The Beau Sancy

A diplomat's stone

The Beau Sancy came out of the diamond fields of Golconda, on the east side of India's Deccan plateau, which were the only known source of diamonds until mines were found in Brazil in 1725. Nobody knows when it reached Europe. The first owner on record is Nicolas de Harlay, seigneur de Sancy, a French diplomat and financier who most likely acquired it in Constantinople, where he served at the Ottoman court.

Sancy owned two great pear-shaped diamonds, and both now carry his name: the larger Sancy, catalogued at about 55 carats, and this smaller stone. A January 1589 reference describes 'a flawless diamond weighing 37 or 38 carats' pledged to Sancy in a gold frame with a pearl pendant. Short of money after trying to raise an army for Henry III of France, he sold off jewels, and the two stones went their separate ways.

Both diamonds show the rose cut, a new style in the late 16th century, but the Beau Sancy is cut on both sides as a double rose, with smaller and more numerous triangular facets arranged around an eight-pointed star. Herbert Tillander, the Finnish historian of diamond cutting, called the work 'an incredible masterpiece of precision and artistic inventiveness.' The cutter is not known.

Marie de Medici's consolation prize

Marie de Medici, daughter of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, married Henri IV of France in 1600 and arrived in Paris with one of the largest fortunes in Europe. She had learned from her father that no colored stone projects majesty across a room the way a large diamond does, and she set out to buy the largest diamonds on the market.

She lost the bigger Sancy to James I of England, who wore it in his hat. In 1604, angry at the loss, she hurried to acquire the smaller stone instead. Her inventory records 'the great diamond faceted on both sides, bought for 25,000 ecus from monsieur de Sancy,' a sum reported as 75,000 livres. The purchase was nominally Henri IV's gift to her.

On May 13, 1610, she was crowned queen at the Basilica of Saint-Denis wearing a crown of pearls and diamonds with the Beau Sancy at the very top. The coronation portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger, now in the Louvre, records the regalia. The next day, May 14, Henri IV was stabbed to death in a Paris street, and Marie became regent for her nine-year-old son, Louis XIII.

Her regency ended badly. Louis XIII exiled her in 1617, she fled France in 1630, and she spent her last years in Brussels and then Cologne, pawning jewels she could not redeem. She died in Cologne on July 3, 1642. By then the Beau Sancy had already passed to other hands.

From The Hague to London to Berlin

The next buyer was Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. On April 9, 1642, he paid G.B. Beni, an Italian dealer in Amsterdam, 80,000 guilders for the stone; the court jeweler Thomas Cletcher valued it at 150,000 guilders and called the price a bargain. Frederick Henry gave it to his new daughter-in-law, the ten-year-old Mary Stuart, Princess Royal, daughter of Charles I of England and granddaughter of Marie de Medici. Some accounts date the purchase to 1641, the year of Mary's wedding.

In 1659 Mary pawned the Beau Sancy to help finance the restoration of her brother, Charles II. She died in London in 1661 without redeeming it. Her mother-in-law, Amalia von Solms, worked to recover it, and by 1677 the problem was solved: the stone was given to Mary, daughter of the future James II, when she married William of Orange. After the couple took the English throne in 1688, the diamond was part of the English royal jewels for their reign.

Mary died in 1694 and William in 1702, childless, and the Beau Sancy passed by inheritance to Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, a grandson of Frederick Henry, who had crowned himself Frederick I, King in Prussia, in 1701. He set it in his new crown as the principal stone of the Prussian crown jewels. Under Frederick the Great, who reigned from 1740, it was reset for Queen Elisabeth Christine in a rococo bouquet jewel; a portrait of her by Antoine Pesne shows it at the center of a pink bow.

By 1822 it hung as a pendant from a necklace of twenty-two rose-cut diamonds. It was kept out of the hands of Napoleon's invading armies, and in 1861 Queen Augusta wore it on her stomacher at the coronation of William I at Konigsberg. It was customary for Hohenzollern brides to wear it at royal weddings, and the last empress to wear it was Augusta Victoria, wife of Wilhelm II.

When the Kaiser fled to the Netherlands in November 1918, the diamond stayed in Berlin. At the end of World War II it was moved for safekeeping to a bricked-up crypt at Bueckeburg, where British troops found it and returned it to the estate of the House of Prussia. In 1972 it was shown in Helsinki beside the larger Sancy, the two stones reunited after some 370 years apart, and it was exhibited again in 1985, 2001 and 2004.

Eight minutes in Geneva

In 2012 Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, head of the House of Hohenzollern, consigned the Beau Sancy to a Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels sale at the Beau Rivage hotel in Geneva. The estimate was CHF 1,850,000 to 3,650,000, roughly $2 million to $4 million. The catalog condition report noted some abrasion to the facet edges and the girdle.

