Marie Antoinette jewellery to be auctioned

Marie Antoinette’s jewellery is to be sold at auction later this year and is expected to fetch £400,000. 

As the history goes, the jewels were smuggled out of France by Lady Elizabeth during the revolution. Lady Elizabeth was the Countess of Sutherland, wife of the British ambassador and an ally of the wildly extravagant Queen Consort. Lady Elizabeth made a pact to return them to her friend once she had escaped from imprisonment.

But the wife of Louis XVI was never to secure her freedom and died on the guillotine in front of thousands that marked the fall of the monarchy.

Fifty years later on the other side of the Channel, 21 of the drop-shaped natural pearls were mounted on to a necklace for the wedding of Lady Elizabeth's grandson, George Granville William Sutherland-Leveson-Gower and Ann Hay McKenzie.

Raymond Sancroft-Baker, senior director of Christie's Jewellery, London, said: "It is exceptionally rare to be able to offer jewels that belonged to Marie Antoinette and which are completely fresh to the market. "The story behind the pearls and their integral incorporation into this necklace for the Sutherland-Leveson-Gower family wedding in 1849 adds to its fascinating history."