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Description

Scarce portrait of Jean Baptiste Tavernier, aged 74 years old in 1679.

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689) was a 17th-century French gem merchant and traveler. He reported travelling 60,000 leagues in making six voyages to Persia and India between the years 1630 and 1668. In 1675, Tavernier, at the behest of his patron Louis XIV, published Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Six Voyages, 1676).

Tavernier is best known for his 1666 discovery or purchase of the 116-carat Tavernier Blue diamond, which he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668 for 120,000 livres.  The price was the equivalent of 172,000 ounces of pure gold. The diamond is now known as the "Hope Diamond."

In 1669, Tavernier purchased for 60,000 livres the Seigneury (fief) of Aubonne, located in the Duchy of Savoy near the city of Geneva, and became Baron of Aubonne.