Aeneas in the Underworld, Design for a Fan (after 1730): Art, History and Details

Aeneas in the Underworld, Design for a Fan (after 1730) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is François Boucher (French, 1703–1770).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Aeneas in the Underworld, Design for a Fan
• Date: after 1730
• Creator attribution: François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor and gouache
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.2 x 54.8 cm (10 11/16 x 21 9/16 in.); Secondary Support: 35.2 x 64.7 cm (13 7/8 x 25 1/2 in.); Tertiary Support: 35.2 x 64.7 cm (13 7/8 x 25 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1941.547

A detail from the museum

The 1700s is often considered to be a golden age of fan design.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Otto Miller

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.