Marie Antoinette's Pink Diamond at Auction, the Restoration of an Early Portrait, and a Very Scandalous Dress
France's ill-fated queen in the headlines this week.
When revolution swept France, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette made the difficult (and ultimately, doomed) decision to remain in the country. But the queen made sure to send ahead a trunk of jewels with the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador to France and a close confidant.
By 1795, both the king and queen were dead, and their only living child, Marie Thérèse, was finally granted permission to live in exile in Austria. There, she was reunited with some of her mother’s jewels. One of them was the 10.38-carat pink diamond below, which Marie Thérèse left to her niece, Duchess Marie-Thérèse de Chambord. Later, the duchess passed it to her own niece, Queen Maria Theresa of Bavaria, who referred to the stone as a “pink solitaire diamond from Aunt Chambord.”
Today, the diamond, coupled with a fleur-de-lis, sits atop a ring. On June 17th, it heads to auction, where it is expected to sell for $3 to $5 million.
Marie Antoinette has been on the mind this week, as I recently released a video about the queen’s scandalous chemise on the Crossroads YouTube channel. (If you’re not already a subscriber, be sure to join here.)
It might surprise some readers to learn that Marie Antoinette’s most scandalous outfit was not her most formal, nor her most expensive. The chemise à la reine was a looser-fitting cotton dress tied at the waist with a sash, and it was immortalized by the queen’s favorite portrait artist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun at the Paris Salon of 1783. (See Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress above.)
To learn why this dress was the source of such uproar, watch below:
The timing of this video was fortuitous not only because of the news about the diamond auction: a few days later, the Victoria and Albert Museum released a video about the conservation work undertaken on an early portrait of the queen. The painting by François Hubert Drouais depicts Marie Antoinette at seventeen, merely a year before she became queen.
Senior Conservator Philip Kevin guides viewers through the process of restoring the portrait—I think readers will find it fascinating.
Finally, for those interested in an in-depth look at the life of Marie Antoinette, patrons of the Gazette can access an exclusive series on the subject here.
Love this! Wow! What a ring. It’s hard to believe things like that are out there still in the public. I wonder how many pieces like this exist that we don’t know about.
Great job!
Thank you for the research 💍 🩷 ⚜️ 🇦🇹 👑 🇨🇵