Juno Allegory

Juno Allegory

Lenght cm. 27,5
Spread cm. 50
Sticks 18 plus 2

Austria around1690-1710

Painted at gouache on kid skin. The essentiality of the paint may mislead on the interpretation of the subject. Here we have: a woman, not dressed according to the fashion of the time, sitting  and crowned and she raises with the right hand a little branch with 2 pomegranates and holds with the left hand a flower crown; on the right of the page a peacock, put on a high pedestal, seems to talk to her; at the right extremity a child with a lamb is playing. On the background, just pointed, the profile of a rural castle. All around the board of the page there  is a running of silver applications : acanthus leaves (?), eagles on a fruit basket, pomegranates and putto. My idea is that it may be an allegory of Juno ( for the presence of the peacock and of the pomegranate) to be linked to the woman to whom the fan has been given. I would pose a particular attention, for the dating of the object, on the analysis of the sticks that present a typology absolutely similar in the fan "Byblical scene ?"  even if it comes from another state: smooth sticks and without decorations and a little cut just upon the rivet. The evolution of these sticks can be noted in the other fans that slowly cross the century and that should have been finished after the period of Orleans Regency. For this reason they have been included amongst the fans of Louis XV’s style.
"Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail." Leonardo Da Vinci