CHAPTER VI
PAINTED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (ITALIAN AND SPANISH)
FAN OF FERRARA, OR ‘DUCK’S-FOOT’ THE establishment of the Portuguese as a conquering power in the far East dates from the first expedition of Vasco da Gama in 1497. Five years earlier, Christopher Columbus had sailed westward over the Atlantic, bearing a letter from his royal mistress to the great Khán of Tartary, seeking India and far Cathay, and finding instead—America.
The three expeditions of Vasco da Gama, during the first twenty years of the sixteenth century, together with the operations of Alfonso d’Albuquerque, resulted in the complete supremacy of Portugal as a trading power with the East. From Japan and the Spice Islands to the Red Sea and the Cape of Good Hope, they were the sole masters and dispensers of the treasures of the East,[83] and during the whole of the sixteenth century enjoyed a complete monopoly of the Oriental trade. As early as 1502, the King of Portugal obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull constituting him ‘Lord of the Navigation, Conquests, and Trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India,’ but it was not until 1516 that the Portuguese made their appearance in China, where, ‘at Ningpo, they succeeded in establishing a colony, carrying on a gainful trade with other parts of China, as well as with Japan.’[84] It was thus that the folding-fan found its way first to Portugal through its traders.
This introduction of the folding-fan into Europe marks the beginning of a new era of the fan’s history, as, although both Chinese and Japanese fans possess qualities which are absolutely individual and unique, yet it must be confessed that the fan, in the hands of European artists, its early Oriental influence notwithstanding, ultimately developed a character and style quite its own, and reflecting the artistic conditions of its epoch and surroundings.
There are, however, considerable grounds for supposing that some form of the folding-fan, as we now know it, existed in Europe at a period considerably anterior to the Portuguese expedition to the East. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonné du Mobilier Français, makes a remarkable statement in connection with some thin metal fragments which were unearthed during some excavation at the Château de Pierre. These fragments, says this distinguished author, which are very characteristic of a fan constructed like those of our own times, should be anterior to the siege of 1422, as they were found in the carbonised débris belonging to that epoch. They are composed of an alloyed metal, cuivre et argent. The piece B represents one of the outside flats, and was fixed to a guard of wood or very thin metal, to which was glued the stuff, or vellum; the piece A one of the branch pieces or brins. M. Viollet-le-Duc infers from the fact of the pieces not being pierced at the handle end, but finished with a cross, that the branches were tied with a silken cord, which would also be attached to the waist belt; he points out the great antiquity of the flabellum (doubtless meaning the cockade form), and concludes by saying, ‘It is difficult to allow that the fan, which is merely a derivation of it (qui n’en est qu’un dérivé), was not in use until the sixteenth century, as several writers have contended.’