The votive crown of Leo VI was crafted between the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th. It consists of a gilded silver structure with fourteen enamel medallions encircled with pearls. Of these medallions, six have been lost, seven depict figures of the apostles and one, that of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise (r. 886-912), garbed with loros (a long, narrow stole wrapped around the shoulders and dropped over the left hand) and crown.

Under the medallions there are rings that must have served to attach strings of pearls or precious stones. The same purpose was served by the rings on the beak of the two peacocks (originally three), added between the 13th and 14th centuries to allow the grafting on the crown of the rock crystal aedicula known as the "Grotto of the Virgin". The rings on the backs of the peacocks instead were used to to attach the crown to a support, as was common both in the Byzantine empire and in the West, as is evidenced by iconographic and text sources as, for example, by some of the mosaics in the church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.