Description
This box is chiseled, partially enameled, and set with three oval portrait miniatures representing:
1. Napoleon I (1767-1821) wearing the uniform of "chausseurs à cheval." Visible on his chest is the star of the Legion of Honor.
2. The "King of Rome" (1811-1832), Napoleon's son by his second wife the Empress Marie-Louise. He wears the band and star of the Legion of Honor.
3. Empress Marie-Louise (1791-1847), the daughter of Francis I of Austria, who married Napoleon in 1810.
The bees surrounding the miniatures were imperial symbols alluding to the Napoleon's royal predecessors, the Merovingian Frankish kings who ruled France from the 5th-8th centuries. Jewels discovered in their tombs were mistakenly identified as representing bees rather than cicadas.
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