Two crowns of two emperors

The Brazilian Empire, which lasted from 1822 to 1889, produced two principal crowns. The first was made for the coronation of Pedro I in 1822 and is sometimes called the Crown of Pedro I. The second, more important, is the Imperial Crown of Pedro II, made in 1841 for his coronation. It is this second crown that is generally meant by the term Imperial Crown of Brazil and that is now displayed in the Imperial Museum in Petrpolis, in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro.

Construction and stones

The crown was made by the Brazilian goldsmith Carlos Marin in Rio de Janeiro. Its principal frame is gold. The form is a closed crown, comprising a circlet surmounted by eight half-arches that meet at the top and support a small orb and cross. The closed-arch form, derived from European imperial crown practice, distinguishes it from royal crowns of the open form.

The gemstones are predominantly diamonds and pearls, with smaller numbers of accent stones. The diamond count is recorded in nineteenth-century inventories at six hundred and thirty nine, the pearl count at seventy seven. The diamonds were sourced from the Brazilian fields, principally the Diamantina and Serro regions of Minas Gerais, which had been the world's principal diamond supplier from their discovery in the 1720s until the Cape strikes of the late 1860s. The use of domestic Brazilian diamonds rather than imported European stones was a deliberate political statement of national resource sovereignty.

The 1841 coronation and its setting

Pedro II was crowned on 18 July 1841 at the Imperial Chapel in Rio de Janeiro at the age of fifteen, having ascended the throne in 1840 in his minority following the abdication of his father Pedro I in 1831. The crown was used in the actual coronation ceremony, which makes it one of the few nineteenth-century imperial crowns globally to have served in a working liturgical coronation. By contrast, the Austrian and Russian crowns were not used in the same way.

The fall of the Empire and the survival of the crown

The Brazilian Empire ended with the military coup of 15 November 1889, which deposed Pedro II and proclaimed the Republic. The imperial family departed for exile in Europe, where Pedro II died in 1891 in Paris. The Imperial Crown remained in Brazil. Unlike many other dethroned royal regalia, it was not melted, sold or dispersed. The new Republican government treated it as state patrimony, and it has remained in continuous Brazilian state custody since.

The crown was transferred from Rio de Janeiro to the Imperial Museum in Petrpolis in 1943, when that institution was established in the former summer palace of Pedro II. It is on permanent public display.

The diamond question

For the gemstone trade the Imperial Crown of Brazil is a useful reference object because its diamonds are among the best-documented examples at the high end of nineteenth-century Brazilian production. Brazilian diamonds of this period are typically of fine colour, often in the D to G range, but were cut in old-mine and old-European cuts that yield less light return than modern proportions. Their value today is driven by their historic provenance rather than by modern cutting standards.

The Brazilian diamond fields, in their nineteenth-century peak, produced an estimated total of two to three million carats. The discovery of South African diamond fields in the late 1860s rapidly displaced Brazil from primary supplier status, although small-scale production continues in Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso to this day.

Comparison with the Crown of Pedro I

The earlier crown made for Pedro I in 1822, the founder of the Empire and the son of Joo VI of Portugal, is also preserved at the Imperial Museum. It is a smaller, less elaborate piece, reflecting the relatively constrained circumstances of the new Empire's foundation in the wake of independence from Portugal. The 1841 crown represents a more confident assertion of imperial dignity, made when the Empire's institutions had stabilised and Brazilian state revenues, supported by coffee export taxation, permitted higher commissioned expenditure.

Conservation and access

The crown has been conservatorially documented and is regularly inspected. Authorised reproductions exist for educational display, and the original gemstones remain in their original cells without documented replacement. The Imperial Museum permits scholarly study by appointment.

Place in the canon

The Brazilian crown is the only major nineteenth-century imperial crown of a former colonial territory that survives intact in its country of origin. The crowns of the British Indian Empire were dispersed; the Mexican imperial regalia of Maximilian were largely destroyed; the African and Asian imperial regalia of the colonial era are scattered across European institutional collections. Brazil's continuous custody of the Imperial Crown is, in this respect, unusual.