# The Patron Who Left No Invoices > Christie's states that no document records the order for the Rothschild Faberge egg. The Academie des Beaux-Arts and the Rothschild Archive say the same of Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild's other 5,000 objects. > The Study - 2026-09-26 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-patron-who-left-no-invoices/ ## Key points - Christie's own 2007 catalogue states that there is no surviving documentary evidence recording an order for the Rothschild egg, and that this is true of all private Faberge commissions from the Saint Petersburg workshops. - The only document behind the story is a codicil of 22 March 1958 to the will of the woman who received the egg, written 53 years after the engagement it marked. It records the gift and the giver. It says nothing about who placed the order. - Christie's own press release of 4 October 2007 suggested her husband Maurice Ephrussi may have ordered it, which is not the same claim as hers. Our own record stated flatly that she ordered it, and that is corrected in this push. - The Third Imperial egg in this archive has what hers does not: a letter of 4 May 1887 in the old style, a named intermediary, an invoice and a price of 2,160 roubles. The state kept accounts and the private client did not. - The Academie des Beaux-Arts writes of her acquisitions that unfortunately the sources are missing, and the Rothschild Archive's own study says the origin of the greatest part of the furniture remains a mystery because the archival sources are lacking. The undocumented egg is not an anomaly but her normal condition. - What is fully documented is the giving away. Her will bequeathed the Villa Ile-de-France and its contents to the Institut de France for the Academie des Beaux-Arts, and the Academie was notified on 11 April 1934, the day of her burial, and accepted on 20 April. ## The selling house says there is no order for this egg ## The one document is a codicil written fifty-three years later ## The Imperial egg has a letter, an intermediary and an invoice ## The museum that owns it credits two makers and no patron ## Specialists say it is a clock, and that it had been published before ## Two institutions with custody of her things say the paperwork is gone ## What is fully documented is the giving away ## Her name is on the object and not in its record ## Why this archive is free to read An auction house told the truth against its own interest in 2007 and almost nobody repeated it: there is no order, no date and no price for the object that carries her family's name. Two institutions that hold what she left, the Academie des Beaux-Arts and the Rothschild Archive, say the same of the other five thousand things. What survives of Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild as a patron is not a single receipt but a villa, a garden, a codicil in another woman's will and a notary's message delivered on the day she was buried. The lesson for anyone researching a woman in a chain of ownership is that the paper is almost always at the receiving end, and that is where to go and look for her. ## Questions **Who commissioned the Rothschild Faberge egg?** Nobody knows, and Christie's says so. Its 2007 catalogue states that no surviving documentary evidence records an order for the egg, as is the case for all private commissions by the Faberge workshops in Saint Petersburg. Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild is documented as the giver, by a codicil of 22 March 1958 to the recipient's will. Christie's own press release suggested her husband Maurice may have placed the order. **Who was Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild?** Charlotte Beatrice de Rothschild, 1864 to 1934, was a French collector and builder, the daughter of Alphonse de Rothschild and the wife of the banker Maurice Ephrussi. She inherited on her father's death in 1905, bought seven hectares at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat that year and built the Villa Ile-de-France, and bequeathed the villa, its gardens and her collections to the Institut de France for the Academie des Beaux-Arts. **How many objects were in her bequest?** The Academie des Beaux-Arts and the villa's own history both say not fewer than 5,000 works of art, drawn from the villa, her Paris house at 19 avenue Foch and her two Monte Carlo villas. French Wikipedia gives more than 5,300 pieces and cites nothing for it. The categories include soft and hard paste porcelain, eighteenth-century furniture, paintings, sculpture and drawings, fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian and Spanish works on stone and wood, Savonnerie carpets and Gobelins tapestries, and painted silks and lacquer from Asia. **What did the Rothschild egg sell for?** Christie's sold it in London on 28 November 2007 against an estimate of 6,000,000 to 9,000,000 pounds for a price realised of 8,980,500 pounds, which includes the buyer's premium. Christie's published no hammer price for the lot, and the lot carried import VAT at 5 per cent on the hammer and 15 per cent on the premium, so any hammer figure quoted elsewhere is a reconstruction. **Is the Rothschild egg actually an egg?** The Faberge Research Site records that Faberge scholars do not agree that it should be called an egg and suggest it is a clock made in the shape of an egg, and notes that it was not presented at Easter. The Hermitage, which has owned it since 2015, catalogues it as the Rothschild Clock Egg and credits the clockmaker Nikolay Rode alongside the workmaster Michael Perkhin. **Where is it now, and how did it get there?