The Pearl: La Peregrina
DISCOVERY IN PANAMA
Scholars offer conflicting reports of its origin, but La Peregrina (“the Pilgrim”) is generally believed to have been discovered during the 16th century off the coast of Panama. Thought to be the largest pearl in the world, it was brought to Madrid by the explorer Vasco de Balboa, who presented it to King Ferdinand V. It was later passed on to his great-grandson, King Philip II, the eldest son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and a grandson of Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad of Castile, founders of the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty.
THE REIGN OF “BLOODY” MARY TUDOR
In 1554 Philip II sent the pearl as an engagement present to the fiancée he had yet to meet, Mary I of England, the eldest daughter of King Henry VIII by his first wife Catherine of Aragon. When they finally came face to face, Philip II is said to have cursed the artist, who he believed had exaggerated Mary’s charms.) The importance accorded to La Peregrina was recorded in numerous portraits of her, including a 1554 piece by the Flemish master Hans Eworth, now displayed in London’s National Portrait Gallery. However, Mary, a pious Catholic, was reviled as Bloody Mary for the 300 Protestant burnings, 100 deaths in custody, and 800 exiles carried out during her five-year reign. Her marriage to the foreign Catholic prince was so unpopular that the ceremony had to be conducted at Winchester Cathedral, miles away from the angry mobs in London. Upon her death in 1558 the pearl was returned to the Spanish treasury, to be worn by a succession of kings and queens, for nearly 300 years.
Queen Mary, 1554, wearing La Peregrina, the largest pearl in the world. Portrait by Hans Eworth (ca. 1525–1578)
THE VELáZQUEZ PORTRAITS
When Philip II died of cancer in 1598, La Peregrina was passed to his son Philip III, whose first wife, Margarita of Austria, wore the pearl on state occasions, such as the celebrations of a peace treaty between Spain and England in 1604. A magnificent equestrian portrait by Velázquez also depicts Margarita with La Peregrina, which is fastened to her bodice. In that picture, today at the Prado Museum, the pearl hangs from the Estanque, a large squared table diamond; the pairing, known as the “joyel de los Austrias” or the “joyel rio,” was created for the royal family. The game continued when Philip IV married his 14-year-old niece, Mariana of Austria. Pressed into royal service once again, Velázquez painted the king’s child bride wearing La Peregrina in her headdress.
Proving that pearls are nothing if not adaptable, Philip IV wore La Peregrina on the brim of his hat at the wedding of his daughter, Maria-Thérèse, to Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, on June 9, 1660. Years later the pearl impressed even the acerbic duke of Saint-Simon, whose famous Mémoires chronicled the intrigues of court life under Louis XIV. “I saw and handled at my ease the famous Peregrina that the King of Spain [Philip V] had that evening on the fold of his hat,” Saint-Simon wrote. “It is perfectly shaped and bell-mouthed.”
Neither the persnickety Saint-Simon – nor the Sun King himself – had much time for Maria Theresa, who had the mentality of a child and loved playing with small dogs and dwarves. French courtiers also noted unkindly she had short legs and black teeth from eating too much chocolate and garlic.
THE TWILIGHT OF THE HAPSBURGS
The tradition of pass the pearl continued when Philip IV died in 1665, leaving La Peregrina to his only surviving son, Charles. Physically and mentally challenged, Charles was known as El Hechizado, the Bewitched—the belief was his disabilities were the result of sorcery rather than th more probably cause: centuries of inbreeding within the Hapsburg dynasty.
In addition to the unfortunate coincidence that his mother was also his first cousin, Charles II had inherited the genes of his great-great-great-grandmother, Joan the Mad. He did, nevertheless, have marvelous jewelry. La Peregrina dangled from his hat during the Corpus Christi processions in 1679, for which he dressed in black, and fastened plumes, diamonds, and other gems to his spectacular headgear.
