geologia: Hope Diamond

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Hope Diamond is a 45.52-carat (9.104 g; 0.3211 oz) blue diamond that has been famed for its great size and blue-violet color since the 17th century. It was extracted in the 17th century from the Kollur Mine in Andhra Pradesh, India. The gemstone's exceptional size has revealed new information about the formation of diamonds. The Hope Diamond's recorded history begins in 1666, when the French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier purchased the raw Golconda stone in India. After cutting the gem and renaming it "the French Blue" (Le bleu de France), Tavernier sold it to King Louis XIV of France in 1668. It was stolen in 1792, re-cut by persons unknown, and recovered after a lapse of years,…

Evidence: 70 • authority: 72

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689) was a 17th-century French gem merchant and traveler. Traveling as a private merchant at his own expense, Tavernier estimated that he travelled 60,000 leagues in six voyages to Persia and India between 1630 and 1668 which he published as Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Six Voyages, 1676). Tavernier is best known for his 1666 purchase of the 116-carat Tavernier Blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV in 1668 for 120,000 livres, the equivalent of 172,000 ounces of pure gold, and a letter of ennoblement. In 1669, Tavernier purchased the Seigneury (fief) of Aubonne, located in the Duchy of Savoy near the city of Geneva, and became Baron…

Evidence: 33 • authority: 72

The Tavernier Blue was the precursor diamond to the Blue Diamond of the French Crown (aka the French Blue). Subsequently, most scholars and historians believed that it was re-cut and, after a disappearance and reemergence into the public forum, was renamed the Hope Diamond. In December 2007, the French mineralogy professor François Farges found in the reserves of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle the lead model of the Tavernier Blue. This model came around 1850, and was given by the Parisian jeweller Charles Achard, who explained that the Anglo-Dutch collector Henry Philip Hope was the owner of the original stone. Moreover, the size of the model definitively proved that the Tavernier…