Geneva, Switzerland:
A mysterious diamond-laden necklace with attainable hyperlinks to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette, bought for $4.8 million at an public sale in Geneva Wednesday.
The 18th century jewel containing round 300 carats of diamonds had been estimated to promote on the Sotheby’s Royal and Noble Jewels sale for $1.8-2.8 million.
However after energetic bidding, the hammer worth ticked in at 3.55 million Swiss francs ($4 million), and Sotheby’s listed the ultimate worth after taxes and commissions at 4.26 million francs ($4.81 million).
The unidentified purchaser, who put in her bid over the telephone, was “ecstatic”, Andres White Correal, chairman of the Sotheby’s jewelry division, advised AFP.
“She was able to battle and he or she did,” he mentioned, including that it had been “an electrical evening”.
“There’s clearly a distinct segment out there for historic jewels with fabulous provenances… Persons are not solely shopping for the item, however they’re shopping for all of the historical past that’s hooked up to it,” he mentioned.
‘Survivor of historical past’
Among the diamonds within the piece are believed to stem from the jewel on the centre of the “Diamond Necklace Affair” — a scandal within the 1780s that additional tarnished the popularity of France’s final queen, Marie Antoinette, and boosted help for the approaching French Revolution.
The public sale home mentioned the necklace, composed of three rows of diamonds completed with a diamond tassel at every finish, had emerged “miraculously intact” from a non-public Asian assortment to make its first public look in 50 years.
“This spectacular vintage jewel is an unimaginable survivor of historical past,” it mentioned in an announcement previous to the sale.
Describing the huge Georgian-era piece as “uncommon and extremely necessary”, Sotheby’s mentioned it had seemingly been created within the decade previous the French Revolution.
“The jewel has handed from households to households. We will begin on the early twentieth century when it was a part of the gathering of the Marquesses of Anglesey,” White Correal mentioned.
Members of this aristocratic household are believed to have worn the necklace twice in public: as soon as on the 1937 coronation of King George VI and as soon as at his daughter Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.
‘Spectacular’
Past that, little is thought of the necklace, together with who designed it and for whom it was commissioned, though the public sale home believes that such a formidable vintage jewel might solely have been created for a royal household.
Sotheby’s mentioned it was seemingly that a few of the diamonds featured within the piece got here from the well-known necklace from the scandal that engulfed Marie Antoinette only a few years earlier than she was guillotined.
That scandal concerned a hard-up noblewoman named Jeanne de la Motte who pretended to be a confidante of the queen, and managed to amass a lavish diamond-studded necklace in her identify, in opposition to a promise of a later cost.
Whereas the queen was later discovered to be innocent within the affair, the scandal nonetheless deepened the notion of her careless extravagance, including to the anger that may unleash the revolution.
Sotheby’s mentioned the diamonds within the necklace bought Wednesday had been seemingly sourced from “the legendary Golconda mines in India” — thought-about to supply the purest and most dazzling diamonds.
“The lucky purchaser has walked away with a spectacular piece of historical past,” Tobias Kormind, head of Europe’s largest on-line diamond jeweller 77 Diamonds, mentioned in an announcement.
“With distinctive high quality diamonds from the legendary, now extinct Indian Golconda mines, the historical past of a attainable hyperlink to Marie Antoinette together with the truth that it was worn to 2 coronations, all make this 18th Century necklace actually particular.”
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