Page 132, line 12 from bottom, for H.R.H. the Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Brandenburg, read H.S.H. the Princess Victor of Hohenlohe Langenburg.
| Pastorelle, Spanish, c. 1780. skin mount, tortoiseshell stick, gilt incrustations. | H.S.H. Princess Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. |
A remarkable fan in this same collection was brought from Madrid by Lady Canning, who accompanied Sir Stratford Canning to Spain on a special mission from Queen Victoria, and was given to Lady Lindsay in 1878. The stick is of ivory, finely and elaborately carved; the mount, skin, painted in the Chinese taste; illustrated facing p. 127.
The character of Spanish work of the stick, which, with a few isolated exceptions, never reached a high level of attainment, materially deteriorated towards the close of the century. A fan appears in the Schreiber collection, with ivory stick, indifferently carved and gilt, the silk leaf having for its subject a large medallion of the surrender of Minorca in 1782, with the English army evacuating the island, and the Spanish flag waving over the fort of S. Phelippe; the sides decorated with vases of flowers embroidered, painted, and spangled; the subject inscribed in Spanish along the top border of the fan.
Of the treatment of the stick, two interesting examples in the Wyatt collection may be referred to—the one, belonging to the early part of the century, in which painted trellis-work in blue and brown is introduced as a background to finely pierced and carved cartouches of figures and other subjects, the ornament being enriched with gold; the other with a paper mount representing the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (probably a church-fan), the mother-of-pearl sticks engraved with three figure subjects en cartouche, with elaborate scroll-work; the leading features of the ornament, together with portions of the figures, being emphasised with thin lines of gold, having an extremely pleasant effect; c. 1750.
Spanish painting in the latter half of the eighteenth century experienced some revival in the person of Francisco Goya, one of the most extraordinary personalities who ever wielded a brush, and whose greatness is only just beginning to be adequately recognised, chiefly, however, on account of his etchings, of which he produced a number.[94]
If we may conceive Goya as ever touching the fan, the example illustrated, from the collection of Lady Northcliffe, is just such a one as he might have painted. At any rate this may be considered as a typical Spanish fan. The silk leaf has in the centre a mounted picador, with six medallions of bull-fights; above the picador are two Cupids holding a shield of arms, with thirteen other shields along the upper border, bearing the arms of Biscaria, Cordova, Majorca, Valencia, Arragonia, Leon, Castillia, Navarra, Toledo, Gallicia, Andalusia, Murcia, and Catalonia. The shields, together with the medallions, are bordered with embroidered spangles; the ivory stick and guards finely pierced and inlaid with gold and silver.