Patience as the Victor over Fortune from Six Sayings about Fortune 1555 - 1565

Curator: This engraving is titled "Patience as the Victor over Fortune from Six Sayings about Fortune," dating back to 1555-1565. It's currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The artist is Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert. Editor: Oh, my goodness, it’s...bleak. There's something profoundly melancholic about this composition. It almost feels like a commentary on the futility of striving, with a kind of dramatic resignation that you find when a juggler has just dropped a bunch of glass bowling pins. Curator: That feeling is understandable. Coornhert was deeply invested in the relationship between humans and their destinies. We see the allegorical figure of Patience, upright and rather solid looking, presiding over the defeated figure of Fortune. Fortune, who you might notice is naked and quite vulnerable, is lying prone. Her hand is resting upon a sphere, indicating her fickle nature. Editor: It's this sharp contrast that is so engaging. This assured Patience versus Fortune literally laid bare. Even the background with its ruined arches and obelisks amplifies the sense of inevitable decline, or maybe even failure. I wonder if the intention was for viewers to examine their resilience when the roulette ball comes to rest on somebody else's lucky number? Curator: Undoubtedly. Notice, too, how Patience is framed by symbols of constancy: a squared pillar, and the hint of a floriated urn above a broken bust that grounds her. Her serene posture and unwavering gaze invite the viewer to meditate on endurance and moral strength in the face of life's inevitable reversals. The symbolic wheel echoes this theme, recalling the vicissitudes of life's journeys. Editor: She has this expression like a schoolteacher that says "I tried to tell you things were going to come to this". Maybe I’m reading into it a little, but I find Coornhert has cleverly constructed a scenario we have all encountered. A goal once thought to be easily in grasp dashed cruelly before our eyes. In its desolation, a perverse type of humor shines through. Curator: Indeed. It's a stark reminder of the transience of worldly success and the virtues of inner fortitude. Coornhert really seems to capture something profound with this image, creating this emotional space of understanding between humanity and these greater concepts. Editor: This was more interesting and moving than I first assumed. The artwork is far more complex once you delve deeper, and what began as what I thought a bleak artwork transformed into something offering the fortitude for me to stand taller.