FACT OF THE DAY

The masterpiece its intended owner never saw

Breguet’s No. 160, better known as the “Marie-Antoinette,” was commissioned in 1783 and not finished until 1827 — 44 years of work, completed four years after Abraham-Louis Breguet himself had died and 34 years after the queen it was named for lost her head to the guillotine. She never held it. According to Rox, the watch was ordered by an unnamed admirer of the queen, with instructions to include every complication then known and to spare no expense. The result became one of the most celebrated pocket watches ever made.

Its story did not end quietly. The watch was stolen from the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem in 1983, and it vanished for decades before finally being recovered in December 2007, back where it belonged.

Some masterpieces outlive everyone connected to them. This one simply refused to disappear.