A mysterious necklace loaded with round 500 diamonds and with attainable hyperlinks to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette offered for $4.8 million at public sale in Geneva on Wednesday.
The 18th century jewel, containing round 300 carats of diamonds, is estimated to have been auctioned at Sotheby’s Royal and Noble Jewels sale for $1.8 to 2.8 million.
However after spirited bidding, the hammer worth reached $4 million and Sotheby’s listed the ultimate worth, after taxes and commissions, at $4.81 million.
Among the diamonds are believed to come back from a centerpiece of the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace” – a scandal within the 1780s that additional tarnished the fame of France’s final queen, Marie Antoinette, and elevated help for the longer term French Revolution. .
The public sale home mentioned the necklace, made up of three rows of diamonds with a diamond tassel at every finish, emerged “miraculously intact” from a personal Asian assortment to make its first public look in 50 years.
“This spectacular vintage jewel is an unbelievable survivor of historical past,” it mentioned in a press release earlier than the sale.
Describing the large Georgian-era piece as “uncommon and extremely essential”, Sotheby’s mentioned it was most likely created within the decade earlier than the French Revolution.
“The jewel has been handed down from household to household. We will begin originally of the twentieth century, when it was a part of the gathering of the Marquises of Anglesey,” mentioned Andres White Correal, chairman of Sotheby’s jewellery division. AFP when the necklace went on show in London in September.
It’s believed that members of this aristocratic household wore the necklace twice in public: as soon as on the coronation of King George VI in 1937 and as soon as on the coronation of his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1953.
Moreover, little is understood concerning the necklace, together with who designed it and who it was commissioned for, though the public sale home believes such a shocking vintage piece of jewellery might solely have been created for a royal household.
Sotheby’s mentioned it’s doubtless that among the diamonds featured within the piece come from the well-known necklace from the scandal that engulfed Marie Antoinette only a few years earlier than she was guillotined.
This scandal concerned a noble lady named Jeanne de la Motte, who pretended to be the queen’s confidant and managed to amass an opulent diamond-studded necklace in her title, in opposition to the promise of a later cost.
Though the queen was later discovered harmless within the case, the scandal nonetheless deepened the notion of her careless extravagance, growing the anger that might set off the revolution.
Sotheby’s mentioned the diamonds within the necklace offered on Wednesday doubtless got here from the “legendary Golconda mines in India” – thought-about to provide the purest and most beautiful diamonds.
