Florentine Diamond
The Florentine Diamond is a 137.27 carat yellow diamond cut in a form of irregular nine-sided and 126-facet double rose cut which is lost since 1920's. The Florentine Diamond is also known as the Florentine, the Tuscan Diamond, the Austrian Diamond and the Austrian Yellow Diamond.
Like the diamond's unknown fate after the 1920's, the origin of the Florentine Diamond is not clear. It was supposedly cut by Flemish jeweler Lodewyk van Berken for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. The story goes that Charles the Bold wore it when he fell in the Battle of Morat which took place in 1476. The diamond was allegedly found by a peasant or a soldier who believed that it was glass and sold it. The Florentine Diamond passed from one owner to another until it finally came in possession of the Medici family. However, there is also a different version of the diamond’s early history. According to another version the Florentine Diamond was acquired Ludovico Castro, Portuguese governor of Goa after he defeated the King of Vijanagar in the 16th century. Afterwards the diamond was brought to Rome and purchased by Ferdinando I de Medici, while his son Cosimo II had it cut in its distinctive shape in 1615.
History of the Florentine Diamond becomes clearer from the end of the 17th century when it was seen by French jeweler and traveller Jean Baptiste Tavenier at Ferdinando II de Medici. On extinction of the Medici line the diamond passed to the Habsburgs through marriage of Maria Theresa to Francis III Stephan of Lorraine. The Austrian Empire collapsed after the World War I, while the Habsburgs took the diamond into exile in Switzerland. About the same time the Florentine Diamond was stolen and taken to South America and at the same time the diamond disappeared from history.