The Wheel of Fortune
Artist: Edward Burne-Jones (English, 1833-1898)
Date: c. 1875-1883
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Description
The painting combines classical and medieval themes to present an allegory of the vagaries of life, a vanitas, with individual lives elevated or cast down as the wheel of fortune turns. Burne-Jones commented: "My wheel of Fortune is a true-to-life image; it comes to fetch each of us in turn, then it crushes us." The prime version has been in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris since 1980.
















