He found his ideal target in Evalyn Walsh McLean, the heiress to a multimillionaire who literally struck gold working as a miner. McLean was fascinated with diamonds and other gems, so Cartier made every effort to sell her the Hope Diamond. After a few failed attempts, he succeeded in persuading her by leaving the diamond in her hands for a week, long enough for her to become attached to it.
Then, following a frustratingly long process, McLean finally purchased the diamond in and maintained ownership of it for the rest of her life. After spending just under a decade putting the diamond on display around the country, he generously donated the stone to the Smithsonian Institute in Covered in countless facets, it holds a deep blue color all the way through—due to trace elements of boron in the stone.
It is also classified as a Type IIb diamond, the rarest of natural diamonds which possess incredibly low levels of nitrogen impurities and phosphoresces, emitting a red glow when exposed to ultraviolet light.
Natural blue diamonds are incredibly rare to begin with, and most of them are neither as bold or as large as the Hope Diamond. Henry Philip Hope, a London banker and gem collector, owned the stone in the s. The diamond weighs It's in a setting designed by Pierre Cartier — surrounded by 16 alternating pear-shaped and cushion-cut white diamonds, on a chain of 45 white diamonds. Deep-blue diamonds rarely exceed a few carats in size, and the Hope Diamond is, in fact, the largest such diamond known.
It was formed a hundred miles beneath the surface of the earth and carried upward by a volcanic eruption more than a billion years ago. Compared with its geologic history, the diamond's history as an object of human desire has lasted barely an instant. The diamond disappeared with the monarchy during the French Revolution, reemerged in London in , and subsequently became the possession of a British king, George IV.
It was then purchased by the aforementioned Mr. Hope, whose family held it through the 19th century. One report suggests he took 25 diamonds to Paris, including the large rock which became the Hope, and sold all of them to King Louis XIV. Another report suggested that in , Tavernier sold this large blue diamond along with approximately one thousand other diamonds to King Louis XIV of France for , livres, the equivalent of kilograms of pure gold. According to the theory, during that period Colbert, the King's Finance Minister, regularly sold offices and noble titles for cash, and an outright patent of nobility, according to Wise, was worth approximately , livres making a total of , livres, a price about half Tavernier's estimate of the gem's true value.
Later English-speaking historians have simply called it the French Blue. The king had the stone set on a cravat-pin. According to one report, Louis ordered Pitau to "make him a piece to remember", and Pitau took two years on the piece, resulting in a "triangular-shaped carat gem the size of a pigeon's egg that took the breath away as it snared the light, reflecting it back in bluish-grey rays.
At the diamond's dazzling heart was a sun with seven facets — the sun being Louis' emblem, and seven being a number rich in meaning in biblical cosmology, indicating divinity and spirituality. The assembled piece included a red spinel of carats shaped as a dragon breathing "covetous flames", as well as 83 red-painted diamonds and yellow-painted diamonds to suggest a fleece shape. The piece fell into disuse after the death of Louis XV.
During the reign of her husband, Marie Antoinette used many of the French Crown Jewels for personal adornment by having the individual gems placed in new settings and combinations, but the French Blue remained in this pendant except for a brief time in , when the stone was removed for scientific study by Mathurin Jacques Brisson, and returned to its setting soon thereafter.
On September 11, , while Louis XVI and his family were confined in the Palais des Tuileries near the Place de la Concorde during the early stages of the French Revolution, a group of thieves broke into the Garde-Meuble Royal Storehouse and stole most of the Crown Jewels during a five-day looting spree. While many jewels were later recovered, including other pieces of the Order of the Golden Fleece , the French Blue was not among them and it disappeared temporarily from history.
In , Louis was guillotined in January and Marie was guillotined in October, and these beheadings are commonly cited as a result of the diamond's "curse", but the historical record suggests that Marie Antoinette had never worn the Golden Fleece pendant because it had been reserved for the exclusive use of the king.