On the evening of Tuesday, May 15, 2012, five bidders from North America, Europe and Asia competed for about eight minutes. The winner, bidding anonymously by telephone, paid CHF 9,042,500 including the buyer's premium, reported as $9,699,618. Some wire reports converted the price to $9.57 million and one put it at 7.6 million euros; at least one secondary account gives the date as May 16.

The auction house's European chairman framed the result simply: 'You are buying an historic work of art, you are not buying a diamond.' The sale's jewelry chairman said the stone's 'supreme historical importance was reflected tonight in the strength of the bidding.' A historian writing after the sale noted that until that night the stone had never been in non-royal hands, and hoped it might one day be lent to the Louvre's Apollo Gallery, where the larger Sancy is displayed.

What the stone is, and what is disputed

The Beau Sancy weighs 34.98 carats and measures about 2.3 cm long, 1.9 cm wide and 1.1 cm deep. It is a modified pear double rose cut, faceted over its entire surface; one account counts 110 facets including the table and culet.

Its color is reported as brown-tinged. A reference infobox records it as faint brown on a gemological laboratory report, a trade body describes it as 'a 34.98 ct, 16th-century faint brown diamond' studied by a Swiss gemological laboratory, and a jewelry historian calls it 'very slightly tinged with brown.' Early sources called it flawless, but no modern clarity grade is published in the sources reviewed.

The Beau Sancy is distinct from the larger Sancy, which James I set in the jewel known as the Mirror of Great Britain and which is now in the Louvre. In France the smaller stone is sometimes called the Petit Sancy.

The numbers

Carat weight

34.98 carats

Color

Reported as faint brown on a laboratory report, per a reference summary

Clarity

No modern grade published in the sources reviewed; period sources called it flawless

Cut

Modified pear double rose cut; about 2.3 x 1.9 x 1.1 cm

Origin mine

Golconda region, India; one reference names the Kollur mine

Cutter

Unknown

Timeline

1. Jan 1589

   Earliest reference: a 37 or 38 carat diamond pledged to Nicolas de Harlay, seigneur de Sancy.

2. 1604

   Bought from Sancy for 25,000 ecus for Marie de Medici, nominally a gift from Henri IV.

3. May 13, 1610

   Worn at the top of Marie de Medici's crown at her coronation at Saint-Denis.

4. Apr 9, 1642

   Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, pays 80,000 guilders for it to an Italian dealer in Amsterdam.

5. Jul 3, 1642

   Marie de Medici dies in exile in Cologne.

6. 1659

   Mary Stuart, Princess Royal, pawns it to help finance the restoration of Charles II.

7. 1677

   Given to Mary Stuart, daughter of the future James II, at her marriage to William of Orange.

8. 1688

   William and Mary take the English throne; the diamond joins their royal jewels.

9. 1702

   After William's death, it passes by inheritance to Frederick I, King in Prussia, and is set in his crown.

10. 1740

    Under Frederick the Great it is reset in a rococo bouquet jewel for Queen Elisabeth Christine.

11. 1822

    Recorded as a pendant to a necklace of twenty-two rose-cut diamonds.

12. 1861

    Worn by Queen Augusta on her stomacher at William I's coronation at Konigsberg.

13. Nov 1918

    Remains in Berlin when Wilhelm II goes into exile.

14. 1945

    Hidden in a bricked-up crypt at Bueckeburg; found by British troops and returned to the House of Prussia.

15. 1972

    Shown in Helsinki beside the larger Sancy, the first reunion in about 370 years.

16. May 15, 2012

    Sold at auction in Geneva for CHF 9,042,500 to an anonymous telephone bidder.

The world in 1610

• Jan 7, 1610

  Galileo observes the moons of Jupiter for the first time.

• Mar 13, 1610

  Galileo publishes Sidereus Nuncius, the first printed record of observations through a telescope.

• May 14, 1610

  Henri IV is assassinated in Paris by Francois Ravaillac, the day after Marie's coronation.

• May 23, 1610

  Survivors of the wrecked Sea Venture reach Jamestown after the colony's 'starving time.'

• Aug 2, 1610

  Henry Hudson sails into the bay that will bear his name.

• Oct 17, 1610

  Louis XIII is crowned King of France.

• Dec 19, 1610

  Pieter Both becomes the first governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.

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, The Beau Sancy is number 21 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 (22 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Marie de Medici wore the Beau Sancy at her coronation on May 13, 1610; her husband was murdered the next day.
• Marie bought it in a temper after James I of England outbid her for the larger Sancy.
• It helped pay for a king's comeback: Mary Stuart pawned it in 1659 to fund her brother Charles II's restoration.
• At the end of World War II it was hidden in a bricked-up crypt, where British troops found it.
• The 2012 price was close to five times the low estimate.
• Its facets radiate from an eight-pointed star, which sets it apart from the larger Sancy's cut.
• In 1972 the two Sancy diamonds were shown together in Helsinki for the first time in about 370 years.