Pendant

France?, Germany?

This pendant has a sliding panel at the bottom. Small enamelled books served as reliquaries or as covers for miniature devotional books that were worn by their owners. Its decoration probably dates from the mid to late seventeenth century, and was produced possibly in France or Northern Europe. It was displayed in Baroness Edmond de Rothschild’s boudoir in a glass case in the Parisian town house she inhabited with Baron Edmond on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris, before their deaths in 1935 and 1934 respectively. Archival evidence shows that this pendant was confiscated by the Nazis from a bank vault belonging to the heirs of Baron Edmond in 1940, as part of the large scale cultural plunder which took place in the areas of Europe they occupied during World War II.

Earliest Rothschild collector: Baron Edmond de Rothschild; b.1845, d.1934

Credit: Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Waddesdon Manor, 1963