A shell of a crown, stripped of stones and of any claim to authenticity. A replica, not a regalia: a house crown from 1742, preserved in the treasury of the Munich Residenz.
Originally crafted to elevate the Bavarian Elector Charles VII, the crown alludes to a reign shaped less by sovereignty than by semblance.
A crown for an emperor without dominion, a title without the Habsburg legitimacy. A coronation of fiction.

It nods discreetly to The Man with the Golden Helmet, once falsely assigned to Rembrandt.
A portrait of the fragility of legitimacy.