Sarah Bernhardt, René Lalique, and Alphonse Mucha – How the Dragonfly Became the Symbol of the Belle Époque and Art Nouveau

 

From the Parisian Stage to the Masterpiece of René Lalique

The Dragonfly Woman Corsage Ornament by René Lalique is considered one of the most important and spectacular jewelry pieces of the Art Nouveau movement. Its story connects three legendary figures of the Belle Époque era—the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the illustrator Alphonse Mucha, and the artist-jeweler René Lalique.

This is a story about theater, art, beauty, mystery, and imagination. A story in which a woman became a muse, an illustrator turned her into a goddess, and a jeweler transformed her into a winged creature that seems born from a dream.

Paris Dreaming

At the end of the 19th century, it seemed that Paris itself lived inside a work of art.

The cafes of Montmartre bustled with poets and painters, the city boulevards were illuminated by electricity, and theaters became the center of European cultural life.

This was the Belle Époque—an era of optimism, beauty, innovation, and boundless creativity.

The artists of the period sought inspiration everywhere: in flowers, insects, mythology, dreams, and the human soul.

They sought to create a new world.

More beautiful.

Freer.

More mysterious.

The Woman Who Became a Legend

Sarah Bernhardt was not just the most famous actress in France.

She was one of the most famous women in the world.

In an era without cinema, television, or social media, her name was known across Europe, America, and Russia. Millions of people knew her face, collected her portraits, and read enthusiastically about her life.

But Bernhardt was not satisfied with talent.

She built a mythology for herself.

She sculpted, painted, wrote books, raised exotic animals, and surrounded herself with extraordinary objects.

Her most famous photograph shows her lying inside a satin-lined coffin.

Did she really use it to rest?

Was it a publicity stunt?

Historians still argue.

But for Bernhardt, that was not the question at all.

She understood well that a strong memory is created not only by talent—but also by imagination.

When the Woman Became a Symbol

In 1894, Bernhardt’s destiny met a young artist from Moravia named Alphonse Mucha.

The poster he designed for her for the play *Gismonda* became overnight one of the works most identified with the Art Nouveau movement.

Mucha did not paint an actress.

He created a modern goddess.

A tall, mysterious, and radiant figure, wrapped in ornaments, flowers, gemstones, and golden halos.

Mucha’s women did not look like ordinary women.

They looked like creatures belonging to a world between reality and dream.

To a large extent, Mucha created the visual image of the modern woman of the Belle Époque era.

 

The Dragonfly Arrives in Europe

In those same years, European artists discovered Japan.

After the opening of Japan to the West in the second half of the 19th century, a wave of prints, art objects, and aesthetic ideas arrived in Paris.

The phenomenon was named *Japonisme*.

One of the symbols that arrived from the East was the dragonfly.

In Japanese culture, the dragonfly symbolized courage, nobility, freedom, and elegance.

Art Nouveau artists embraced it with enthusiasm.

The dragonfly became one of the most identified motifs of the period.

It appeared in paintings, posters, furniture, art glass, and jewelry.

René Lalique and the Revolution of Art Nouveau Jewelry

At that same time, an artist named René Lalique was working in Paris.

Today he is considered one of the most important jewelry designers in history.

But at the end of the 19th century, his ideas were considered almost revolutionary.

In a world where the value of jewelry was measured mainly by the size of the diamonds, Lalique dared to place art at the center.

He used gold, enamel, diamonds, moonstones, chalcedony, chrysoprase, pearls, and colored stones to tell stories.

Women became flowers.

Snakes became bracelets.

Bats became pendants.

And dragonflies became masterpieces.

Lalique did not create jewelry.

He created wearable art.

From the Snake to the Dragonfly

The connection between Sarah Bernhardt, Alphonse Mucha, and René Lalique began long before the famous dragonfly.

In 1898, Bernhardt played the character of Medea.

Medea—one of the most complex, powerful, and tragic figures in classical theater.

Alphonse Mucha designed the poster for the play and presented Bernhardt as a mythological figure rather than a human being. Her hair twists in organic lines, her gaze is hypnotic, and snake motifs appear around her—an ancient symbol of power, temptation, danger, and transformation.

The snake was not chosen by chance.

For Art Nouveau artists, it represented the idea of metamorphosis—the ability to change, renew, and exist between different worlds.

A short time later, the artist Georges Fouquet designed the famous Serpent Bracelet for Bernhardt, one of the jewelry pieces most identified with the Art Nouveau period.

 

But the snake was only the beginning of a bigger story:

Mucha, Lalique, Fouquet—each in their own way—saw Sarah Bernhardt as an extraordinary figure—a woman who constantly changed, on stage and off.

