The Black Orlov Diamond

I’d  never heard of the Black Orlov, not to be confused with the historically important “Orlov Diamond”, until it was sold at auction four or five years ago.  It was really the ‘legend’ associated with the diamond rather than the diamond itself that caught my attention.  Its “history”, as presented in the newsletter announcing the auction, had been provocative.  The diamond had been presented as  “The Infamous Black Orlov Diamond”, a cursed gem; and the story had begun by tracing the diamond’s origin to the eye of an idol in Pondicherry, India.  Stolen by a Russian adventurer in the early 1800s, the story went on, it had become the Black Orlov when it was acquired by Russian Prince Grigori Grigorievich Orlov, who had then presented it to the Tsarina, Catherine the Great.  Early 1800’s? Catherine the Great? Not likely, as she had died in 1796.  Perhaps the date was a misprint, so I dug a bit deeper. 

The British Natural History Museum had displayed the diamond and reported the “curse of the Black Orlov” in it’s September 21, 2005 news release.  It made the improbable connection to Catherine the Great as well; and it presented evidence of the alleged curse.  It rested on the claimed suicides of Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov, Princess Leonila Galitsine-Bariatinsky and J.W. Paris, each reputed to have been a former owner of the diamond.  A diamond that drove people to suicide?   The story strained my credulity, even the Hope diamond doesn’t have inexplicable tragedy associated with it.   In my skepticism I turned to the “Natural Color Diamond Encyclopedia” and found a story that was not associated with “selling” the diamond in any way.   

The entry on the Black Orlov described the diamond as a dark “gun-metal” in color and not absolutely opaque; then it went on to discuss the “legend of the Black Orlov”.   I was cheered to read, “Regrettably, most accounts of the early history of this diamond must be treated with the utmost skepticism.”   The author observed that there is no evidence of black diamonds having ever been found in India (in fact, natural black diamonds have only been found in Brazil and in the Central African Republic).   Had one been found, he or she continued, it is unlikely that it would have been used as the eye of an idol since Hindus see black as an inauspicious color.   Third, there never was a Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov; all princes Orlov descended from the brother of Catherine the Great’s lover, Count Grigori Grigorievitch Orlov.  Finally, the diamond’s cushion shape indicates that it was probably polished in the19th century. 

“Diamond Legend”, another internet resource, shed a little more light on the story.  It reported that one real, historical, princess might have been a cause of the “legend”.  While there is no evidence of a Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov, it commented, there had been a Princess Nadezhda Petrovna Orlov (probably nicknamed Nadia).   Her family had lived on Black Lake before the Revolutions of 1917 and bred horses known as “Black Orlovs”.   Thus, though there is no record of it, given the family’s ‘branded’ horses, a large black diamond might have been a natural purchase.   After the revolutions, probably using the family’s jewelry to finance her flight and resettlement,  Nadia had settled in France. Hardly a suicide, she had lived to the age of 90, dying in 1988; and with no ‘witnesses’ to dispute the story, I suspect the stories of the Orlov (which Grigori, Grigorievich Orlov had given to Catherine the Great) and the Black Orlov were deliberately conflated, the better to sell the black diamond.  

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