on certain important dates, such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries or onomastics.

A years went by, the short necklace become a large and imposing sautoir, which Queen Victoria paired with some of her favourite jewels, namely the Aquamarine Parure, the Cartier Stomacher or the Emerald Parure. As recalled by Rayón and Sampedro on their book “Las Joyas de las Reinas de España”:

The Queen especially liked this jewel and – according to Gerard Noel – even when she was not wearing it, she caressed it, held it up to the light, twisted it between her fingers and continually put it on and took it off, admiring herself in the mirrors”.

By the early 1930s, after almost 25 years of marriage, the necklace would comprise roughly 100 diamond collets making it the most valuable jewel in the Queen’s collection. Queen Ena started dividing it on several strands, two or three, possibly adding some family rivière necklaces. Los chatones, as popularly know in Spain, would be worn by the Queen for the most important events in Madrid’s Court Life, like the ceremonies marking the Opening of Parliament, where she would also wear her Coronita and a Diamond Bandeau. The necklace was also worn abroad, namely for King Alfonso and Queen Ena’s Visit to the Vatican in 1923.

After the fall of the Monarchy in Spain in 1931 and the Royal Family’s exile, Queen Victoria Eugenie managed to retain her Rivière Necklace with almost no losses. In the following years, she kept being photographed with her treasured diamonds, most notably with the redesigned version of her Turquoise Tiara.

Curiously, in 1937, the Queen loaned the Diamond Rivière Necklace to her sister-in-law, the Marchioness of Carisbrooke, for her to wear with Queen Victoria’s Strawberry Leaf Tiara at the Coronation of King George and Queen Elizabeth. Queen Victoria also loaned her Cartier Tiara with emeralds to Lady Carisbrooke for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

From the 1940s onwards, Queen Ena repeatedly wore the diamond collets as a two-strand necklace. By then, the diamonds were most likely remounted into a different structure. It is also believed that the Queen handed over some of the stones to her daughters, Infanta Beatriz and Infanta María Cristina.

In 1947, Queen Victoria wore her Diamond Rivières, together with her Fleur de Lys Tiara, the Diamond Earrings and her Cartier Stomacher, for the Wedding Ball of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen kept wearing her trademark chatones throughout the 1950s and 1960s, notably for her eldest granddaughter, Princess Sandra Torlonia’s, Debutante Ball in Rome in 1954, and for Wedding Ball of Infanta Pilar in Estoril in 1967.

When Queen End died, her last wishes established that the longest of her duo of Diamond Rivière Necklaces should became part of the set of “Joyas de Pasar”, a collection of jewels linked to the headship of the Borbon dynasty, consisting of several of her beloved wedding gifts. The lot of jewels was kept by the head of the family and pretender to the throne, Don Juan, Count of Barcelona, though it seems that his wife, Doña Maria de las Mercedes was never photographed publicly wearing the Diamond Rivière, since she had her own.

Part of the shortest Necklace, comprising 27 diamonds, was inherited by Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia. In 1977 his widow, Charlotte Tiedemann, sold it at auction at Christie’s. It has been said that the piece was acquired by a Spanish Jeweller, who later sold it to King Juan Carlos in the early 1980s. This has never been officially confirmed by the Royal House and since Queen Sofia never wore two strands at the same time, we never got any unofficial confirmation as well.

Some years after the Proclamation of Don Juan Carlos as King of Spain in 1975, the Count and Countess of Barcelona passed on the “Joyas de Pasar” to their son and daughter-in-law. In 1982, during a State Banquet in honour of French President François Mitterrand at the Royal Palace of Madrid, Queen Sofia wore a part of Queen Ena’s Diamond Rivière for the first time. However, we do not know if it is the necklace auctioned by the widow of the Duke of Segovia in 1977 or a shorter version of the long necklace entailed to the “Joyas de Pasar” collection.

Since then, Queen Sofia has worn the Diamond Necklace for a couple of of events throughout her husband’s reign, mostly on formal occasions, notably pairing it with the Fleur de Lys Tiara for a State Visit to Britain in 1986 and with Queen Victoria Eugenie’s Cartier Pearl Tiara for the Spanish State Visit to Nepal in 1986.

On three occasions, Doña Sofia decided to wear the Diamond Rivière in its long version: the Wedding of a Jordanian Prince, the Wedding of Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark in 2004, and a Banquet held at the Royal Palace of Madrid for the Mexican President in 2014, her farewell banquet as Spanish Queen Consort, a few days after the shorter version was worn for the Wedding of Princess Ayah bint Faisal.

With the accession of King Felipe to the throne, the lot of Joyas de Pasar passed to his wife, Doña Letizia, in accordance with Queen Ena’s last wishes. The new Queen Consort paired Queen Sofia’s Emerald Earrings with a short version of the Rivière Necklace and the remaining collets adapted as Bracelet for the first time at Emperor Naruhito’s Enthronement Ceremony in 2019.