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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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sponsorship
of diamonds for feminine rather than masculine adornment, while a
daring innovation, gave new dignity to the jewel. Her career at court
was as brief as it was brilliant. Within six years she had been laid
to rest with a king's tears. But the diamond-wearing vogue had been
taken up in earnest and soon such queens as Isabella of Spain were
accumulating large collections of diamonds and other precious stones.
It was Isabella, of course, who even pledged her private jewels to
raise the necessary funds to finance the voyage of Christopher Columbus
across the Atlantic in search of a short route to India, resulting in
the discovery of a new world.
In
France the use of diamonds by women for decorative purposes increased
in popularity. Eighty-three years after Agnes Sorel's death we find the
French court being treated to an incursion of Italian jewelry brought
in the trousseau of little fourteen-year-old Catherine de Medici, who
came from Florence to be the bride of the future Henry II. It is
doubtful that Catherine did much to stimulate diamonds, however. She
brought few with her from Italy because the cutting of diamonds, at
that time, had not been developed fully in Florence. Yet she certainly
needed a bright appearance to attract the attention of her spouse
because Diane de Poitiers, ten years the young king's senior, reigned
in his heart as the real queen and even had obtained possession of the
crown jewels of France. After the king's death, however, Catherine came
into her own, wrested the jewels from the now banished mistress, and
began to effect a new elegance in dress.
Her new importance was in part due to the official position of her children: She became the mother of four kings and a queen. All types of jewelry and various expensive fabrics and ornaments, even in interior decorations of her
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