A shorter code has been published in English (duly copyrighted) by M. J. Duvelleroy. This, although the principle is the same, differs materially in the details; thus, ‘I love you’ in Spanish is to hide the eyes behind the opened fan; in English, to draw the fan across the cheek. ‘I hate you,’ in the former instance, is to raise the shut fan to the shoulder in the right hand; in the latter, to draw the fan through the hand: either code being sufficiently expressive and acquired with tolerable ease.
CHAPTER VII
PAINTED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (FRENCH)
FAN OF RICE STRAW
(From a Fifteenth-Century MS. in the National Library, Paris.)The so-called Renaissance of the arts of France in the sixteenth century was the outcome of an increased knowledge of, and familiarity with, Italian ideals of life, and the splendours of a more refined civilisation; it represented the assimilation of the national spirit, the union of French ‘netteté d’exécution’ with the more sober learning of Italian tradition. The beginnings of this Italian influence are to be discovered earlier, in the visit of Jean Foucquet to Italy in 1440-1445; this event being the signal for a general migration of Italian artists northward.
For the purposes of the fan, however, we are concerned only with the history of French art from the period when, in 1530, at the invitation of François I., Le Rosso and Primaticcio repaired to Paris for the purpose of decorating the palace at Fontainebleau.
At this period architecture was creating Chenonceau and Chambord. Sculpture, in the hands of Cellini and Jean Goujon, was providing the decorative details for the château then being built by Philibert de l’Orme for Diana de Poitiers.
In the sister art of Painting, Jean Cousin and François Clouet, together with Primaticcio, who continued working until 1570, were the dominant influences.