Marie Antoinette loved jewelry
One of the interesting facts about Marie Antoinette is that she was frequently depicted wearing sparkling jewels in pictures of her painted before the French Revolution. She cherished pearls and diamonds in particular. She brought some "beautiful white diamonds" to Versailles from Vienna, according to author Antonia Fraser, but it was during her reigns as Dauphine and subsequently Queen of France that her jewelry collection truly took off.
Marie Antoinette received several gifts upon her arrival at Versailles, including a necklace of large pearls that had been a family heirloom saved for the new Dauphine, a fan covered in diamonds that was a gift from King Louis XV, a bracelet bearing the initials "M.A." that was encrusted with diamonds, and the pièce de résistance, a parure of diamonds. Over the years, Marie Antoinette's jewelry collection developed; many of these pieces were sold at Sotheby's auction in 2018 by the Bourbon Parma family.
Just before her family's disastrous attempt to elude capture in France, one of her final acts as queen was to have her collection packed for storage. Her daughter Marie Therese, the only member of the family to survive the French Revolution, ultimately received the diamonds. Marie Therese left the jewels to her relatives, the Bourbon Parma women because she was childless.
Marie Antoinette's mother, Empress Maria Teresa, who had quite different personal preferences, may have inspired her love of bling. She once said that she valued the treasures from the East—including lacquers, tapestries, and mirrors—far more than "all the diamonds in the world." The little Dauphine seemed to be completely mesmerized by the sparkling gems of the French Court, which were unlike anything she had ever seen in Vienna.
