Folding Fan Depicting a Mask

In a disconcerting visual conceit, the design decorating the paper leaf of this fan imitates a life-size mask, its eyeholes cut out to allow the bearer of the fan to peep through. The flanking vignettes represent scenes of commerce- fan and music shops- and intriguing narratives, of an irate woman beating a man, and of a partially masked lady scanning a newssheet in the street. A small group of eighteenth-century fans decorated in this fashion survive in museum collections (the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg; and The Fan Museum, Greenwich, U.K.), some painted and some printed. It is believed that they were produced in England, but targeted at the Spanish market, hence the Spanish language newssheet conspicuously represented. This example must have been one of the more expensive versions, painted in gouache, with carved ivory sticks and guards, and glass stud pivot ends.