** It is in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, museum number E-18382, recorded as having entered in 2015 as a gift from the President of the Russian Federation, with the handover ceremony held on 8 December 2014 at the museum's 250th anniversary. Alexander Ivanov, who bought it at Christie's in 2007, confirmed to the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets in December 2014 that it was the egg he had bought. The specialist site that tracks these objects writes that as far as its author knows it has not been made public how the Russian state came to hold it. ## Sources - [1] Christie's, lot 55 in auction 7461 (lot page id 5002399), "A JEWELLED VARI-COLOURED GOLD-MOUNTED AND ENAMELLED EGG ON PLINTH, INCORPORATING A CLOCK AND AN AUTOMATON", Russian Works of Art Including The Rothschild Faberge Egg, London, 28 November 2007, for the statement that no documentary evidence records an order for the egg or for any private Faberge commission, the codicil of 22 March 1958 and its English translation, the provenance line reading gift to, the Perkhin and Rode marks and the engraved date, the Wartski workshop photograph and the 1,500 rouble helmet box delivered on 19 July 1902, the estimate of 6,000,000 to 9,000,000 pounds and the price realised of 8,980,500 pounds, the VAT at 5 per cent on hammer and 15 per cent on premium, the fifty Imperial eggs, the private clients including Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Iusupov and Kelch eggs, the inheritance of 1905 and the purchase of seven hectares of which 3.5 remain, and her gambling on cruises. Read by plain fetch with a desktop User-Agent after WebFetch refused the domain. - [2] Ulrich Leben, "Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild: creator and collector", The Rothschild Archive, Review of the Year April 2008 to March 2009, for the quoted bequest clause to the Institut de France for the Academie des Beaux-Arts and the salon direction, the death at the Hotel d'Angleterre in Davos aged 70 and the burial at Pere Lachaise on 11 April 1934, the notary's message of the same day, the Institut informed on 15 April and the acceptance and appointment of Albert Tournaire on 20 April, Widor's call at the Faubourg Saint-Honore and the family's ignorance of the bequest, the absence of acquisition and payment records, the mystery of the furniture's origin, the unsubstantiated purchases including Lefuel on Josephine Bonaparte's mirror room, her being a keen auction enthusiast unusual for a Rothschild and a seller as well as a buyer, the disposal of her father's antique and Dutch paintings, the roll call of architects and the Auburtin and Messiah sequence, the completion of structural work in 1911, the orders to Jean Dunand in the Fond Laprade, and the six million francs reported by L'Intransigeant of 16 April 1934. - [3] Academie des beaux-arts, "Patrimoine de l'Academie: la Fondation Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild", for not fewer than 5,000 works of art in the bequest and the list of categories, the purchase of seven hectares at La Colle Blanche in 1905, the titanic works of 1907 to 1912, the exhaustion of four architects and the roles of Auburtin and Messiah, the phrase that unfortunately the sources are missing for her acquisitions, the Prelle silk woven for the Parmentier chairs, the Savonnerie carpet for the chapel at Versailles, the survival of only the terracing, the lapidary garden, some acclimatised trees and the fountains, the gardens redrawn three times since the bequest, and the classification date printed as 1993. - [4] State Hermitage Museum, digital collection record for the Rothschild Clock Egg, for the authorship given as Perkhin as master and Nikolay Rode as clockmaker, the House of Faberge, the date 1902, the dimensions of 27 cm high, the museum number in the Cyrillic E series as 18382, and the acquisition recorded as entering the museum in 2015 as the gift from the President of the Russian Federation. Read by plain fetch with a desktop User-Agent, which returns the record in full. - [5] Faberge Research Site, "Eggs: Recent Discoveries", for the scholars' disagreement that the object is an egg rather than a clock in the shape of an egg and that it was not presented at Easter, for the report that a photograph of the clock was found in Maurice Rheims, L'Objet 1900, 1964, and for Kieran McCarthy's garland-count argument distinguishing the Rothschild egg from the Kelch Chanticleer egg in the Perchin workshop photograph. Tertiary to the printed catalogues it summarises, and cited as the specialist reference's own claim. - [6] Faberge Research Site, "Faberge Imperial Egg Chronology", for the letter of 4 May 1887 in the old style from Modest Solovyev to Nikolai Petrov recording the commission by order of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the delivery to the Emperor and the invoice of 2,160 roubles, and for the presentation to Maria Feodorovna at Easter 1887. - [7] Kieran McCarthy, "Faberge and the Rothschilds", The Rothschild Archive, Review of the Year April 2004 to March 2005, for the statement that the Rothschilds purchased Faberge exclusively from the firm's London branch, that the London branch was the only one outside Russia and opened in 1903, that twenty-five members of the family were customers to 1917, and that of the thousands of pieces the firm made only fifty were Imperial eggs. A machine search of the extracted text returns no occurrence of Ephrussi or Beatrice. - [8] Mieks Faberge Eggs, "1902 Rothschild Egg", reproducing in full the Christie's press release of 4 October 2007, for the statement that the egg had never been published and was recorded only in private family records, for the suggestion that it is possible that Maurice ordered the egg whilst in St. Petersburg or during a Faberge selling trip to Paris, for the figure of no more than 12 documented examples made to Imperial standards for private clients, for the presentation to the Hermitage on 8 December 2014 at the 250th anniversary, for the note that it has not been made public how the Russian State came into possession of the two Faberge works, and for Alexander Ivanov's confirmation to Moskovsky Komsomolets of 9 December 2014. The release itself is no longer on christies.com; this specialist site carries it and lists the dead original URLs. - [9] Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, "Un peu d'histoire", for the garden works beginning at once and taking seven years, the villa works beginning in 1907 and her moving in in 1912, the crediting of Auburtin without naming Messiah, the themed gardens conceived by Louis Marchand in the year of her death, the bequest dated 1933 with some 5,000 works of art and seven hectares, and the Academie resuming direct management in 2023. - [10] Galerie Georges Petit, Objets d'art, sale catalogue, Paris, 19 May 1913, 222 pages, Lugt 72771, copy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art libraries, catalogued under the topic Madame Ephrussi. Cited for the existence of a dated Madame Ephrussi sale of works of art in Paris in 1913; the identification with Beatrice is inference, since the period named her Madame Maurice Ephrussi, and the catalogue's 222 pages were not read.