So the question remains: Is the information reliable? Since so many details (dates, names) are included, I'm inclined to think it's not without actual relevance.
The portrait of Empress Elisabeth would depict the tiara's condition before "Alexander Köchert was commissioned to create a new one using the leaves, the diamonds & emeralds" in 1878 - which pretty much sums up the status of the piece as worn by Elisabeth in 1874.
Thus the alteration of 1864 could in fact have meant the tiara was dismantled into its components: leaves, emeralds, extra diamonds.
There were supposedly two previous alterations: 1856 (this would have been two years after Elisabeth's wedding to Franz Joseph) and 1847.
As Juscha wrote, three possible owners before Elisabeth come to mind:
Dowager Empress Karoline Auguste, Elisabeth's aunt and widow of Franz Joseph's grandfather Franz, moved to Salzburg after her husband's death in 1835. While it's easy to imagine that she presented her niece with a tiara for her wedding to the young emperor in 1854, it seems somewhat unlikely that she would have commissioned an alteration of the tiara for herself in 1847, 12 years into her widowhood and aged 56 while living a quiet and rather secluded life away from the Viennese court.
Maria Anna of Savoy on the other hand was still empress consort in 1847, the year before her husband's abdication. (And some of the elements of the hair ornament in her portrait from 1835 indeed resemble the ivy leaves worn by Elisabeth in 1874.)
Of course Maria Anna might have inherited a tiara after her mother's death in 1832 – or it could have been a wedding present in 1831 – but maybe she received the tiara from the retiring dowager empress Karoline Auguste who herself, during her tenure from 1816 to 1835, had made use of the tiara originally created for her husband's former wife Maria Ludovika in 1811.
So the tiara's genesis could have been:
Created in 1811 for Empress Maria Ludovika
Used after 1816 by Empress Karoline Auguste
Used after 1835 by Empress Maria Anna who commissioned an alteration in 1847.
Given to Elisabeth for her wedding in 1854, who had it altered in 1856 and dismantled into its elements in 1864, commissioned the use of the elements for a new tiara in 1878 and had it altered again in 1888.
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