Cut registry › Historic cuts › Mazarin
Historic cuts · The double cut
Seventeen facets a side.
The Mazarin doubled the single cut’s facets and is usually called the first true brilliant. On our measurements it bought sparkle and gave back light.
The short version
A Mazarin cut diamond is a cushion-outlined stone with seventeen facets on the crown and seventeen on the pavilion, 34 in total, and it is generally regarded as the first true brilliant cut.
It doubled the single cut’s facet count and is credited to Cardinal Jules Mazarin in the mid-1600s, an attribution that is trade tradition rather than documented history.
Definition
Tolkowsky describes it in Diamond Design at page 22 and draws it at figure 9: "sixteen facets, excluding the table, on the upper side". That is the specification this reconstruction is built from, together with the 57.5% table his figure shows.
Its outline is a soft-cornered square, closer to a cushion than to a circle. Round outlines were not practically achievable before mechanical bruting, so every cut in this line before the Old European is some approximation of a square.
The attribution to Cardinal Mazarin should be handled carefully. It is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere, and the Cardinal was a collector rather than a cutter. Treat it as the name the trade gave the cut, not as a claim about who devised it.
Two facet counts, and both are right. The historic count omits the girdle, because a hand-bruted stone had no faceted girdle to count. Our model resolves the girdle as real surfaces, so the census reads 42. Where a figure below depends on facet count, it is the measured number that produced it.
Proportions
Trade description on the left, our reconstruction from figure 9 on the right. The proportions are deliberately shared with the Old Single and the Peruzzi, which is what makes the comparison between them meaningful.
| Measure | Commonly cited | Our reference stone | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outline | cushion / soft square | superellipse 2.70 | Round was not yet achievable. |
| Historic facets | 34 (17 and 17) | 42 measured | The difference is the girdle. |
| Depth | not standardised | 68.8% | Deep, as the whole early line is. |
| Table | fig. 9 shows 57.5% | 57.5% | Taken from the figure rather than the text. |
| Pavilion angle | not standardised | 46.2° | Well steeper than the modern 40.75°. |
Sharing one proportion set across the Old Single, Mazarin and Peruzzi is a deliberate modelling choice, not an accident of the sources. It isolates facet count as the only variable between the three, which is the only way to answer what adding facets actually bought.
Light
Measured on the census that runs on every cut on this site: 3,200 rays face-up, 2,200 at 20° tilt, on exact facet geometry, against T57 as the standard.
| Material | Useful light | Leak | Fire | Scintillation | Global | vs the standard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 64.56% | 17.27% | 62.94 | 60.68 | 74.88 | −13.73 |
| Moissanite | 61.38% | 17.12% | 88.31 | 60.68 | 78.51 | −11.31 |
| Cubic zirconia | 62.06% | 20.97% | 77.35 | 60.68 | 76.54 | −15.23 |
| T57 standard, diamond | 92.28% | 1.88% | 78.85 | 71.82 | 88.61 | 0.00 |
The Mazarin returns 64.56% of entering light usefully for 74.88 Global, against the standard’s 92.28% and 88.61. Its scintillation climbs to 60.68 from the single cut’s 78.79-scoring 26-facet plan, which is the gain the extra facets bought.
It also went backwards. Global falls from the single cut’s 78.79 to 74.88, and fire falls from 26 facets’ worth of large-facet colour to 62.94, the lowest of the six historic cuts. Doubling the facet count halved the size of each facet, and colour went with it.
This is the first entry in the line where the honest answer is that the improvement was not an improvement on every term. It bought flashes and sold colour.
Where the light is: useful return across the face
Five equal bands across the outline. The Mazarin returns 73.3% across the centre against 43.9% at the edges, so unlike the single cut its dark region is the rim rather than the middle. A modern round brilliant is flat at 99.1% against 98.1%. The corners of a cushion outline sit furthest from the pavilion’s working geometry, and they show it.
Against the standard
Facet count. 42 measured against 57, 34 against 58 historically.
