The world's largest known freshwater pearl, which once belonged to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, has been sold for $494,000 at auction in the Netherlands.
Known as The Sleeping Lion, the pearl has a distinct animal-like appearance, weighs over 100 grams and is seven centimetres long.
It is believed to have been formed in Chinese waters in the first part of the 18th century.
Marco Polo wrote in 1298 of a large lake in China, situated near the city of "Kaindu", where pearls "of a white colour, but not round" were hunted.
The Sleeping Lion Pearl is thought to have been transported to Europe between 1765 and 1769 by a Chinese trading company.
Eventually the pearl was sold to Catherine the Great who, by the end of her life, possessed almost 4,000 paintings and a library of more than 10,000 books.
After she died, the pearl vanished before turning up in Poland and eventually being bought by a Dutch goldsmith in 1865.
Its next intended owner was Victor Emmanuel II — the King of Italy from 1849-1861. The baroque pearl was the perfect size for the royal sceptre but the king found himself short of money.
The pearl stayed in the same Polish family for four generations before being bought by the Amsterdam Pearl Society in 1979, who studied its origins and form.
Pearl expert Hanco Zwaan said the pearl was unique not just because of its size but also because it was a "natural, blister pearl".
"Most pearls that you see today are all cultured, created by human intervention," he said.
"This pearl is really formed by a mollusc, somewhere in a river or lake."
The Swiss Gemmological Institute determined in 2016 the pearl was "a true treasure of natural history" due to not only its size but also its historical provenance.
Reuters/ABC
