A pair of diamond bracelets commissioned and worn by former French Queen Marie-Antoinette will be going up for auction this week. The auction is a part of British Auction House Christie’s Luxury Week, which runs from the 2nd of November to the 14th of December.
It is a miracle that the bracelets have survived the centuries since their creation. Many of Marie-Antoinette’s jewellery has ended up being separated into parts, but somehow these bracelets have remained intact. The Queen of France hid away her most important possessions whilst imprisoned in the Tuileries Palace in Paris by wrapping them in cotton and placing them in a wooden chest. Somehow, the chest was snuck out of France, in 1971, to Count Mercy-Argenteau in Brussels, who was the former Austrian ambassador, for safekeeping.
The chest passed through a couple of hands before ending up in the safeguarding of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. Shortly after the Queen beheading by guillotine on the 16th of October 1793, he ordered the chest’s opening. Before being sent to Vienna, the items were catalogued, where they were held until the Queen’s sole heir could claim them. Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France, also known as Madame Royale and the Duchess of Agoulême, was the only surviving child of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, who claimed items in 1796, upon arriving in Vienna. Upon Marie-Thérèse’s death, she had no children, so she passed the bracelets on to her niece, the Duchess of Parma, who then bequeathed them to her son Robert, Duke of Parma, and the bracelets have been in the royal family’s jewellery collection ever since.
Marie-Antoinette is well-known for her elaborate spending, which she received much criticism for and was part of why French commoners intensely disliked her, and these bracelets continue the trend. It is reported that she commissioned the piece, circa 1776, from Charles Auguste Boehmer for 250,000 livres (estimated to be around AUD 8 million). To afford the bracelets, she had to trade some of her gems and borrow 29,000 livres (almost AUD 1 million) from her husband. The bracelet is made up of 112 diamonds, worth about 140-150 -carats. A 1785 portrait of Marie-Antoinette with two of her children by Adolf Ulrich Wertmuller shows her wearing the bracelets, and an 1817 portrait of Marie- Thérèse by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, depicts her wearing the bracelets.
The diamond bracelets are up for auction as a part of the Geneva Magnificent Jewels collection. Which also contains antique Cartier diamond rings, fancy vivid yellow and purple-pink diamond rings and a 43-carat D colour, flawless diamond ring. They are estimated to fetch between AUD 3,000,000 – 6,000,000 at auction. However, the actual selling price may be higher, as is the trend with complete royal jewellery from this era.
Christie’s are hosting auctions in Geneva, London, New York and online. The Luxury Week Collections are Jewels Online: The Geneva Edit, Watches Online: The Geneva Edit, Finest and Rarest Wines and Spirits, Handbags Online: The London Edit, Jewels Online: The London Edit, Magnificant Jewels, Jewels Online, Fine Watchmaking: Important Timepieces and the Independent Collection, Handbags x HYPE: The Luxury Remix, Only Watch, Fine and Rare Wines and Spirits and Rare Watches.