This drawing is a fine study for the head of Fortune for The Wheel of Fortune (1) and dates from the first half of the 1870's. The bowed profile and swathed head are also reminiscent of Flamma Vestalis (Grosvenor Gallery 1886, Private Collection, Switzerland) but this drawing is clearly not a work of the 1880's, neither is it a likeness of Margaret Burne-Jones, who inspired Flamma Vestalis. Because of its format and because it is drawn on both sides, it probably originated in a sketchbook. The Wheel of Fortune is another of the pessimistic subjects derived from the Troy Triptych.(2) It is the first of four `Triumphs' in the predella; and it is a significant indication of Burne-Jones's fatalism that he produced no less than six paintings of the power of Fortune, but only one or two on the subjects of each of the succeeding triumphs, Fame, