Given the vast demand for luxury goods for use at court, the production of fine fans flourished in Paris during the 17th century. The rare selection from the time of Louis XIV presented in this sale was part of a larger collection assembled over a period of 26 years by the French dealer and collector Sylvain Lévy-Alban. Fans were delicate and ephemeral objects, these survive because they were mounted and framed as pictures.
By the end of the century, the hand-painted decoration of fans had evolved from purely ornamental patterns into more elaborate figurative subjects. The designs offer a wide range of representations, from allegorical and mythological compositions to depictions of contemporary events and royal occasions. They provide a genuine flavor of life at court: its rituals, its curiosity about the Far East, and the many interior details of furnishings and decorations, as well as of gardens and festivities.

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan (1640-1707), known to history as Madame de Montespan, was among the most celebrated and influential figures of the court of Louis XIV. Born on 5 October 1640 into the ancient and distinguished House of Rochechouart, she possessed the beauty, wit, ambition and cultivated intelligence that would secure her a position at the very center of the French court. Married to the Marquis de Montespan in 1663, she subsequently entered the household of Princess Henrietta, Duchess of Orléans, before becoming a lady-in-waiting to Queen Maria Theresa. By the late 1660s, she had supplanted Louise de La Vallière as the principal favorite of Louis XIV, establishing a relationship with the king that endured for more than a decade. The relationship produced seven children, six of whom were ultimately legitimized by the king, although only four survived infancy. Their upbringing was entrusted largely to Madame Scarron, the future Marquise de Maintenon, whose subsequent ascendancy in the king’s affections would mark the beginning of Montespan’s decline from royal favor. Her later reputation was profoundly affected by the notorious Affair of the Poisons, which came to light in 1677 and in which her alleged involvement cast a lasting shadow over her legacy. By 1691, she had withdrawn from court and entered the convent of the Filles de Saint-Joseph in Paris. Thirteen years later she departed for the Château d’Oiron, where she devoted the remainder of her life to charitable works, religious observance, patronage and penance. Madame de Montespan died on 27 May 1707, aged sixty-six. A figure of extraordinary prominence in the cultural and political life of the Grand Siècle, Madame de Montespan remains emblematic of the splendor, ambition and intrigue of the court of Louis XIV.