Mazarin Cut — The Seventeenth-Century Brilliant Precursor
Mazarin Cut — The Seventeenth-Century Brilliant Precursor
A 17-facet crown attributed to Cardinal Mazarin, the bridge from table cut to brilliant
The Mazarin cut is an early brilliant-cut style attributed to the seventeenth century and traditionally associated with Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the Italian-born chief minister of Louis XIV of France and a notable patron of the diamond cutting trade of his day. The cut features 17 facets on the crown — a step up in optical complexity from the simple table cuts that dominated the medieval and Renaissance trade — and represents a transitional stage between the table cut and the later Peruzzi cut, which added further facets to push light return closer to what the modern brilliant achieves.
The historical attribution
The attribution of the cut to Mazarin himself is conventional rather than fully documented. Mazarin was a major collector of diamonds and other gems — his bequest to the French crown of eighteen large diamonds known as the Mazarins formed part of the French Crown Jewels until the 1792 Revolution thefts and the 1887 sale of the residue. His role in promoting the development of more elaborate cuts in mid-seventeenth-century France is documented in the trade literature of the period and in subsequent scholarship, though the precise extent of his personal contribution to any specific cutting innovation is harder to pin down. The trade convention of crediting the 17-facet crown to Mazarin reflects this association rather than firm documentary attribution of the cut itself.
The geometry
The Mazarin crown carries 17 facets: a central table, 8 main facets on the crown, and 8 corner or star facets. The pavilion is variable in surviving examples, with some Mazarin-cut diamonds showing a comparable 17-facet pavilion (giving 34 facets plus table) and others showing simpler pavilion arrangements. The result is a stone that returns substantially more light to the eye than a table cut of equivalent material — the increased number of facets breaks up white light into a wider range of reflected directions, producing visible scintillation and modest fire — but that falls well short of the modern round brilliant.
The cut is sometimes called the double cut in older trade references, distinguishing it from the simpler single cut — the table cut with eight crown facets — and from the more developed triple cut that the Peruzzi cut represents.
The succession of cuts
The trade narrative of brilliant-cut development moves from the early table cut, through the single cut, to the Mazarin (double cut), to the Peruzzi (triple cut, with 33 crown facets and pavilion development), and on to the old mine cut, the old European cut, and the modern round brilliant of the early twentieth century. Each step added facets and pushed proportions toward greater light return, with the modern brilliant emerging as a mathematically optimised configuration in the work of Marcel Tolkowsky in 1919.
Mazarin cuts are rare in modern circulation. Genuine seventeenth-century Mazarin-cut diamonds appear principally in museum collections, antique jewellery of secure provenance, and the occasional important auction. The cut is sometimes loosely applied in modern usage to any seventeenth-century brilliant precursor, which can confuse the catalogue history of antique pieces.
In the trade
For collectors of antique diamonds, the Mazarin cut is one of the historical waypoints in the development of brilliant cutting. Authentic examples are rare and command premium prices on rarity and historical significance grounds, with provenance documentation important to any high-value transaction. Modern reproductions of the cut are produced occasionally for educational and decorative purposes but should be clearly disclosed as such.