A ROYALIST FAN

By: Anna Checcoli

This time we speak about a so-called “Royalist fan, very very rare. His peculiarity consists in being unique, and it distinguishes from the others of this typology because it openly extols to the king and his family and, above all, when he is still alive. The known examples, as a rule, reveal the royal portraits seeing them against the light, or opening them partly, exploiting images’ plays apparently innocuous.

In this case the fan is of French manufacture, it has rosewood sticks(18+2), an ivory plaque on the rivet, and it measures cm. 27,5 (max. spread cm.51). It has double gauze leaf, of wine colour, with a mezzotint etching on the paper medaillon in the middle, depicting Louis XVI, Mary Antoinette and the dauphin Louis-Charles, with the writing” DOMINE SALVUS (sic) FAC REGEM, REGINAM ET DELPHINUM”. The engraving's author is Aubin de Saint Augustin, the king's engraver, of the family of Saint-Aubins, all engravers and drawers. He was born on January, 3rd 1736 in Paris, where he died on November, 9th 1807. He entered the Royal Academy of Painting in 1775. To be noted that on the fan the engraving is on the opposite, with the addition of a writing, a cloth with lilies and two crowns, while the king wears the "Cordon Bleu" with the St. Spirit's Order Cross, which end was to protect the sovereign because sacred.

Recto is embroidered with sequins representing French lilies and with the writing: ”TOUT PUISSANT JE L’AIME MALHEREUX JE L’ADORE. DOMINE SALVUM FAC REGEM”(Almighty, I love him, unlucky, I adore him. God save the King).

The tenor of the writings makes us to understand with certitude that when the fan was made the whole Royal Family was obviously still alive, seeing the exhortation to God. The nature of the invocation, so sorrowful, so intimate and direct, makes us also to understand that the fan has belonged to someone close to the King, if not even to Marie Antoinette or to the young sister of Louis XVI°, Elisabeth Philippine Marie-Hélène de Bourbon. We have to consider that besides the general exodus of the French nobles, also the Louis XVI’s brothers ran away to England, where they organized the Monarchic Resistance. It has always been thought that fans with similar characteristics were produced in England, but I can sustain that this exemplar has been manufactured in France,probably in the Madame Deaspeaux's boutique, Rue de Gramont - Paris, as quoted by Blondel, who mentions an announcement of the "Journal des Hommes libres de l'an IV°" (1796). Here it is sustained that such fans were of the most refined and expensive quality (see also: " Autant en porte le vent - Eventails,histoire du gout"- page 66,n°77). I think that the misunderstanding has risen from the circumstance that M.me Despeaux moved her activity to England, following the exodus of the nobles from France.

Louis XVI was born in Versailles on 8/23/1754 and he died in Paris on 1/21/1793; he was King from 1774. He was Louis XV’s grand-son, he was son of the dauphin Louis and of Mary Josephine of Saxon. When his father died in 1765, he became dauphin at the age of 11,and King of France with the name Louis XVI. In 1770,at 16, he married Mary Antoinette, 15 years old. She was daughter of Emperor Francis Ist and M.Thérese of Austria. She was born in Wien on 11/22/1755 and died in Paris on 10/16/1793.

Since the beginning people didn’t like M. Antoinette at all, both because she was stranger, and because her frivolity.

When Revolution broke out she took sides with the most intolerant and reactionary aristocracy, inciting her husband to set himself against the most moderate revolutionaries, as Mirabeau and Lafayette.

Louis XVI had three children: Mary-Thérese Charlotte, then known as Madame Royale; Louis-Joseph (the heir to the throne who will die at the age of 8 in 1789, only a month before the French Revolution), and Louis-Charles who, when his brother died, became, at the age of 4, the new dauphin of France.

When Louis married M. Antoinette, France was already burdened with debts and impoverished. He tried to reduce taxes and make reforms, but he was too weak in character to face the aristocracy’s resistances. On the contrary of his predecessors, he hadn’t even the fortune to go through a prosperity period; so, he went off by himself, and he got estranged from the real problems of the State. From financials, they became ideologics, and hostility rose, favoured by the union between middle-class and lower-classes, who tried to create an economical politic lined up the Industrial Revolution, already begun in England.

In 1788 Louis summoned the General States. Convened with their “Cahiers de Doleances” they changed into National Constituent Assembly. The King tried to opposite, then to suborn deputies.

Finally, on July 1791, the night between 20 and 21, he ran away with his family. He was arrested and taken again to Paris, but anyway he was saved by the Assembly, which allowed him to become Constitutional King.

So, the king swore allegiance to the new Constitution, but stealthily he continued to manoeuvre against the revolution. Then he was accused of betrayal, and prisoned in the Temple with his wife and the two children. Republic was proclaimed on September 21st,92. He was tried and guillotined on January 21st,1793. His last words were: “PEOPLE,I DIE INNOCENT”. M.Antoinette was executed on October,16th.

Little Louis-Charles and Madame Royale remained prisoners of Revolutionary Government. Madame Royale then obtained liberty thanks to an exchange with Austrian prisoners, while about the child the history is more difficult.

With his father’s death he became Louis XVII, a little and cumbersome prisoner, for the bloody Roberspierre’s men. Officially he died for tuberculosis on June 8th ,1795. But it’s still a mystery, after two centuries. His body has never been found, so many persons were convinced that he ran away.

When Napoleon fell down, another Bourbon ascended the throne: he was Louis XVI’s brother, and Louis XVII’s uncle. And seen that nobody knew nothing about his nephew, he preferred to be called Louis XVIII.

Louis XVIII was often in conflict with Duke of Berry: Charles-Ferdinand of Artois, Louis XVII’s cousin, whom was seven years older than.

He was brother of Louis-Antony of Bourbon Duke of Angouleme, and of the young Countess of Artois, then called Mademoiselle.

The Duke of Berry supported the reasons of a so-called Charles William Naundorff, who tried, in 1818, to demonstrate to be Louis-Charles of Bourbon. Perhaps also Louis XVIII thought that his nephew was still alive, but he had perfect reasons to keep silent: his throne was in danger. And probably also for this reason the Duke of Berry was killed outside the theatre on February 13th , 1820, in Paris.

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