(Cartier Paris, 1927)
(Cartier, c. 2003)
(Cartier, Paris, 1935)
(Cartier Paris, 1914)
(Cartier Paris, 1964)
(Cartier Paris, 1957)
At the Capitoline Museums
(Milan, Marsilio Arte, 2025)
At least once in our lifetime, we have been dreaming of wearing a powerful untamed apotropaic Cartier panther. We may have wisely driven away such a fantasy because of its somehow obscene character for all the reasons we profoundly know as daughters of this aporetic world: of course, this is not a time for pomp and ostentation. It is all very well to fiercely repeat this kind of austerity mantra, in a time when Rama Duwaji has to justify herself for wearing luxury boots at her husband’s swearing-in ceremony, until we ask ourselves how many people work globally in the industry of high jewellery. One is immediately blown away by the figures: more than 25 million miners and 150 to 170 million people indirectly depend on artisanal and small-scale mining worldwide, according to estimates cited in recent European policy papers, UN reports, and a 2011 study by the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM). This is nearly three times the population of Italy, if we need a proportion. Then with a clear conscience we can allow ourselves to indulge in our interest for high jewellery history and knowledge, without adding—because it is evident—that it is culture after all.
In its whole, the exhibition tells the story of the cultural relationship the Maison Cartier entertains with Antiquity, myths, and Italy since it was founded in 1847, a moment in which Queen Victoria and Emperor Napoleon III encouraged combinations of styles and historical periods in the arts. In this fertile framework the Maison Cartier paid a tribute to pharaonic Egypt and the Greco-Roman world, as jewellery historian Bianca Cappello observes in “The Evocation of Classicism” in the Cartier & Myths exhibition catalogue. Panthère rings—the first one was made by Louis Cartier in 1935—and double-headed bracelets—the first one, in diamonds and onyx with emerald eyes, was commissioned in 1952 by the Duchess of Windsor—are directly drawn from Greco-Roman imagery. Panthers are a representation of womanhood, a central theme in Louis Cartier’s creative activities. The desire to enhance the power of being a woman, the question of its representativeness appeared when he met Jeanne Toussaint, who started working as an employee in the accessories department in 1920. Jeanne’s passion for jewellery in Antiquity was evident, and Louis Cartier followed her path. She was a striking example of the at the time nascent figure of the modern career woman with all the skills of a manager. Louis Cartier used to call her “Pan-pan”, a nickname drawn from “panthère” because she owned a cigarette case decorated with an onyx panther on, made around 1917. At the time, the animal was the symbol of a strong powerful woman as it was in Ancient Greece and in the Roman world in which the panther symbolized a woman aware of her sexual power. In Greece, panthers were the attribute of Dionysus.
During Pan-pan’s career, from the accessories department job to the role of creative director she held from 1933 to 1970, the Panther became an emblem of the Maison Cartier, and took as many different forms as the variety of the objects Cartier designed and crafted. The exhibition at the Capitoline Museums shows some of them, and they are spectacular. Among them a panthère cliquet pin (1929) in platinum, diamonds and onyx, which belonged to the British fashion model Nina Dyer (1930-1965), wife of Sadruddin Aga Khan. She used to wear it with a panthère bangle, in which Cartier perfectly seized the strength and the refinement of the animal and of the woman it adorned.