Amateur Sleuth Identifies the Mystery Women in a Museum’s Fabergé Frames

For years, staffers at an English museum wondered about the identities of two women in a pair of Fabergé photo frames. Now, thanks to the amateur detective work of a museum visitor, the mystery has been solved: The women are Sophia of Prussia, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and Marie Perugia, the wife of Leopold de Rothschild.

Geoffrey Munn, a fine jewelry specialist for Antiques Roadshow, rediscovered the frames in storage at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery about five years ago, per a statement from the museum. At that time, Munn confirmed that the purple and pink frames, as well as several other small objects, were made by Peter Carl Fabergé, the Russian jeweler famous for his ornate Easter eggs.

Though Munn was able to find tiny inventory numbers and Fabergé seals stamped on all the items, nobody could identify the women in the two black-and-white photographs, as Country Life reported in 2020.

The Fabergé frames went on display in 2021. Soon after, actor and filmmaker Andreane Rellou visited the museum with her sister.

“As we wandered around the museum, my sister and I saw the beautiful Fabergé display,” she recalls in the statement. “I noticed the sign next to the display, which indicated that the identities of the women portrayed were a mystery, despite the efforts of researchers, and asked for information from any visitors who had insights to share. I was struck by the idea that these women’s identities were lost, and immediately felt compelled to look into it more.”

Rellou, who says she’s always loved a good mystery, went home and got to work. As she tells the museum, she used her knowledge of historical fashion and hairstyling to date the photographs. She guessed that the older woman’s photo—housed in the smaller, pink frame—was taken in the early Edwardian period, at the beginning of the 20th century. Since Fabergé frames have always been expensive, Rellou guessed the woman had considerable wealth.

“At that point, I searched through debutante portraits, and then I looked through lists of recently married men of the upper classes … and the Rothschild name came up,” says Rellou. “I gasped when I came across Marie Perugia’s portrait from the Rothschild Archive website.”

Perugia was born in Italy in 1862, and she married Leopold de Rothschild—“one of the wealthiest men of his time”—in 1881, writes Newsweek’s Alice Gibbs.

Though identifying Perugia took only a few hours, finding the woman in the purple frame required three days of research. “She had fewer identifying features and was shot from a slightly unusual angle, which made comparing her to pictures of potential women tricky,” Rellou tells Newsweek.

When Munn originally examined the frame, he had wondered whether the woman was Princess Alice of Battenberg, mother of Prince Philip and great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. However, Rellou found that the woman in the purple frame is actually Sophia of Prussia. Born in 1870, Sophia was actually Victoria’s granddaughter. She became the queen of Greece after marrying Constantine I.

Experts think the Brighton Museum’s small Fabergé collection came from the nearby Preston Manor, a historic mansion once owned by an heiress who may have received the items as gifts, reports Artnet’s Sarah Cascone. The five pieces are valued at over $1.27 million.

“I felt very satisfied and extremely excited with my findings,” says Rellou in the statement. “My research very much relied on the work of others, so in a way, it feels like a collaborative effort. I just put the dots together.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.