The color green embodies the dawn of a promise, that of the tender rebirth of beings that winter has caught, ankylosed, asleep for long frigid months, of a newfound vitality, nourished by hope, by nature awakening in the sunny mist of a new morning. A better world, a happy world, a fulfilled world: these are the profoundly human values embodied by this hue with its thousand invigorating nuances. Among them, Breguet has chosen the tenderness of turquoise intermingled with azure, the union of earth and sky, to dress the noble, slender silhouette, rounded like a heart in love, of the irresistibly feminine Reine de Naples 8918 watch.

Its oval face is adorned with immaculate mother-of-pearl like a carpet of soft snow, and at its heart, slightly offset downwards, is a disc covered with diamonds of different diameters, arranged one against the other using the snow-set technique. Encircled by a delicate black belt of stars and geometrical symbols that punctuate the minutes in segments of five and fifteen, the small blued Breguet hands with hollowed-out knobs indicate the essential time, driven by the automatic caliber 537/3, which delivers 45 hours of power reserve. Arabic numerals, printed on the iridescent surface with decals combining two different greens – one light to form the body of the character, one dark to highlight it and give it relief – follow the curvature of the dial, while the fire of a pear-cut diamond at 6 o’clock illuminates this elegant scenography. The white gold case, measuring 36.5mm long, 28.45 wide and 10.1 high, is hemmed with two ribbons of 117 gemstones running along the flange and bezel, and features a crown at 4 o’clock punctuated by a briolette. It is attached to the wrist by two strands of alligator leather matching the hour-markers, closed by a diamond-trimmed folding clasp.

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While its roots lie in the rich heritage of the company founded in 1775, which includes some of the greatest advances in modern watchmaking such as the eponymous balance-spring, the pare-chute and the tourbillon, to name but a few, the Reine de Naples is essentially based on an interpretation of the first wristwatch developed by Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823) at the request of Caroline Murat née Bonaparte (1782-1839) between 1810 and 1812. Its unique oval silhouette, in a landscape populated by round models where square, rectangular or even tonneau shapes are rare, makes it an atypical, furiously feminine timepiece, but also a blank canvas on which to affix aesthetic savoir-faire, also initiated in the 18^th century by the ingenious watchmaker.

Bucking the ornamental trends of the time, which resulted in timepieces saturated with decoration, Abraham-Louis Breguet focused on the watch’s primary function: to display time clearly, freeing cases and dials from all embellishment. This philosophy of purity, this design based on the essential, is a driving force that still fuels the watchmaking brand, without however neglecting artistic craftsmanship, as evidenced by certain models in the Reine de Naples collection, and often hemmed with precious stones. Guilloché is one of Breguet’s main signatures, and the Manufacture’s craftsmen work on the dials using several motifs – Clous de Paris, colimaçon, checkerboard – to delimit the reading zones, as on the 8998 Day/Night reference, the 8968 and 8908, on a gold disc or, in the case of the 8965, in mother-of-pearl. Moreover, this natural material with its iridescent reflections is often used by Breguet in this product family, in applied surfaces to cover all or part of the watch face (8918, 8925, 8928, 8908, 8909, , 8939, 8978) or in marquetry (9807, 9808, 9818). The company also distinguished itself with cameo shell work on a spectacular piece, the Reine de Naples 8958, a few years ago.

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Right from the start, when he was still learning the art of watchmaking in France, the young Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823) stood out for his mechanical aptitude, precocious erudition and rare intelligence. Once established in 1775 in a workshop on the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris, Breguet’s technical inventions and aesthetic language quickly earned him a solid reputation and a prestigious clientele both inside and outside France.

Among the illustrious personalities who bought the work of Abraham-Louis Breguet, famous women were seduced by the instruments he developed: Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793), wife of Louis XVI (1754-1793), Empress Joséphine (1763-1814), then her daughter Hortense (1783-1837) and her sister-in-law Caroline Murat (1782-1839), younger sister of Napoleon I (1769-1821). For the latter, and at her request, the master watchmaker invented the first wristwatch, which he delivered in 1812 and whose main features inspired the Reine de Naples collection almost two centuries later. This family of timepieces, whose personality is so powerful that each model is perfectly identifiable, not least thanks to its oval case, is not the only one to pay tribute to the strong bond between Abraham-Louis Breguet and his customers. Indeed, although the trend is to do away with categories based on gender, the eponymous brand’s offering includes certain timepieces – always mechanical, often adorned with precious stones and sometimes featuring complications – with contained dimensions clearly intended for feminine wrists. The references Classique 9085, 8068, 9087, 9067, Marine 9509, 9517, 9518, or 7035, 7038 from the Tradition family, or, more exceptionally, the extraordinary Les Volants de la Reine, L’Orangerie, among others, are proof of this attachment.

