The central scene on the recto is derived from Domenichino's painting of Diana with Nymphs at Play, datable to the end of the second decade of the seventeenth century. The painting has a large progeny: in the seventeenth century a number of painted copies were made, in addition to engravings by P. Scalberge, G.F. Venturini and others. Both the subject-matter and the arrangement of the figures made Domenichino's painting popular with fan-painters: it reappears on painted and printed leaves produced in eighteenth-century London.

The verso is painted with scenes showing ships being loaded with bales of wool. Cannon and cannon balls are shown in the foreground while in the reserves at either side are two groups of three cannon balls. Similar subjects are frequently found on Meissen porcelain of the early eighteenth century. The sticks are lacquered with a falconer, a hunting scene and woodland scenes. The delicate decoration on the mica panels is composed of cut-out leather (kidskin) covered with gold on the recto and silver on the verso. The main body of the leaf was punched or cut from the front, but the top border appears to have been punched and cut through two thicknesses of kidskin.

This is the finest of a small group of similarly highly decorated fans with mica insertions. In addition to this fan, there are comparable examples in Munich, Cambridge and elsewhere. The recto of the Munich fan was probably painted by the same hand as the present fan, while another artist painted the versos of the three other fans. Although the decoration on these fans has traditionally been associated with the Preissler family, no similarities have yet been established between the painted decoration and that found in glass painted by the best-known member of that family, the Bratislava glass-painter Ignaz Preissler (1676-1741). The group of fans may in fact be Italian in origin.

The fan was a birthday present to Queen Mary in 1914 and was later mounted onto a double-sided fan screen. In her article on Queen Mary's fans published in 1927, Eugénie Gibson described this 'as one of the most remarkable in the collection. Generally it is in wonderful preservation; eloquent testimony to the care which has been taken of it from the time of its creation'.

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