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IX. The Devonshire Parure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
Extract
On 13th May 1856 Granville George Leveson Gower, 2nd Earl Granville (1819–91), Liberal diplomat and politician, wrote to Viscount Canning announcing his appointment as representaive of Queen Victoria at the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in Moscow that summer. He added that before accepting he had consulted his wife Marie, who had ‘pronounced some sage aphorisms, but danced a hornpipe and lamented that it would be necessary to buy twenty gowns and have her diamonds reset’. Marie Granville's sense of the importance of jewellery on such an occasion was shared by her husband's uncle, William, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858), who, on behalf of George IV, had attended the coronation of Tsar Nicholas I in 1825. Having himself experienced Russian hospitality at its most magnificent he knew what was expected of the representatives of foreign royalty, and he not only gave the Granvilles money and lent them also his silver, but he commissioned a set of jewels incorporating hundreds of diamonds and eighty-eight cameos and intaglios from his ancestral collection.
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1 Fitzmaurice, Lord Esmond, Life of Granville George Leveson Gower (London, 1905), I, p. 181Google Scholar. Marie Granville, widow of Sir John Acton of Aldenham in Shropshire, married Lord Granville in 1840. Brought up in France, she was the daughter of Emeric due de Dalberg, of an ancient Rhineland family claiming descent from a Roman soldier related to Jesus Christ who had settled at Herrnsheim. Her great uncle, Karl von Dalberg (1744–1817), Archbishop Elector of Mainz, Grand Duke of Frankfurt, is the subject of cameo portraits in the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Cf. Kris, E., Catalogue of Postclassical Cameos in the Milton Weil Collection (Vienna, 1931)Google Scholar, no. 81. Her portrait, by Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), is in the collection of her descendant, the Hon. Mrs. J. M. Corbett.
2 Hancock, C. F., Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of the Celebrated Devonshire Gems from the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire K.G. Arranged and Mounted for His Grace as a Parure of Jewels (London, 1857).Google Scholar
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4 Morning Chronicle, 30th April 1857, quoted by C. F. Hancock, op. cit. (n. 2): ‘To the taste and zeal in professional matters of Mr. Hancock not only the construction and arrangement of this valuable set of jewels, but also the first idea of turning the gems to such an account is due’. The parure was exhibited at the Mechanics Institution, Manchester, February-March 1857, at the Archaeological Institute in London, 1861 (cf. Arch. J. xviii (1861), 300–2), and at the International Exhibition, South Kensington Museum, 1862, where the International Jury of Class Three especially noticed the setting of the Devonshire gems (cf. Masterpieces of the Exhibition (London, 1863), pl. 203).Google Scholar
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25 MS. at Chatsworth. Mrs. Strong was advised by Professor Adolf Furtwängler, who illustrated some of the most important gems from the Devonshire collection in Die antiken Gemmen (Berlin, 1900). In vol. III, pp. 409–11, of this work he praises the connoisseurship of Philip von Stosch.Google Scholar
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40 Reinach, op. cit. (n. 21), ‘Pierres gravés du Due d'Orleans’, VII, p. 138, planche 126, no. 66, cornelian head of Bacchus: ‘le Régent portait souvent cette pierre au doigt et s'amusait à en tirerdes empreintes’.
41 Vollenweider, op. cit. (n. 35), p p. 18–20.
42 Diadem, no. 65.
43 Dio Cassius, XLIII, 43.
44 Necklace, no. 41.
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47 Vollenweider, op. cit. (n. 35), pl. 59. no. 2.
48 Ibid., pl. 41, no. 1.
49 Raspe, op. cit. (n. 40), nos. 9385–474.
50 Suetonius, 11, 50.
51 Bandeau, no. 10.
52 Necklace, no. 42. Babelon, op. cit. (n. 6), no. 302, relates to this portrait. Information kindly supplied by M. L. Vollenweider, who discusses the group in her forthcoming catalogue of the gems in the Cabinet des Medailles.
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55 Natter, op. cit. (n. 27), p. xxvii: ‘Les amateurs préfèrent de beaucoup une bonne copie d'une gravure qu'ils affectionent à une gravure nouvellement imaginée quelque parfaite qu'elle put être dans le fonds’. A. P. Giulianelli, Memorie degli intagliatori (Livorno, 1753), p. 156, describes how Thomas Hollis while in Florence saw a gem of a dancing Bacchante in the collection of Cavaliere Luigi Pitti and, wanting one exactly like it, ordered a copy from the engraver Borghiani.
56 A. Maffei, Gemmae Antiquae Figuratae (Rome, 1707), IV, pl. 28; P. von Stosch, Gemmae Antiquae Caelatae (1724), pl. LXIII.
57 A. F. Gori, Dactyliotheca Smithiana (Venice, 1767), pls. XXI and XXII.
58 de Don Juan, Conde de Valencia, Catalogo de la Real Armeria de Madrid (Madrid, 1908), no. 64, shield of Charles V, made by Negroli of Milan.Google Scholar
59 B. de Montfaucon, L'Antiquité expliquée, suppl. tome v (Paris, 1725), pl. LI.
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61 Babelon, op. cit. (n. 6), no. 623.
62 Raspe, op.cit. (n. 39), nos. 7374,7375 (without veiled woman).
63 Necklace, no. 51.
64 Diadem, no. 53.
65 Stomacher, no. 26.
66 Stomacher, no. 25.
67 Lucian, Dialogues of the Sea Gods, 15.
68 G. P. Valeriani, Hieroglyphica (Cologne, 1631), p. 774, cap. XLI.
69 Ibid., p. 734, cap. XIV.
70 Stomacher, no. 21.
71 Hackenbroch, op. cit. (n. 12), fig. 9, p. 4.
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78 Kagan, ibid., also mentions the magical properties ascribed to these stones.
79 Necklace, no. 48.
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85 Necklace, no. 36.
86 Diadem, no. 57.
87 Kagan, op. cit. (n. 77), suggests that the good supply of onyxes and sardonyxes reflects the extent of the market established in London by British trading enterprise during the Tudor period, as well as pointing to an English origin for the group.
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92 The Vertue Note Books, 11, Walpole Society, vol. 20 (Oxford, 1932), p.91.Google Scholar
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98 Diadem, nos. 59 and 62 respectively.
99 Diadem, no. 64. Cf. Kent, op. cit. (n. 31), no. 349.
100 Dalton, op. cit. (n. 60), lxxxvi; similar to no. 88.
101 Coronet, nos. 74, 76, 82, 83, 84.
102 Billing, A., The Science of Gems, Coins and Medals (London,1875), p. 22, ‘notwithstanding the exquisite work of the jeweller’.Google Scholar