Philip,
whose one redeeming characteristic was a love for the fine arts, spent
a considerable sum upon the purchase of jewels. He acquired a very
large diamond just about this time, but the Pelegrina pearl was given
to him.
Garcilaso
de la Vega, that gossipy historian who incorporated every possible
subject and all sorts of anecdotes into his history of the Incas, saw
the Pelegrina. Of course so interesting a fact was immediately set
forth at length in the Royal Commentaries of Peru, where it belongs at least with as much reason as the account of the writer's drunken fellow-lodger in Madrid.
He says:
"
In order more particularly to know the riches of the King of Spain one
has but to read the works of Padre Acosta, but I will content myself
with relating that which I did myself see in Seville in 1579. It was a
pearl which Don Pedro de Temez brought from Panama, and which he did
himself present to Philip 11. This pearl, by nature pear-shaped, had a
long neck and was moreover as large as the largest pigeon's egg. It was
valued at fourteen thousand four hundred ducats ($28,800) but Jacoba da
Trezzo, a native of Milan, and a most excellent workman
