Unseen in public for 200 years, a breathtaking group of jewels belonging to Marie Antoinette are among the many highlights of one of the most important royal jewellery collections ever to come to auction.
It turns out that before Marie Antoinette lost her head, she had the foresight to send many of her precious jewels back to her family. And now, in Geneva, Switzerland, Sotheby’s will be auctioning off an unprecedented amount of jewels with royal provenance, 10 of which can be traced back to Marie Antoinette herself. These treasures have not been seen publicly in nearly two-and-a-half centuries. Conspicuous consumption is associated with one glittering monarch above all others: the infelicitous Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. From the rooms and rooms and rooms of furniture and decorative arts that filled Versailles and Fontainebleau, to the hundreds of gowns, shoes, and wigs that she bedecked herself with, the queen of Louis XVI was no stranger to the finer things in life. This spirit of excess was notably channeled by director Sofia Coppola in the over-the-top shopping montage in her 2006 film starring Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette, set to the tune of “I Want Candy.”
