According to Roman legend, Claudia Quinta was a Vestal Virgin. She and her companions tended the sacred fire brought by Aeneas from Troy to Rome and kept in a sanctuary in the Forum. Claudia was wrongly accused of adultery but proved her innocence with the help of the goddess Cybele. In this fan she is shown standing to left of centre, holding one end of her girdle in her right hand. The other end of the girdle is tied around the gilded prow of a ship bearing the sacred stone image of Cybele, the 'Great Mother'. The ship had become grounded at the mouth of the Tiber on its journey from Pergamum to Rome, but Claudia had managed to pull it free. After this miraculous outcome the elders (shown here at left and right) were convinced of Claudia's chastity. To right of centre another Vestal Virgin, Tuccia, kneels while gazing at Claudia in wonderment. Tuccia had proved her own chastity by carrying water in a sieve, shown here propped up behind her knee.

This finely painted fan belonged to George IV's only child, Princess Charlotte, who died in childbirth at Claremont House, Surrey, in 1817. It was among the Princess's belongings which passed to her dresser, Mrs Louisa Louis (1771-1838), who continued to live at Claremont after the Princess's death and was close to a number of members of the royal family. On Queen Victoria's accession in 1837 Mrs Louis moved to Buckingham Palace, where she died, on Easter Sunday, in April of the following year. The Queen recorded the decline and death of Mrs Louis in her Journal, later noting that a 'Nobler more disinterested or more high minded person never breathed'. Queen Victoria's Journal also records her receipt of a small number of mementoes of Princess Charlotte (including a chain and a pincushion) in the period immediately following Mrs Louis's death. In the 1870s the fan was lent by Queen Victoria to two exhibitions, with the information that it had been 'Given to the Queen by Mrs Louis'. Other items of clothing which had belonged to Princess Charlotte were bequeathed by Mrs Louis to Lady Gardiner (1784-1876), Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria, who discreetly sold them in order to benefit Mrs Louis's German relatives. The purchasers included Queen Victoria, the Duchess of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester and the Queen of the Belgians, in addition to a small circle of other royal ladies.

Text adapted from Unfolding Pictures: Fans in the Royal Collection, 2005