Fortune

Renaissance allegories usually gave Fortune a rudder and a sail, so that she steered the storm she lived in. Rubens takes those away. His Fortune rises from the sea like a Venus, full-grown and heavy-fleshed, and balances on a crystal globe at the bottom of the canvas while the waves run under her. Her veil blows out behind, her hair hangs wet in strands, and nothing about her footing is secure. The picture was painted between 1636 and 1638 for Philip IV's hunting lodge outside Madrid, one of the few single figures in a set otherwise full of stories. Rubens moved a long way from his own first idea. In the small oil sketch, now in Berlin, she is absorbed in herself, head tilted back, right arm raised and left arm trailing behind as she steps onto the globe. On the finished canvas all of that is reversed and she turns to meet the viewer's eye. The Prado catalogues the work as Rubens and his workshop, giving the modelling of the face and skin to the master's own hand.