Cleveland Museum of Art

Aeneas in the Underworld, Design for a Fan

François Boucher

Date

after 1730

Medium

watercolor and gouache

Culture

France, 18th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Both practical and fashionable, fans were essential accessories for elite European women in the 1700s. Often decorated with elaborate motifs, a fan could reveal information about its wearer. It might expose a woman’s artistic or literary tastes, divulge her politics, or disclose her knowledge of current cultural conversations. The design seen here represents an episode from The Aeneid , a Latin epic poem, suggesting the owner’s interest in recent translations of classical poetry. It could also operate as a metaphor for the Enlightenment: seen entering a cave at right, the hero, Aeneas, travels through the underworld where he faces harrowing challenges and converses with the dead before emerging newly enlightened and victorious. The 1700s is often considered to be a golden age of fan design.

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