拍品专文
LOYALTY TO THE KING
The present pendant incorporates a rare medallion, which was commissioned by Queen Charlotte as a gift to close friends, who had remained loyal during the King's illness, to celebrate King's recovery in 1789, subsequently diagnosed as porphyria. The event was greeted with widespread celebrations, and Parliament presented addresses of congratulation to the King on 10 March, the date commemorated on the medallion. The later conversion to a locket enclosing the hair of the King and Queen makes it a very personal memento mori. A similar unmounted medallion is illustrated in G. de Bellaigue, 'Huzza the King Is Well!', The Burlington Magazine, June 1984, vol. 126, no. 975, p. 331, fig. 10.