The Marie Antoinette Necklace — 2,800 Carats of Court Diamonds That Helped End a Monarchy
The Marie Antoinette Necklace — 2,800 Carats of Court Diamonds That Helped End a Monarchy
Boehmer and Bassenge's unsold masterpiece and its destruction by fraud in 1785
The Marie Antoinette necklace — properly the necklace at the centre of the 1785 Affair of the Diamond Necklace, called in the contemporary documentation simply le collier — is one of the most famous diamond compositions never delivered to its intended wearer. It was made by the court jewellers Charles-Auguste Boehmer and Paul Bassenge of Paris in the late 1770s, contained approximately 650 brilliant- and rose-cut diamonds totalling something in the order of 2,800 carats, and was valued at 1.6 million livres — a sum equivalent, in modern terms, to a high eight-figure or low nine-figure dollar valuation depending on the conversion method used. The necklace was never sold to a legitimate buyer; it was acquired through fraud, dismantled, and dispersed within months of leaving the jewellers' premises.
Construction and design
The necklace was designed in the late-18th-century French taste for festoon-and-tassel compositions, with a primary band of large brilliant-cut diamonds tied at the back, three rows of pendant diamond drops at the front graduated in size, two diamond tassels, and a forward bow. The total number of stones is variously reported at 540, 647, or 650 diamonds in the historical literature; the discrepancies reflect different methods of counting principal stones versus accent stones in the descriptions of the time. The largest stones in the necklace were said to be of the order of ten carats individually, with the bulk of the composition made of stones in the 2- to 5-carat range.
The unsold problem
Boehmer and Bassenge had assembled the necklace speculatively, anticipating sale to the French court — most likely to Madame du Barry under Louis XV, and after his death to Marie Antoinette under Louis XVI. The queen declined the piece on several occasions, citing both the cost and the state of national finances, which were then under acute strain in the years preceding the Revolution. By the early 1780s the jewellers were exposed: their inventory was tied up in a piece they could not sell and could not easily dismantle without taking a substantial loss on the assembly cost.
The fraud (1784–1785)
The fraud was orchestrated by Jeanne de Saint-Rémy de Valois, Comtesse de la Motte, a minor descendant of an illegitimate line of the Valois royal family. De la Motte cultivated a relationship with Cardinal Louis de Rohan, then in disfavour with the queen and seeking restoration to her good graces, and persuaded him that the queen had decided to acquire the necklace in secret and that the cardinal should serve as discreet intermediary. Forged letters, purportedly from the queen, and a staged late-night meeting in the gardens of Versailles with a prostitute impersonating Marie Antoinette completed the deception. Rohan acquired the necklace on credit in February 1785 and delivered it to de la Motte's husband and accomplices. The necklace was dismantled within days; the stones were dispersed via dealers in London, where Nicolas de la Motte sold them through the trade.
Discovery and trial
When the first instalment of payment came due in summer 1785 and Boehmer pressed the queen for confirmation, the fraud unravelled. The cardinal was arrested at Versailles in August 1785, and the resulting trial — heard before the Parlement of Paris in 1786 — was a public sensation. Rohan was acquitted, an outcome popularly read as a public verdict against the queen rather than for the cardinal. De la Motte was branded with the letter V (for voleuse, thief) and imprisoned, but escaped and fled to England. The necklace itself was never recovered as a complete piece; the stones had passed into the trade and most were never traced.
Historical consequence
The Affair of the Diamond Necklace was a contributing factor — by no means the sole cause, but a measurable one — to the erosion of monarchical authority in the years immediately preceding 1789. Napoleon later said of it: the queen's death must be dated from the Diamond Necklace trial. The piece itself is known today only through the sketches preserved in the records of Boehmer and Bassenge, the testimony at the trial, and a small number of contemporary engravings. Several of the stones may have re-entered the trade in unrecognised form; no documented identifications survive.
In the trade
For the modern trade, the necklace functions as the canonical example of a high-value piece destroyed almost immediately after sale, and as a cautionary example of the risk of speculative production for an uncertain royal market. Period engravings and reconstructions appear in the major reference works on French royal jewellery; the originals of the Boehmer and Bassenge correspondence are held in the Archives Nationales in Paris.