Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
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Title:
Fortune Turning her Wheel, from the Moralia in Job
Creator:
Description:
This scene of Fortune turning a wheel is a twelfth-century addition to a tenth-century Spanish copy of Pope Gregory the Great’s commentary on the Book of Job. Alfred Boeckler believes that the artist was not Spanish but French or English. (Pickering p. 213). This drawing is the only figural decoration in the entire book. It appears at the end of the twenty-second book of the commentary and its relation to the text of the work remains unclear. The richly-dressed personification of Fortune sits atop a claw-foot throne with an ample cushion. She appears swathed in robes ornamented with various patterns and wears a crown evocative of acanthus leaves. Fortune brandishes a sword in her left hand while turning the crank of the wheel with her right hand. The four figures on the wheel, in various states of regal or plain dress, represent four stages of rulership clockwise from the top - Ruling, about to rule, without a kingdom, and having ruled. Fortune herself and the two crowned figures cast their gazes up and away from the viewer, while the two despondent figures look imploringly at Fortune as if requesting that she intervene on their behalf. Though visual representations of Fortune with a wheel date back to Greek and Roman antiquity, depictions of Fortune explicitly governing the rise and fall of kings first appeared and rose to popularity in the twelfth century.
Source:
Wikimedia Commons
Rights:
Public Domain
Subject
(See Also)
:
Allegory
Fortune (Personification)
Wheel of Fortune
Geographic Area:
Iberia
Century:
12
Date:
First half of 12th century
Related Work:
Current Location:
Manchester, The University of Manchester, Ryland MS Latin 83, 214v
Original Location:
Spain
Artistic Type (Category):
Digital Images; Manuscript Illuminations
Artistic Type (Material/Technique):
Vellum (Parchment); Paint
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm):
42 cm/30 cm/
Inscription:
FORTUNA/REGNO/REGNABO/REGNAUI/SUM SINE REGNO
(Translation: Fortune/I reign/I shall reign/I have reigned/I am without reign)
Related Resources:
James, Montague Rhodes. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Latin Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library at Manchester. Cambridge University Press, 2011. pp. 150-52; Radding, Charles M. "Fortune and her wheel: the meaning of a medieval symbol," Mediaevistik: Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung 5, (1992): pp. 129-40; F. P. Pickering. Literature & Art in the Middle Ages. University of Miami Press, 1970. p. 213.