A likely scenario is that the French Blue or sometimes also known as the Blue Diamond was "swiftly smuggled to London" after being seized in in Paris. But the exact rock known as the French Blue was never seen again, since it almost certainly was recut during this decades-long period of anonymity, probably into two pieces, and the larger one became the Hope Diamond.
One report suggested that the cut was a "butchered job" because it sheared off In a contrasting report, historian Richard Kurin speculated that the "theft" of the French Crown Jewels was in fact engineered by the revolutionary leader Georges Danton as part of a plan to bribe an opposing military commander, Duke Karl Wilhelm of Brunswick. When under attack by Napoleon in , Karl Wilhelm may have had the French Blue recut to disguise its identity; in this form, the stone could have come to Britain in , when his family fled there to join his daughter Caroline of Brunswick.
Although Caroline was the wife of the Prince Regent George later George IV of the United Kingdom , she lived apart from her husband, and financial straits sometimes forced her to quietly sell her own jewels to support her household. Caroline's nephew, Duke Karl Friedrich, was later known to possess a This smaller diamond's present whereabouts are unknown, and the recent CAD reconstruction of the French Blue fits too tightly around the Hope Diamond to allow for the existence of a sister stone of that size.
A blue diamond with the same shape, size, and color as the Hope Diamond was recorded by John Francillon in the possession of the London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason in September , the earliest point when the history of the Hope Diamond can be definitively fixed, although a second less definitive report claims that the Hope Diamond's "authentic history" can only be traced back to The jewel was a "massive blue stone of It is often pointed out that the date was almost exactly twenty years after the theft of the French Blue , just as the statute of limitations for the crime had taken effect.
While the diamond had disappeared for two decades, there were questions whether this diamond now in Great Britain was exactly the same one as had belonged to the French kings, but scientific investigation in confirmed "beyond reasonable doubt" that the Hope Diamond and that owned by the kings of France were, indeed, the same gemstone, in the sense that the Hope Diamond had been cut from the French Blue.
There are conflicting reports about what happened to the diamond during these years. Eliason's diamond may have been acquired by King George IV of the United Kingdom, possibly through Caroline of Brunswick; however, there is no record of the ownership in the Royal Archives at Windsor, although some secondary evidence exists in the form of contemporary writings and artwork, and George IV tended to mix up the Crown property of the Crown Jewels with family heirlooms and his own personal property.
A source at the Smithsonian suggested there were "several references" suggesting that King George had, indeed, owned the diamond. After his death in , it has been alleged that some of this mixed collection was stolen by George's last mistress, Lady Conyngham, and some of his personal effects were discreetly liquidated to cover the many debts he had left behind him.
Another report states that the king's debts were "so enormous" that the diamond was probably sold through "private channels". In either case, the blue diamond was not retained by the British royal family.
It has been suggested that Eliason may have been a "front" for Hope, acting not as a diamond merchant venturing money on his own account, but rather as an agent to acquire the diamond for the banker.
In , the Hope Diamond appeared in a published catalog of the gem collection of Henry Philip Hope, who was a member of the same Anglo-Dutch banking family.
The stone was set in a fairly simple medallion surrounded by many smaller white diamonds, which he sometimes lent to Louisa de la Poer Beresford, the widow of his brother, Thomas Hope, for society balls.
After falling into the ownership of the Hope family, the stone came to be known as the "Hope Diamond". Henry Philip Hope died in , the same year as the publication of his collection catalog. His three nephews, the sons of Thomas and Louisa, fought in court for ten years over his inheritance, and ultimately the collection was split up. Tavernier first reports possession of an incredible blue diamond "the Tavernier Blue" weighing carats nearly size of man's fist , though he never mentions how he acquired the gem.
The French Blue, as well as other crown jewels, are stolen from the treasury during the French revolution. At about the same time an illustrated perspectus for the sale of the diamond is found, signed by the gem's owner, Daniel Eliason. Because of its size and unusual color, it is speculated that the diamond was cut from the French Blue.
0コメント