On the second evening of the German state visit to the Netherlands, it was the Queen Maxima Romanov brooch that stopped royal watchers in their tracks: a pearl and diamond stomacher with a lineage stretching back to the Russian imperial court, worn at the German Ambassador’s residence in The Hague with the ease of someone entirely at home in history’s jewel box.
Queen Maxima and King Willem-Alexander were hosting German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife, Elke Büdenbender, returning the hospitality of the grand state banquet held the previous evening. For the musical reception, Maxima, 55, chose a dusky pink jumpsuit from Natan, her favoured Belgian designer, with her hair drawn up into a sweep. The jewellery was the quieter, more considered register she favours away from the banqueting table: cascading bejewelled earrings, bangles, and then, at the centre of it all, the brooch.
A piece of imperial Russia in The Hague
The Queen Maxima Romanov brooch carries a remarkable provenance. Originally a stomacher, worn flat across the torso, it belonged to Tsarina Maria Feodorovna of Russia, who gave it to her daughter, Anna Pavlovna. Anna arrived in the Netherlands as the wife of King Willem of the Netherlands, bringing with her an immense dowry that included this piece. The daughter of Tsar Paul I and granddaughter of Catherine the Great, Anna never fully shed her Russian identity, identifying more as an Imperial Duchess than a Dutch consort, and never quite settled into her role as queen.
The stomacher passed down through the generations, reaching the two wives of Anna’s eldest son, King William III, and eventually finding its way to the Dutch Royal House collection that Maxima wears from today. The brooch exists in two configurations: the simpler form, as Maxima wore it at Wednesday’s reception, and a more elaborate version featuring a cascade of diamonds and two great pearls, which she chose for an official visit to Austria in 2022. On that occasion she paired it with the Mellerio tiara, itself crafted from pearls once owned by Queen Wilhelmina, the granddaughter of Anna Pavlovna.
The Dutch sapphire tiara and a night of royal history
If the brooch was the quieter story of the visit, the previous evening’s state banquet had offered something far grander. For that occasion, Maxima reached for the Dutch sapphire parure tiara, one of the most imposing pieces in the royal collection, dating to the late 19th century. Featuring 33 blue sapphires and 655 diamonds, it was purchased by King Willem III as a gift for his wife, Queen Emma. After Emma’s death it passed to Crown Princess Juliana, who wore it to the Coronation of King George VI in 1937, and it returned to Britain again in 1962, this time on the head of Queen Beatrix, King Willem-Alexander’s mother, who held a particular affection for the piece.
For Maxima, the sapphire tiara carries a deeper personal significance: it was the diadem she wore when King Willem-Alexander was inaugurated as King, following Queen Beatrix’s abdication after a 33-year reign. The inauguration itself took place later on the same day that Beatrix stepped down.
Alongside Maxima at the state banquet sat Princess Catharina-Amalia, wearing the Dutch star tiara, a piece with its own sentimental connection to her mother. The princess’s ease with the royal collection has been evident since childhood. Her biography, Amalia, records that at just eight years old she was trying on the Mellerio Ruby Tiara as her mother prepared for engagements, and that she later declared: ‘Show me a tiara, and I know where it comes from. I can recognise all the tiaras in Europe.’ Since her official tiara debut in 2022, she has worn more of the family’s heirloom pieces with growing confidence.
The Queen Maxima Romanov brooch, worn in its quieter form on Wednesday evening, was perhaps the most eloquent piece of all: a fragment of the Russian imperial court, carried across Europe by a woman who never quite felt she belonged, now worn with complete assurance by a queen who very much does. For details of the Dutch Royal House’s programme of official engagements and state visits, see the Dutch Royal House official site, and for President Steinmeier’s itinerary, visit bundespraesident.de.