And lawny strips thy naked bosom grace.’
An ostrich-plume folded fan is given in a miniature of Mademoiselle D’Hautefort in the cabinet of M. de la Mésangère. This consists of ten sticks each with a single feather attached, dyed alternatively yellow and blue.
Feather-fans continued in general use until the time of Vandyck and later, and are in evidence in several portraits by this master; indeed the use of the tuft- and feather-fan has never been completely abandoned, the article having remained in intermittent use even to the present day.
None of these ancient feather-fans exist in their complete form, from the perishable nature of the ostrich plume, which, in the lapse of time, crumbles to fragments, and from this circumstance the remarkable feather hand-screen in the possession of Mr. Messel is of the highest interest.
A few handles, however, are to be found in the various collections, both public and private. A pretty ivory handle of a sixteenth-century Italian feather-fan is in the Salting collection, at present at South Kensington. This is delicately carved with two half-length female figures issuing from acanthus-leaved ornament, and holding a festoon of drapery, a mask of Cupid above. Near the handle end are two winged terminal monsters.
The head of an ivory-fan handle, also Italian of the same period, is in the South Kensington collection: this has a female terminal (head restored) and two dolphins forming the top, two masks on either side, with other terminals and cornucopiæ.
GHOST FAN. Malay Archipelago
(Ethnological Museum, Berlin.)
| Italian Fan, cut vellum mount. finely painted with miniatures, end of 17th Cent., stick ivory, of later date. | Mr. L. C. R. Messel. |