Fabergé Eggs: The 1915 Red Cross Egg

A repost from April 3, 2015:

Fabergé Eggs: The 1915 Red Cross Egg with Imperial Portraits
Over the years we've posted most of the Imperial (and one non-Imperial) Fabergé eggs but somehow missed the 1915, the first Easter of the Great War.
So 100 Easters later (it fell on Apr. 4 that year), here it is via one of the best sources on the internet, Mieks:

1915 Red Cross Egg with Imperial Portraits

Presented by Nicholas II to Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna
Made in Saint Petersburg
Owner:  Lillian Thomas Pratt Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, USA
Height: 7,6 cm

The 1915 Red Cross Portraits Egg is made of silver, gold, opalescent white and translucent red enamel. The miniature screen is made of mother of pearl and watercolor on ivory.

Opalescent white guilloche enamel covers the chased silver ground on this Egg. Two opposing red enamel crosses bear the dates "1914 and "1915". A Russian inscription, in stylized god enamel scrip reads "Greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his comrades". On the top of the Egg is the crown and monogram of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, in silver. At the bottom is a six-petal rosette.

The surprise of this Egg is a hinged, folding screen of five oval miniature portraits, each set in an opalescent white enameled panel mounted in gold. The portraits by Vasilii Zuiev are of:

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the Tsar's sister,
Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaievna, his eldest daughter,
Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna,
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nicholaievna, the Tsar's second daughter,
and Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, the Tsar's first cousin. 

 ...MORE 

Here is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Pratt collection homepage including links to their five Imperial eggs.

addendum via Mieks:

....Meanwhile, the Tsar spent more and more time at the front with his armies. Alexandra wrote daily to her husband: 20 November 1914.
"This morning we were present (I help as always giving the instruments and Olga threaded the needles) at our first big amputation. Whole leg was cut off. I washed and cleaned and bandaged all up." 25 November 1915. "During an operation a soldier died. Olga and Tatiana behaved well; none lost their heads and the girls were brave. They had never seen death. But he died in a minute. How near death always is."

A photograph taken during the First World War, of
Tsarina Alexandra and the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana in their nurses' uniforms