The fancy 10.38-carat purple-pink diamond once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Now it is set with other diamonds in a JAR ring estimated to sell for $3 million to $5 million.
The modified pink brilliant-cut diamond was one of the French queen's precious jewels. According to royal legend, she entrusted them to a loyal hairdresser when she left Paris in 1791, in the hope that she would one day retrieve them. While the queen met a tragic fate during the revolution, her jewels survived.
Marie Antoinette's daughter Duchess Marie Thérèse de Angoulême inherited the diamond. She later passed it on to her niece Duchess Marie Thérèse de Chambord. Further down the genealogy, the diamond is mentioned in the will of Queen Marie Thérèse of Bavaria as «a pink solitaire diamond from Aunt Chambord».
Now identified by Christie's as Marie Thérèse Pink. A Historic JAR Colored Diamond Ring (Marie Thérèse Pink: a Historic JAR Colored Diamond Ring). The modern reissue was made by JAR - the famous Parisian jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal. He sets the stone in a striking ring of blackened platinum, accented with round diamonds.
Marie Antoinette's pink diamond was last seen at auction in Geneva in 1996. It was offered by a member of European royalty, but remained largely unseen for nearly three decades. In Christie's sale, the diamond comes with a velvet case. The case even contains a gold and silver hairpin bearing the Australian imperial warrant. Christie's reports that the hairpin probably dates from 1868, when it was commissioned by Duchess Marie Thérèse de Chambord.
Source: jckonline.com
