Princess Marie Bonaparte (1882–1962) was the great-great-niece of Napoleon and, through her mother's family, one of the wealthiest women in France. In 1907, at 25, she married Prince George of Greece and Denmark in Athens. The wedding jewels were commissioned from Cartier Paris, a commission the firm valued both for the commercial significance and for the association with a princess bride marrying into European royalty.
The Wedding Tiara
The diamond tiara Cartier made for the occasion drew on both branches of the princess's new identity. The wreath form referenced tiaras worn by Bonaparte women; the olive motif referenced the wreaths worn by Greek brides in antiquity. In a characteristic piece of Cartier ingenuity, the eleven olive-shaped stones were made in emerald but could be exchanged for diamonds, giving the tiara two distinct appearances from a single piece. So proud was the team at 13 rue de la Paix that they held an exhibition before the wedding, with the tiara as its centrepiece.
The tiara was not retired after the wedding. In June 1953, Princess Marie wore it to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, almost five decades after it was first shown. The photographs of her at the coronation, alongside her wedding-day portrait from 1907, are included in Prince Dimitri's book Once Upon a Diamond.
A Remarkable Career
The princess's life extended well beyond her role as a royal client. She trained as a psychoanalyst under Sigmund Freud in Vienna, later becoming one of the most prominent figures in the field in France. When the Nazis moved to arrest Freud in 1938, she used her connections and resources to help him escape to London. She wrote extensively on psychology and sexuality, interviewed condemned prisoners to study the causes of violence, and remained intellectually active until the end of her life. Within the family she was known as Aunt Mimi.
Her story connects Cartier Paris to the Romanov-descended circles of European royalty that were among the firm's most significant clients in the decade before the First World War, a period in which the kokoshnik and Russian-inflected wreath forms became central to the Cartier vocabulary for royal commissions.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 2 (“Louis, 1898–1919”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 51, 52 et al.
- Wikipedia: Princess Marie Bonaparte
