Fortuna

Entry

This nude statue of a woman can be identified as Fortuna, the personification of Fortune, based on her raised left arm and the lock of hair blowing forward. In her right hand, she still holds one knotted end of her now missing attribute: a full-blown sail, symbol of fortune’s fickle nature. The iconography of this figure coincides with Horatio’s description of Lady Fortuna, the mistress of the sea so greatly feared by seafaring captains (Odes 1:35).

Fortuna normally appears balancing on a sphere or globe, referring both to her fickleness and her influence over the world. Here she is depicted in a forward stride. The large, filled-in holes in Fortuna’s back, buttocks and calves, along with numerous other repairs made to the bronze’s surface, indicate this specific cast was unsuccessful. To improve its appearance, the cast was extensively reworked: a cover-up rendered complete with the subsequent application of various patina layers to its surface. To no avail, however, as observed casting flaws still greatly detract from the aesthetic appreciation of this bronze.

Directly or indirectly, Giambologna’s oft-imitated Fortuna of circa 1560-70 (fig. a) served as a prototype for the Amsterdam bronze.¹ Excepting the positioning of the head – on Giambologna’s original, gazing upward and at an angle – the present bronze adheres to the overall composition of his invention. The fairly muscled corporeal type recalls the original, including the wide hips and small breasts, though much less fluid in its modelling. Casts of Giambologna’s Fortuna were made by Antonio Susini, Pietro Tacca and Massimiliano Soldani. The same figure, albeit in a slightly modified form, was adopted by Giovanni Francesco Susini for his Venus Chastising Cupid of 1638.² Additionally, an exquisite Venetian statuette based on Giambologna’s invention, attributed to Tiziano Aspetti (c. 1559-1606), is preserved at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.³

As far as can be ascertained, there are no other casts of the Amsterdam statuette. At the onset of the twentieth century, it was still viewed as a northern Italian work from the end of the fifteenth century, and more specifically, as a bronze from the school of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).⁴ Nevertheless, the primitive casting technique, in combination with the overall style, expressionless face and the scarcely flattering physique, make a provenance north of the Alps somewhere in the late sixteenth century far more likely. Leeuwenberg spoke of a Northern Netherlandish origin;⁵ the graphic manner in which details such as Fortuna’s eyes, mouth, nipples and labia were incised in the wax instead point more in the direction of southern Germany. One possibility is that the statue served as the crownpiece of a sculptural house fountain of the late Renaissance era, made in cities such as Mainz, Nuremberg, Augsburg and Vienna.⁶ A project centring on a maritime theme may be deemed a highly befitting context for such a figure.⁷

Bieke van der Mark, 2024