The earliest examples remaining to us are Coptic or Saracenic. M. Robert Forrer in his _Reallexikon_ figures two which were obtained from the cemetery of Akhmîn, the Greek Panopolis, presumably belonging to the fourth-sixth century. Of these, one is finely plaited of brown, red, and black straw, with a representation of four hearts encircling a cross, the other of a reticulated diapered pattern with a border of linen. A similar flag-fan of plaited straw appears in the Berlin Museum: this example, also, is probably Coptic. M. Charles de Linas, quoting from the life of St. Fulgentius, sixth century, affirms that the Bishop of Ruspa, whilst he was a monk and even an abbot, occupied his leisure hours in copying Holy Writ or in plaiting ‘fly-flaps’ of palm leaves. This same author[75] figures a flag-fan from an engraved glass vase, exhumed from the catacombs, and now preserved in the library of the Vatican, representing the Virgin Mother seated with the infant Saviour on her lap, a deacon behind agitating a rectangular flabellum fixed in a lateral handle. The zigzag ornamentation indicates that this, also, was formed of plaited straw. [Illustration] In the Observances of the Augustinian Priory at Barnwell, Cambridge, ‘The Fraterer ought to provide mats and rushes to strew the Frater and the alleys of the Cloister at the Frater door, and frequently to renew them; in summer to throw flowers, mint, and fennel into the air to make a sweet odour, and to provide fans.’ ‘Muscatoria in estate providere.’[76] [Illustration: Coptic Fans, Akhmîn. Ethnological Museum. Berlin.] The most remarkable example, however, of this banner form is on a diptich of ivory offered by Charles the Bald to the abbey of Saint-Corneille de Compiègne, and at present in the Cabinet de Médailles at Paris. On the inferior compartment of the diptich is a eunuch (?) holding with both hands a flabellum apparently of metal, the handle long, thick at the end, and engraved with lines representing masonry; the top in the form of a turret, from which hangs a cord. The leaf, in all probability embroidered, has a plain broad border enclosing a laurel wreath. The banner form of fan became fashionable with the Venetian women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These were of two kinds: the one, of a more ornate character, was used by matrons; the other, _abanico di novia_, of a delicate whiteness, used only by engaged maidens or the newly married. An example of the latter occurs in the portrait of the painter’s daughter Lavinia, by Titian, in the Dresden Gallery, probably painted in 1555. Titian painted this favourite daughter some eighteen years later; in this portrait she carries a feather-fan, the sign of Venetian nobility, Titian having been, in the interval, created a Count Palatine by the Emperor Charles V. [Illustration: FROM AN IVORY DIPTICH. (Cabinet de Médailles, Paris.)]