The Spaniards, says Henri Estienne, carried towards 1440 large round screens garnished with plumes, and in the sixteenth century folded fans, _éventails plissés_, enriched with gold and attached to the waist by a gold cord. Of these latter, many, doubtless, were imported from Italy; few, probably, were of native workmanship. A very small pleated fan appears in the hand of a Spanish lady, illustrated in Vecellio, 1590. The rigid flag-fan employed in Italy at this period was also used in Spain, together with the various plumed fans, some in the shape of a peacock’s tail; others formed of the feathers of the ostrich, pheasant, parrot, and Indian raven. During the seventeenth century and later, a large export trade in unpainted pleated fans was done in Paris to Madrid and other Spanish cities, where they were decorated by native artists; many were exported complete, the authenticity of many so-called Spanish fans must always therefore remain a more or less doubtful question. The well-known story of Cano de Arevalo, given in Quilliet’s _Dictionnaire des peintres espagnols_, sufficiently testifies to the extent of the Paris export trade and the popularity of French fans during this period. This painter, who was a capable miniaturist, finding himself impoverished after a period of extravagance and dissipation, secluded himself for a whole winter, produced a number of fans, and passed them off as newly-imported French ones. The trick proved completely successful, for upon its discovery, he was not only hailed as a master, but was subsequently appointed _abaniquero_ (fan-maker) to the queen. Cano was born at Valdemoro in 1656, and was assassinated in a bull-fight at Madrid in 1696. From the same source (Quilliet) we learn that Cano also ‘essayed water-colour painting on a larger scale, but only succeeded with fans,’ which are still esteemed, the few that are preserved. This success of Cano must necessarily have given a considerable impetus to the native production of fans, largely used from the fifteenth century onwards by men as well as women. In brief, the story of Spanish painting during the whole of the sixteenth century is that of a general migration of Spanish artists to Italy for purposes of study, with a consequent strong Italian influence; and an immigration of Italian artists to Spain, chiefly at the invitation of Charles V. The seventeenth century witnessed the rise and full development of a purely native school of painting, headed by Velasquez and Murillo, who, however, can scarcely be said to have exercised any influence upon the fan, since they were painters pure and simple, _i.e._ their works were distinguished by the qualities of the painter rather than those of the designer; and, especially in the case of Velasquez, their subjects were unsuitable to the fan.