Queen Marie Antoinette's Natural Pearl Pendant (Bourbon-Parma)

A queen's pearl

Marie Antoinette was born at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna on November 2, 1755, a daughter of the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa. She married the future Louis XVI by proxy in Vienna on April 19, 1770, and again in person at Versailles on May 16 that year, and became Queen of France when Louis took the throne on May 10, 1774.

The pendant is a natural pearl and diamond jewel of the 18th century. A large teardrop pearl hangs from an oval diamond by a run of smaller diamonds arranged in a bow. The pearl is a natural saltwater pearl of slightly baroque shape, measured at 15.90 by 18.35 by 25.85 millimeters, roughly 26 millimeters long.

One account published around the 2018 sale says the drop was originally connected to a three-strand pearl necklace that belonged to the queen.

Packed under cover of night

In 1791, as the revolution closed in, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette prepared to escape from the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris. Before the attempt, the queen wrapped her finest jewels in cotton and placed them in a wooden chest. The pendant is believed to have been among them. The chest was sent first to Brussels and then to Vienna, into the safekeeping of the Austrian emperor. One account names Count Mercy-Argenteau, the longtime Austrian ambassador to the French court and a confidant of the queen, as the man who got the chest out of France.

The escape itself, the Flight to Varennes in June 1791, failed. The royal family was caught and brought back to Paris. Accounts differ on when the jewels were packed: the seller's own account says 1791, while another account of the sale places it before the queen was put under house arrest in 1792.

Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793. Marie Antoinette, moved to the Conciergerie prison, followed him to the guillotine on October 16, 1793, at the Place de la Revolution. Her jewels were by then outside France.

Two hundred years in one family

The king and queen's only surviving child, Marie-Therese, was released from the Temple prison in Paris on December 18, 1795, the eve of her seventeenth birthday, in an exchange for French prisoners of war. She reached Vienna on January 9, 1796, and was reunited with her mother's jewels there.

Marie-Therese married her cousin Louis Antoine, Duke of Angouleme, in 1799 and died at Schloss Frohsdorf outside Vienna on October 19, 1851. She had helped raise her niece, Louise d'Artois, after 1832, and she left this part of the collection to her. Louise married the future Duke of Parma in 1845 and ruled Parma as regent for her young son from 1854 to 1859.

That son, Robert I (1848-1907), was the last ruling Duke of Parma, and the jewels passed down through his descendants. The Bourbon-Parma family kept the pieces privately for about two hundred years. The public did not see them until they were shown in New York and London ahead of the 2018 sale.

The November 2018 sale

On November 14, 2018, the pendant was offered at auction in Geneva as the final lot, number 100, of a sale of royal jewels from the Bourbon-Parma family. It was estimated at CHF 995,000 to 1,900,000, about $1 million to $2 million. It sold to an anonymous private buyer for CHF 36,427,000, or $36,165,090 with fees, setting a new auction record for a natural pearl.

Ten pieces from Marie Antoinette's collection were in the sale. Estimated together at CHF 1.6 million to 2.9 million, they brought CHF 43.1 million, about $42.7 million. A three-strand natural pearl necklace from her collection made CHF 2,295,000, a diamond brooch CHF 2,115,000, and a diamond ring bearing her initials and containing a lock of her hair CHF 447,000, about fifty times its estimate.

All 100 lots sold. The sale totaled CHF 53,522,875, about $53.1 million, more than seven times its high estimate, and passed the $50.3 million paid in 1987 for the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor, setting a record for any sale of royal jewels.

The pearl's price dwarfed the most famous earlier pearl sale. La Peregrina, the pearl Richard Burton gave Elizabeth Taylor in 1969, sold at auction in New York in December 2011 for more than $11 million against an estimate of $3 million.

Why a pearl outsold the diamonds

The pendant's price came from its story more than its size. Daniela Mascetti, a deputy chairman of the selling house, called the Bourbon-Parma group one of the most important royal jewelry collections ever to appear on the market, every piece of it imbued with history.

The pendant's line runs without a break from a queen of France, through her daughter and her daughter's niece, to the Bourbon-Parma family and the 2018 sale room. That history carried a jewel estimated at no more than $2 million to more than eighteen times that figure.

The numbers

Pearl dimensions

15.90 x 18.35 x 25.85 mm

Pearl type

Natural saltwater pearl, slightly baroque drop shape

Mounting

Diamond bow set with an oval diamond, 18th century

Maker

Not recorded in the sources consulted

Timeline

1. Nov 2, 1755

   Marie Antoinette is born at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

2. May 16, 1770

   She marries the future Louis XVI at Versailles.

3. May 10, 1774

   Louis XVI takes the throne and Marie Antoinette becomes Queen of France.

4. Dec 19, 1778

   Her daughter Marie-Therese, the jewels' later heir, is born.

5. 1791

   Before the royal family's attempted escape, the queen packs her jewels in cotton in a wooden chest and sends them to Brussels, then Vienna.

6. Jun 1791

   The Flight to Varennes fails and the royal family is returned to Paris.

7. Oct 16, 1793

   Marie Antoinette is executed in Paris.

8. Dec 18, 1795

   Marie-Therese is released from the Temple prison in a prisoner exchange.

9. Jan 9, 1796

   Marie-Therese arrives in Vienna and recovers her mother's jewels.

10. Oct 19, 1851

    Marie-Therese dies at Schloss Frohsdorf, leaving this part of the collection to her niece Louise, Duchess of Parma.

11. 1854

    Louise becomes regent of Parma for her son, the future Robert I.

12. 1907

    Robert I, last ruling Duke of Parma, dies; the jewels remain with the Bourbon-Parma family.

13. 2018

    The Bourbon-Parma jewels are shown in New York and London before the sale, the first time the public sees them.

14. Nov 14, 2018

    Sold at auction in Geneva for CHF 36,427,000 ($36,165,090), an auction record for a natural pearl.

The world in 1791

• Mar 13, 1791

  Thomas Paine publishes the first part of Rights of Man in London.

• May 3, 1791

  Poland-Lithuania proclaims the Constitution of May 3, the first modern codified constitution in Europe.

• Jul 17, 1791

  The Champ de Mars massacre takes place in Paris.

• Aug 21, 1791

  A slave rebellion breaks out in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, beginning the Haitian Revolution.

• Aug 27, 1791

  In the Declaration of Pillnitz, Prussia and the Habsburg emperor Leopold II declare support for restoring the French king's power.

• Sep 6, 1791

  Mozart's opera La clemenza di Tito premieres in Prague.

• Nov 6, 2018

  The United States holds its midterm elections, a week before the pendant sells.

• Nov 11, 2018

  Nations around the world mark the centenary of the end of World War I.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Queen Marie Antoinette's Natural Pearl Pendant (Bourbon-Parma) is number 10 of 100 in the jewelry entries of the FLOAT 100. 44 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (9 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The queen wrapped her jewels in cotton and packed them in a wooden chest before the royal family's attempt to flee Paris.
• The pendant's estimate topped out at about $2 million; it sold for more than $36 million.
• It was the 100th and final lot of the evening, and every one of the 100 lots sold.
• A diamond ring from the same sale held a lock of Marie Antoinette's hair and went for about fifty times its estimate.
• The Bourbon-Parma sale beat the record set in 1987 by the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor.
• Marie Antoinette's daughter was released from prison on the eve of her seventeenth birthday and recovered the jewels in Vienna weeks later.