Brisé fan of ivory, painted with tempera and gold paint, with central cartouche depicting Zephyrus and Flora, surrounded by Chinoiseries

Fan, so-called brisé fan of ivory painted with tempera, mythological scene amid medallions and cartouches with chinoiseries. Model: brisé fan with 28 ivory sticks and two undecorated tortoiseshell guards. The sticks are held together by a green rib ribbon. Mother-of-pearl washer around brass rivet. Decoration: the gold-coloured background has reserved spaces for the various cartouches. Around the central cartouche a beaded rim in relief, above which a gold field with leaf and flower motifs in relief. Furthermore, the gold background features a diamond pattern with dots. The cartouches to the left and right had a silver(?) rim, which has now turned black/grey. The central scene is formed by a winged young man in classical attire raising his hands to a young woman seated on the ground before a tree, with a floral wreath on her head. It is a scene from the 'Fasti' of the poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 18) in which Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, holds a floral wreath above Flora as a token of his love. This fan painter has chosen the moment after Zephyrus has placed the floral wreath on Flora's head. Love between these two must have been a popular theme in the 1720s, as it appears more frequently on fans from this period (cf. BK-NM-10463, reverse). To the upper left of Zephyrus is a cartouche containing a man picking grapes (Bacchus, the god of grapes, wine and joy) near a village with a church tower. To the upper right of Flora, a cartouche in which a woman with a sheaf of wheat in her right hand and a sickle in her left hand (Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, harvest, grain and fertility) is seated in a wheat field with a building (farmhouse?) in the background. Beneath the central scene is a hunt scene with a beater driving a dog after a deer, straight into the line of sight (field of fire) of a man with a gun. The lower section (gorge) is painted with an outdoor scene of a group of women in Chinese(?) dress with a large seated animal (dog?). In the background a village. In the left cartouches: above, a man and woman in a garden with a peacock; below, a seated woman with outstretched arms looking back. In the right cartouches: a woman with lance or spear seated in a carriage drawn by a man, accompanied by a spotted dog (dalmatian?); below, a seated woman looking back. On the back of the fan, leaf and flower motifs and the contours of the cartouches are painted in gold. The lower section features a multicoloured leaf and flower pattern. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, holds this object as BK-1993-8; its record gives material recorded as ivory, tortoise shell, copper (metal), mother of pearl, gilt paint, tempera; technique paint, cutting. Description translated from the museum's Dutch catalogue text; details are those of this museum object, and how far it represents a wider type has not been independently verified.