Natural History Collections in the Science of the 21st Century

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François FARGES

IMPMC – CNRS, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle,

Institut universitaire de France, Paris, France

Rare minerals – and more particularly gems – were the preferred instruments of power for past rulers. In the 19th century, these political objects became scientific: gemology was born as a branch of mineralogy. Between thefts, sales, covetousness, fashions and other alienations, the majority of these masterpieces of lapidary art have not survived. The rare historical gems that remain today tell lost or fragmented stories: the history of art – French academic art history has long neglected the expertise of gems, relegating them to a craft without creative inspiration. In a worst-case scenario, its expensive trade would definitely disqualify it from aesthetic research, which is dedicated to a pure Bohemian nature and insensitive to markets. Entire sections of this history are, therefore, unknown and left to various “fashionable storytellers” and others who magnify myths through a literary inventiveness that distorts the work of current reasearchers. Among them is the diamond known in English as the “French Blue”, a misleading name because the gem was never named as such in French but rather as the “ Grand Diamant Violet de Sa Majesté ” (Great Violet Diamond of his Majesty) or the “Great Blue Diamond of Louis XIV”.