LONDON — An unusually cut blue diamond with a royal history could fetch as much as $13 million when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s on Wednesday.
Blue diamonds are exceedingly rare, and the 35.56 carat Wittelsbach Diamond has often had its color and clarity compared with the famed Hope Diamond, on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
The Wittelsbach Diamond was a favorite of European rulers for centuries. The gem got the Wittelsbach name when Leopold I of Austria’s granddaughter married Charles of Bavaria, a member of the Wittelsbach family.
It stayed with the family until after 1918, when it was lost in the aftermath of World War I. Christie’s first auctioned the Wittelsbach diamond in 1931, after which it disappeared from the public eye.
The diamond resurfaced in the 1960s, when a jeweler recognized its historical significance and refused to re-cut it. The Associated Press
