When Marie de Medici was crowned Queen of France in 1610, she wore a 35ct diamond known as the Beau Sancy. After having been passed down through generations of European royalty, the famous diamond sold at a Sotheby’s auction in Geneva yesterday for $9.7m, more than twice its $2m-$4m estimate.Before an anonymous buyer prevailed, five bidders from three continents had competed for the pear-shaped, rose-cut gem, which had never before left royal hands. Along the way, Mary Stuart pawned the diamond to finance Charles II’s fight for the English throne. Later, before the Royal House of Prussia sold it, the stone adorned the crown of Prussia’s first king. “You are buying an historic work of art,” said Sotheby’s Philipp Herzog von Wuerttenberg, “you are not buying a diamond.”
Royal “Sancy” Diamond Draws Glittering $9.7m
May 16, 2012
Rodin Statue Something To Think About At $15.3m
May 9, 2013There are only 28 casts of Auguste Rodin’s iconic “The Thinker” known to exist. One originally commissioned by Ralph Pulitzer in 1906 sold this week for $15.3m at Sotheby’s in New York. The statue bears a plaque certifying that Rodin, himself, supervised the casting. A similar cast sold for $12m three years ago.
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$230m Evening At Sotheby’s Kicks Off Major Art Sales
May 8, 2013Propelled by major works by Cezanne, Braque, Rodin and Leger that excelled expectations, Sotheby’s kicked off New York’s big spring auction season with a sale of Impressionist and Modern Art that brought in $230m, just below its $235m high estimate. The evening’s top seller, as expected, was “Les Pommes,” a Cézanne still life from 1889-90 that a telephone bidder bought for $37m, or $41.6m, including commissions.
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Authors Annotate Books For Charity
May 6, 2013Why would a writer revisit a work completed years or decades ago? A host of Britain and Ireland’s brightest literary lights found sufficient cause in Second Thoughts, a charity auction that Sotheby’s will host later this month to benefit English PEN, which supports the rights of writers and readers around the world. Writers such as J.K. Rowling, Ian McEwan, Kasio Ishiguro, and Tom Stoppard have been induced to annotate first editions of their works with additional texts or illustrations. To avoid the appearance of rating the authors, Sotheby’s isn’t releasing estimates for the sale, which will be held on May 24 in London.
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Rising Value of Unrestored Cars
By Malcolm Welford, Vintage Car Specialist