THE NAPOLEONIC ERA
The peregrinations of La Peregrina during the first half of the 18th century remain a mystery, but the pearl appears to have stayed in the Spanish treasury. It was worn by Maria Luisa of Parma, the last of the country’s 18th-century queens, who was painted frequently by Goya. Contemporaries described her as a boorish and morally corrupt woman who dominated her feeble husband, King Charles IV.
Maria Luisa had numerous lovers, while her husband preferred to spend his time hunting. Still, Charles did try in vain to satisfy his wife’s unquenchable thirst for jewels. Finding the exquisite purity of La Peregrina insufficient, she had it remounted in an oval ball of diamonds with an engraved band across the middle that declared in black enamel letters: Soy La Peregrina (I am the Peregrina).
In 1808 Napoléon Bonaparte’s forces captured Spain and royals were forced to flee, leaving a vacancy on the Spanish throne. Napoléon filled this by appointing his alcoholic brother Joseph Bonaparte, king. Joseph failed to unite the country, and amid threats of a national uprising he fled Madrid and returned to France in 1813, carrying with him La Peregrina.
In Paris, Joseph bestowed the pearl upon Hortense de Beauharnais, the ravishingly beautiful daughter of the Empress Josephine. Napoléon, though, had compelled the 19-year-old Hortense, his stepdaughter, to marry Louis, one of his other brothers. It was a loveless match, but Hortense dutifully accompanied her husband to the Hague when the emperor appointed them as king and queen of Holland in 1806. Upon her death in 1837, she bequeathed La Peregrina to her eldest surviving son, Louis-Napoléon, the future Napoléon III.
THE ABERCORN SUCCESSION
Short of cash, Louis-Napoléon sold the pearl to his friend James Hamilton, the Second Marquis of Abercorn, a British nobleman and a favorite at Queen Victoria’s court. (He later was appointed the First Duke of Abercorn.) James had purchased La Peregrina as a gift for his wife, Louisa, and she was terrified of misplacing it. “To my mother it was an unceasing source of anxiety,” Lord Frederic Hamilton, one of her 14 children, wrote in his 1921 memoir, Here, There and Everywhere. The pearl had never been drilled, he noted, so it could not be fastened, and was “constantly falling from its setting.”
The slippery pearl was inherited in 1885 by Hamilton’s son, the second duke, who had it drilled so that his wife could wear it without the risk of losing it. In 1913 it was polished and its exact weight recorded: 203.84 grains, nearly half an ounce. In turn, it was inherited by the third duke, then the fourth, who offered it to a London jewelry dealer who consigned it to Sotheby Parke Bernet in New York for auction in 1969.
RICHARD BURTON BUYS LA PEREGRINA FOR HIS WIFE, ELIZABETH TAYLOR
Catching wind of the sale, Richard Burton telephoned Sotheby’s and successfully bid $37,000 for La Peregrina as a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most famous women in the world at the time.
At Burton’s request, Ward Landrigan, the head of the auction house’s jewelry department, accepted the hilarious assignment of delivering a pearl worn by four centuries of European royals to a pair of Hollywood royals staying at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Upon receiving it, Taylor was instantly smitten. “I loved putting it around my neck and feeling it dangle,” she said in her memoir My Love Affair With Jewelry. “The pearl was so tactile, I couldn’t stop rubbing it.” But minutes later her excitement turned to terror.
“Elizabeth came across the room yelling, ‘Ward! Ward! The pearl’s missing!’” Landrigan recalls. “I said, ‘Have you looked down your poitrine?’ She answered, ‘Yes!’ Six or seven of us were on our hands and knees trying to find a pearl in the shag rug.”
Landrigan crawled past a white settee and heard a disheartening noise emanating from underneath. “One of Elizabeth’s Pekinese dogs was crunching something in its mouth,” he recalls. “Elizabeth opened his mouth and out popped La Peregrina! This pearl had survived 500 years of history unblemished, and it had little teeth marks from her dog!”
Delighted with her storied pearl, Elizabeth Taylor chose to wear La Peregrina in several films; the first was Anne of a Thousand Days, the 1969 movie in which Burton plays King Henry VIII. It was a fitting film debut for La Peregrina for the Royal Pearl. ◼️
