A rare 197.80-carat sapphire fetched a hefty $4.9 million at auction on Wednesday—more than double its expected value of between $1 million and $2 million. According to Sotheby’s, the giant Ceylon sapphire likely came from the Mughal Empire in South Asia, before entering the Russian Czars’ collection sometime in the 18th Century. The gem was famously worn by Czar Nicholas II’s mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, at the Winter Palace Ball of 1903. Shortly after the Russian Revolution, the Soviets sold the jewel. In 1927, Polish opera singer Ganna Walska acquired it and repeatedly had it remounted into new jewelry designs. According to the Associated Press, the sapphire, now part of a diamond-studded bracelet designed by Cartier in 2015, was bought by an anonymous private collector.
Rare photographs of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna at the 1903 Winter Palace Ball show her adorned with heaps of jewels.
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