An actress who became a queen, a saint, a witch, a goddess, and a tragic hero, sometimes in a single evening.

The idea of metamorphosis—change and transformation—was at the heart of the Art Nouveau movement.

Women merged with flowers, flowers became living creatures, and creatures from nature took on human qualities.

In the work of René Lalique, this idea reached its peak. The woman does not just wear the dragonfly—she is the dragonfly.

It is no coincidence that shortly thereafter, even the most delicate insect in nature would become a mysterious and complex creature.

The Dragonfly Woman That Became a Legend

Around the years 1897–1898, Lalique created one of the most famous works in the history of jewelry.

The Dragonfly Woman brooch.

At first glance, it seems to be a dragonfly.

But on second glance, a completely different creature is revealed.

Huge wings made of opalescent enamel are spread to the sides like a tiny stained-glass window.

Diamonds and moonstones glitter along the body.

The creature's abdomen is made of chalcedony.

The character's chest is carved from chrysoprase.

A human face looks forward.

Claws of a mythological creature grasp the air.

And an articulated tail was designed to move with the movement of the wearer's body.

This is not a dragonfly.

This is not a woman.

This is not an animal.

This is a creature born from the imagination of the Art Nouveau era.

 

Was the Dragonfly Sarah Bernhardt?

We do not have proven photographic evidence of Sarah Bernhardt wearing the dragonfly brooch.

However, the connection between the work and the actress is considered one of the most fascinating stories in the history of Art Nouveau jewelry.

Bernhardt was one of Lalique’s most important patrons.

She ordered jewelry from him for her performances and costumes.

Many scholars believe that the dragonfly was created for her or inspired by her, although there is no unequivocal proof of this.

When you look at the face of the dragonfly.

When you look at Mucha’s posters.

And when you look at the famous photograph of Bernhardt in the coffin.

It is hard not to feel that it is the same world.

The same woman.

The same myth.

Sarah Bernhardt was not just a source of inspiration for mythological images. She was also the embodiment of the theater world itself. In one of the famous jewelry pieces René Lalique designed for her, the masks of tragedy and comedy appear—an ancient symbol of the art of acting.

Just as the snake and the dragonfly symbolized change and metamorphosis, so the masks represented the constant transition between characters, emotions, and worlds that made Sarah Bernhardt a legend.

The Exhibition That Changed the Jewelry World

In 1900, Lalique presented his works at the Exposition Universelle de Paris 1900.

About 50 million visitors came to the exhibition.

Visitors came to see the wonders of the new century. It was the largest world exhibition up to its time.

But it was Lalique’s Art Nouveau jewelry that became one of the greatest attractions of the event.

The jeweler and historian Henri Vever wrote after his visit:

“You thought you were dreaming when you saw these beautiful things.”

Lalique won the Grand Prix and was recognized as one of the most important artists of his generation.

Not just a jeweler. An artist.

 

The Man Who Purchased the Dream

Among the visitors to the exhibition was Calouste Gulbenkian.

An oil tycoon, art collector, and one of the richest people in the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

Out of the thousands of works he saw, it was Lalique’s dragonfly that captured his heart.

In 1903, he purchased it directly from the artist.

More than 120 years have passed since.

It is still preserved in the permanent collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal.

Visitors from all over the world continue to stand before it with the same look of wonder that the visitors of Paris had in 1900.

Three Artists, One Image

Alphonse Mucha painted the new woman.

Sarah Bernhardt embodied her.

René Lalique transformed her into jewelry.

All three operated in the same cultural world.

All three contributed to shaping the language of Art Nouveau.

And all three helped make the dragonfly one of the greatest symbols of the Belle Époque era.

The dragonfly was no longer an insect.

It became a metaphor.

For beauty.

For freedom.

For transformation.

And for the power of art to reinvent the world.

- More than a hundred years later

There is beautiful jewelry.

There is rare jewelry.

And there are masterpieces.

René Lalique’s dragonfly brooch belongs to the latter group.

It connects theater, art, fashion, mythology, and jewelry.

It tells the story of an entire era.

And it reminds us why certain works continue to fascinate even more than a hundred years after they were created.

Because they are not just objects.

They are dreams that have taken shape.

Albertina

At Albertina Gallery, we research, collect, and exhibit antique jewelry from the Victorian, Edwardian, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco periods. Like the works of René Lalique and the artists of the Belle Époque, every antique piece of jewelry carries with it a story, craftsmanship, and the spirit of an era. For us, jewelry is much more than luxury items—they are living testimonies to history, culture, and human imagination.