GENEVA – A diamond-encrusted necklace believed to be linked to a scandal that hastened the downfall of France's doomed 18th-century queen Marie Antoinette offered at an public sale in Geneva on Wednesday for four.26 million Swiss francs ( 6.44 million Singapore ).
Put up on the market by a personal Asian collector, the Georgian-era piece containing 300 carats of diamonds offered greater than anticipated after a protracted bidding battle, having beforehand been valued at as much as 2 million francs, based on Sotheby's.
“It was an electrical night time,” Sotheby's jewellery specialist Andrés White Correal stated after the necklace's late-night sale to an undisclosed purchaser.
“There may be clearly a distinct segment available in the market for historic jewellery with fabulous provenance. Folks don't simply purchase the merchandise, they purchase all of the historical past related to it.”
Sotheby's stated this month that among the diamonds within the piece might have come from a necklace that helped precipitate the downfall of Marie Antoinette, a member of the Austrian royal household who grew to become the spouse of French King Louis XVI.
Each had been guillotined in 1793 in the course of the French Revolution.
The jewels in query had been on the heart of a 1785 scandal referred to as the Diamond Necklace Affair through which a rich noblewoman named Jeanne de la Motte posed because the French queen and bought the necklace in her title with out cost.
A subsequent trial discovered the queen harmless, however did little to decrease her rising notoriety for her extravagance, which helped gasoline the revolution and the overthrow of the French monarchy.
The diamonds from the unique necklace, made within the 1770s, had been later offered piecemeal on the black market and are subsequently nearly unimaginable to hint. Nevertheless, some consultants say the standard and age of the diamonds level to a coincidence.
The necklace, which seems like a shawl, might be worn open or tied within the entrance. A earlier proprietor was the British Marquis of Anglesey, and a member of the household wore it to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Sotheby's stated.
Blanco Correal stated the necklace's purchaser was “ecstatic.”
“She informed me one thing lovely: 'I’m exceptionally glad to have received this lot; however I don’t personal it, I’m merely the custodian till the subsequent individual comes alongside.'”
[[nid:709111]]