Now imagine if all that Bulgari was not just gold but bedazzled with stonking great diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires? This gives you just a hint of the nature of the collection that Christie’s will put under the gavel next month, when it presents what it considers to be the largest and most valuable ever to come to auction.
With a pre-sale estimate of more than £122.3million, it is set to become only the third private jewellery collection in the world to fetch a total of more than £70million, following the auction house’s two previous record-breaking sales – the Elizabeth Taylor Collection in 2011 (£74million) and the Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence auction in 2019 (£87million).
The enormous 700-piece collection of pieces from many of the world’s leading jewellery brands, including Bulgari, Cartier, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels, belonged to Heidi Horten, an Austrian billionaire and art collector. She died at the age of 81 in June last year, just 10 days after opening her eponymous museum of modern art in Vienna. The museum houses works by 20th and 21st-century artists including Picasso, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst, and will be the sole beneficiary of proceeds from the sale.