Red Cross with Imperial Portraits (Fabergé egg)
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The Red Cross with Imperial portraits egg (or the Imperial Red Cross Easter Egg) is a jewelled and enameled Easter egg made by Henrik Wigström under the supervision of the Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé in 1915, for Nicholas II of Russia, who presented the egg to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, in the same year.[1]
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[edit] Surprise
The surprise is a hinged, folding screen of five oval miniature portraits of women from the House of Romanov, each wearing the uniform of the Red Cross. Inscribed on the outside of the egg are the words, "Greater Love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends". The portraits are of the Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, Nicholas II's sister, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, his eldest daughter, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, the Tsar's second daughter, and the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, the Tsar's first cousin.[1]
[edit] History
Maria Fyodorovna served with the Red Cross during the 1877 Russo-Turkish war, and was later president of the Red Cross from 1894 till her death.[2]
At the outbreak of World War I, Alexandra and her older daughters enrolled as trainee nurses and the Imperial palaces were converted into provisional hospitals.[2]
In 1930, the Red Cross with Imperial portraits egg was sold with nine other Imperial eggs by the Antikvariat to the Armand Hammer Galleries in New York City. It was purchased by Lillian Thomas Pratt, the wife of John Lee Pratt, in 1933. Her Fabergé collection was willed to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, upon her death in 1947.[2]
