La Pelegrina is one of the most celebrated natural pearls of the early modern period, frequently and persistently confused in popular accounts with the more famous La Peregrina. The two are distinct objects with separate documented histories, and the persistent confusion in the literature reflects both the similarity of the names and the fact that several large historic pearls associated with the Spanish royal house circulated through the European courts. La Pelegrina, in the documented modern record, is a pear-shaped natural pearl weighing approximately 111.5 grains (28 carats), of fine white body and excellent orient, and its chain of custody can be traced through the Russian imperial collection of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Documented history

La Pelegrina is most reliably documented from the period of Catherine II of Russia (the Great), who acquired it in the late eighteenth century. It then passed through the Romanov collection. After the Russian Revolution the pearl was sold along with other Romanov treasures by the Soviet government in the 1920s, and it appeared at Christie's in Geneva on 12 May 1987, where it was sold to a private collector. The pearl reappeared at Christie's Geneva on 14 November 2018 in a lot that realised approximately 9.5 million Swiss francs. In its 2018 sale catalogue Christie's documented the pearl's drilling, the historical attributions, and the chain of custody from the Russian sale through to the consignor.

Distinction from La Peregrina

The confusion with La Peregrina is structural and persistent. La Peregrina is a separate, larger pear-shaped natural pearl of approximately 50.6 carats (originally larger before redrillings), with a documented history beginning in the sixteenth century at the Spanish court, passed through the Spanish royal house to the Bonaparte family during the Peninsular War, ultimately acquired by the Hamilton-Abercorn family and then, famously, by Richard Burton at Sotheby's in 1969 for Elizabeth Taylor. The pearls have at various times in the older literature been treated as one and the same object, and even modern reputable accounts occasionally conflate them. The 1987 and 2018 Christie's catalogues, and the corresponding Sotheby's documentation for La Peregrina, treat them as separate objects with non-overlapping provenances, and that is the modern scholarly position.

Origin and species

The species and origin of La Pelegrina are not definitively established by laboratory analysis. The historical record is consistent with a Pinctada radiata or Pinctada margaritifera origin in the Persian Gulf or, less probably, the Gulf of California, the two principal sources of large natural pearls for the European market in the early modern period. Trace-element and isotope analysis of natural pearls is now possible at the SSEF and other laboratories and would in principle resolve the question, but published analysis of La Pelegrina specifically is not in the public scholarly record.

Significance

For the historian of natural pearls, La Pelegrina is significant as one of the very few pearls of the Romanov collection whose post-revolutionary history is documented and which has reappeared on the open market. Its size, white body, fine orient and pear-shape place it in the highest category of natural pearls, and its appearance at auction with documentation has provided the trade with two reference data points (1987 and 2018) for the upper end of the natural pearl market. The persistent confusion with La Peregrina is itself an artefact of pearl-collecting history and reflects the small number of named historic pearls of this calibre and the speculative attributions that older popular literature was prone to.