$10.8 million for diamond brooch
Paris: The Louvre in has agreed to pay €6.72 million ($10.8 million) for a diamond brooch once owned by the Empress Eugenie, the wife of the mid-19th century French ruler Napoleon III.
Made for the empress in 1855 by Parisian jeweller Francois Kramer, the 141-carat diamond bow brooch was designed a as belt buckle but the Empress later turned it into a stomacher (an adornment worn on the chest).
Enhanced, in 1864, two diamond tassels and five diamond pendants were added.
Following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, After Napoleon III was deposed in 1871, the piece was seized by the new republican French government and through jeweller Emile Schlesinger, the brooch was sold in 1887 for 42,400 francs to American socialite Caroline Astor and it stayed in the Astor family for more than a century.
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