An allegory of this marriage appears as the subject of a fan that formed part of an important collection of a deceased Parisian lady, Madame X., sold at the Hôtel Drouot, April 1897. In this the stick is mother-of-pearl, carved with reliefs, gilt, and the arms of France and Austria. The leaf is in gouache on skin, with medallions of the royal pair, alternated with others emblematic of the Fine Arts.
Another bridal-fan of Marie-Antoinette has on the obverse an allegorical composition, in which the dauphine, enthroned upon a cloud, is about to sign the marriage contract which Cupid lays before her, while Hymen hovers above: on the left, the Graces weave garlands of roses; on the right, Midas and Discordia are banished to the regions of obscurity.
On the reverse, Louis and his young bride appear walking in a wood, guided by Cupid, blind, and bearing a torch. Both these subjects have been attributed to Fragonard; they are, however, most certainly by two different hands. The stick is mother-of-pearl, carved à jour, with figures of the royal couple, cupids, and other appropriate emblems.
The custom of presenting fans on the occasion of a wedding was universal, and surely no more acceptable offering than a fan could be made to a bride. The fine fan, illustrated by the kindness of the Countess of Bradford, is typical of a whole class of fans produced during the latter years of the reign of Louis XVI., having silk mounts, with painted medallions, usually one superior, and the other inferior; the borders and intervening spaces decorated with spangles of gold, silver, and colours; the sticks either broad and ornate as in the example given, or narrow; the ornamentation being of a more reticent character.
The principal medallion figures the prospective bride and bridegroom nursing a figure of Love. On the extremely ornate mother-of-pearl stick, lavishly gilt in dead and burnished gold of two colours, the happy pair again appear clasping hands before the altar of Hymen, with an accompaniment of Cupids; on the two inferior cartouches are dancing figures with wreaths, spangling being applied here as on the leaf. The fan appeared at the recent exhibition of Fair Women at the Grafton Galleries, where it attracted much attention.
On the occasion of the birth of the dauphin, (Louis XVII.) in 1785, eleven years after the marriage, the royal pair renew their vows at the altar of Hymen. This on a fan from the unfortunate queen’s collection, which, together with the last mentioned, appeared at the Walker sale in 1882; the mount skin, the stick mother-of-pearl, carved in open with portraits of the queen and the young dauphin.
The fan (brisé) presented by the town of Dieppe to Marie-Antoinette, in celebration of the same event,[113] is declared by Balzac to be the handsomest of all historical fans. It is of ivory open work, carved by the famous worker Le Flamand, eulogised by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The subject, from the design for Vien, premier peintre to Louis XVI., is an episode in the life of Alexander the Great. Porus, an Indian prince, on the eastern bank of the Hydaspes, refused to submit to Alexander, but, defeated and taken prisoner, he was brought into the presence of the conqueror. Asked how he expected to be treated, he boldly replied, ‘As a brave man and a king.’ Alexander, subdued by his foe’s firmness, restored to him his conquered territory.
Fan stick, Ivory, carved with subject of the Assembly of Notables 1787, figures of Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette on panaches. | Photo by A. Girander. Musée du Louvre. |
When the queen was obliged to quit Versailles in 1789, she gave this fan to Madame du Cray, who was keeper of her Majesty’s laces. From Madame du Cray it passed into the possession of her daughter, Madame la Bruyère, who, at her death, bequeathed it to Monsieur de Thiac, by whom it was exhibited at South Kensington in 1870.