There were three in the relationship: Rudolph Valentino, Pola Negri – the Latin Lover and the Femme Fatale, two of the greatest stars of the silent screen – and the massive jewel on her finger, said to be the fateful ring that cursed a string of owners.
Within a year of the smouldering portrait by the Spanish artist Federico Beltrán Masses – which is expected to sell for up £15,000 at a Bonhams auction on 27 September – Valentino had died from peritonitis aged 31, and several women and at least one man were killing themselves in anguish.
Negri turned his funeral into a publicity bonanza, insisting the pair had been engaged, sending 1,000 red and white roses spelling out the word Pola, hurling herself fainting on to his coffin in New York and then accompanying the coffin on a train journey across the US, weeping becomingly at each one of the dozens of stops along the route toward his burial in California.
The ring was also the stuff of Hollywood legend. Negri chose it as a keepsake from his estate, despite – or possibly because of – its lurid reputation. Valentino bought it from a San Francisco jeweller, despite being warned it had brought disaster to several owners before his untimely death.
Negri gave it to the actor Russ Valentino, noted as a Valentino lookalike, who died in an accidental shooting. His best friend and heir, the entertainer Joe Casino, was run over by a truck after spending months pondering whether to wear it. It was then stolen from his brother’s home by a doomed burglar who was shot dead by the police with the ring in his pocket.
It was borrowed by a young actor for a screen test who inexorably died of a rare disease within weeks, before it finally vanished after a fire at the bank where it was kept under lock and key.
Negri recovered from her grief sufficiently to marry a Georgian prince within the year, but he turned out to be a compulsive gambler, which swiftly brought her back from retirement. She survived the transition to the talkies, and her 1935 film Mazurka was said to be one of Adolf Hitler’s favourites, though she successfully sued a French magazine for suggesting they had been lovers. She made several comebacks before her death in 1987 aged 90.
Bonhams paintings expert Charles O’Brien called the portrait “ethereal and beautiful” and said the artist, as a friend of Valentino’s, had succeeded in capturing a moment of stillness in the tumultuous lives of the couple.
