Portrait of a Lady with a Fan by Diego Velázquez

Painting of the Spanish painter Diego Velazquez “Portrait of a Lady with a Fan”. The size of the portrait is 94 x 69 cm, canvas, oil.

The image of portraits of ladies with a fan was quite widespread in the artistic environment, beginning with the Renaissance. Fan, a small hand, usually folding fan, in expanded form in the form of a semicircle, of paper, fabric, bone, wood, feathers, lace.

The folding fan, first appeared in Japan and China, was made up of separate plates fastened at the base by a pin, and in the upper part – by a thin cloth, paper or parchment, cut out arched. This type of fan appeared in Western Europe, and then, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in Russia.

It was borrowed not only the form of a fan, often made of precious materials, but also its special “language”, in which ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth century conducted a kind of dialogue – changing its position, partially closing or opening, etc.