Sparkle. 60.68 against 71.82. Roughly halfway from the single cut to the modern standard, which is what you would expect from roughly doubling the facets.
Fire. 62.94 against 78.85, and the weakest of the six historic cuts.
Light return. 64.56% against 92.28%, for a Global gap of 13.73 points.
Outline. A soft square rather than a circle, because mechanical bruting was two centuries away.
The baseline for all of this is the round brilliant itself. Its facet plan is set out in the anatomy of a round brilliant, and the measured standard we compare against is T57, the stone Tolkowsky published in 1919.
Materials
In moissanite the Mazarin returns 61.38% for 78.51 Global, and its fire recovers to 88.31 from 62.94 in diamond. A higher-dispersion material compensates for exactly the thing this cut gave up.
In cubic zirconia it returns 62.06% for 76.54 Global.
Its Index tilt figure sits at the scale ceiling of 100. On a cut returning 64.56% face-up that means there was little left to lose, not that the stone is stable. Read it as an artefact.
Trade-offs
Questions
The questions buyers actually ask, answered in full. Where the answer is ours to prove, the figure is measured on the Index; where it is an established gemological fact, it is stated as one.
A Mazarin cut diamond is a cushion-outlined stone carrying seventeen facets on the crown and seventeen on the pavilion, 34 in total. It is generally regarded as the first true brilliant cut, because it is the first in the line to carry facets on both the crown and the pavilion.
Cardinal Jules Mazarin, chief minister of France in the mid-1600s and a noted collector of diamonds. The attribution is trade tradition rather than documented history: the Cardinal collected stones, he did not cut them, and no contemporary record credits him with the design. Say credited to, not devised by.
Thirty-four historically, seventeen on each side. Our reconstruction measures 42 facets reaching the surface, the extra eight being the girdle, which the historic count does not include.
It is usually called that, and the claim is reasonable if a brilliant means a stone with facets arranged on both crown and pavilion to return light. It is not a brilliant in the modern sense of proportions solved for light return, which is a nineteenth and twentieth century idea.
It returns 64.56% of entering light against the standard’s 92.28%, for 74.88 Global against 88.61. Its scintillation of 60.68 is roughly halfway between the single cut and the modern standard, which is what doubling the facet count buys.
On sparkle, clearly: scintillation rises from the single cut’s figure to 60.68. On everything else, no. Global falls from 78.79 to 74.88 and fire drops to 62.94, the lowest of the six historic cuts, because halving the size of each facet also halved the width of the spectrum it throws.
Because a round outline was not practically achievable until mechanical bruting arrived in the late nineteenth century. Every cut in this line before the Old European is some approximation of a square, and the Mazarin’s is a soft-cornered cushion.
Facet count, on shared proportions. The Mazarin carries sixteen facets excluding the table on the upper side; the Peruzzi took that to thirty-two, reaching 58 facets in total. In our measurements that step recovers most of what the Mazarin gave up: Global rises from 74.88 to 78.49.
Next
See the whole set on the historic cuts index, or the measured house and historic cuts in the cut registry.
Method
Monte-Carlo on exact facet geometry: 3,200 rays face-up plus 2,200 at 20° tilt, cosine-weighted from a 7° near-vertical cone. Useful light is what exits through the crown within 64° of vertical. The same protocol runs on every cut on this site, so the figures are comparable to each other.
They measure our reference geometry for the shape at the proportions listed above, not an average of stones on the market. A mazarin cut to different proportions will read differently. Treat them as a like-for-like comparison between shapes, not as a grade for any individual stone.
Engine estimates, ±2 points, not lab-certified grades. We do not publish the Index symmetry axis on these pages: it scores facet regularity within each pavilion family, which is meaningful for a round brilliant and misleading for a shape whose pavilion is deliberately irregular.
60.68 here against the standard’s 71.82. The term is 100(1−e−n/45) on the count of facets that actually reach the surface, so it is a pure function of facet count and nothing else.