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Like love, the beating of an infatuated heart and the sentimental gymnastics that embrace it, alternating between the euphoria of an unforgettable memory and the deep sighs of emotional serenity, time too possesses a philosophical elasticity. Isn’t it said that time tends to speed up during joyous moments and lengthen during boredom? If sixty seconds on the dial of a watch make up a minute, sixty minutes make up an hour, time breathes in rhythm, like the organ that palpitates in our chest, and yet the experience of these durations sometimes presents a different reality. Breguet translates this purely lyrical impression with an original hand applied to its ideal timepiece for transcribing this symbol of love: the Reine de Naples.

The elegant collection, based on the creation between 1810 and 1812 of the first wristwatch born of the relationship between a young monarch, Caroline Murat (1872-1839) and the mechanical genius of her favorite watchmaker, Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), is expanded with the addition of two models that personify this temporal flexibility. One, the Reine de Naples 9835, is a limited edition of just 20 pieces, all in blue mother-of-pearl with diamonds, while the other, the Reine de Naples 9838, features an immaculate white-lacquered face hemmed with blue sapphires. Common to this duo is the egg-shaped gold case, measuring 36.5mm in length, 28.4mm in width and 11mm in thickness, and housing the 78A0 caliber. This movement, wound by a platinum oscillating weight with a 40-hour power reserve, features a heart-shaped hand under the hour aperture, composed of a pair of nickel-phosphorus alloy arms, one flexible and the other rigid. This binomial ends in an arrowhead, silver or red, to indicate the minutes, and its rhythmic stroke transforms its geometry, stretched towards 9 o’clock then fleshy from 3 o’clock onwards, mimicking the pulsations of love.

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It was in 2002 that the Reine de Naples watch made its entry into the watchmaking world, based on the main codes depicted in the books of special orders by Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823) and then his son Antoine-Louis Breguet (1776-1858), carefully preserved in the museum of the current eponym company, of piece no. 2639 that the ingenious Paris-based watchmaker developed at the request of Caroline Murat (1782-1839) between 1810 and 1812. Indeed, the young sister of Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821), then sovereign consort of the Italian region, wanted to be able to read the time inscribed freely on her wrist like a piece of jewelry. The essential stylistic vocabulary of this now-defunct object can be found in the reinterpretation of what remains the first wristwatch in the history of watchmaking.

The Reine de Naples collection reinvents the time imagined by Abraham-Louis Breguet and worn by Caroline Murat, with its timepieces featuring a mechanical heart and oblong-shaped cases whose flanks are adorned with delicate fluting. At around 4 o’clock, the crown is topped with a cabochon-cut or briolette-cut gem, while at 6 o’clock, a metal sphere, sometimes lined with stones, secures the alligator leather, silky satin or braided chain bracelet. Time follows the curved lines of the dial, with its hour-markers extended between 11 and 2 o’clock, while two small Breguet-style hands indicate the hours and minutes in the center of the dial. Steel, white or pink gold, polished or diamond-coated: the precious case measures 36.5mm high by 28.45mm wide, with a thickness of 10.5mm. A smaller version (32×27), available in different versions, completes this family of watches.

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He, a brilliant watchmaker and undoubtedly the greatest master of scientific timekeeping, was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where his curiosity for mechanics led him to continue his training in Paris, where he practiced his craft like a sacred art in his workshop on the Quai de l’Horloge on the Île de la Cité since 1775, a place that bears witness to his many inventions, both technical and aesthetic.

She, the younger sister of the first French emperor, born in Ajaccio, Corsica, and married to a high-ranking army officer who inherited the kingdom of Naples, was his most fervent admirer, as evidenced by the 34 pieces she acquired between 1808 and 1814, the duration of her role as sovereign consort.

His name was Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), her name was Caroline Murat (1782-1839), and their relationship, between dazzlement, loyalty and deference, guided them towards a unique creation, the first wristwatch in history.

Indeed, in 1810, two years after settling in Naples, Caroline Murat commissioned Abraham-Louis Breguet to design a timepiece with a completely new main criterion: instead of nestling it in a pocket or purse, she wanted to wear it at the end of her arm, close to her hand, like a jewel that everyone could see, admire against their skin. The object was paid for in 1811 and delivered in 1812, according to the carefully preserved archives, which lost track of him in 1855. Although there are no technical drawings, the recorded description allows us to grasp its essence: a watch with a flat, elongated silhouette, equipped with a repeater and a thermometer, to be tied to the wrist with a braided link of hair and gold thread.

In 2002, the Breguet watchmaking company unveiled a contemporary interpretation, refined to the extreme, of the timepiece imagined by Abraham-Louis Breguet for Caroline Murat, a collection that pays tribute to them and conveys a unique expression of time with its oval shape, often trimmed with diamonds and always set to the rhythm of a mechanical heart: the Reine de Naples.

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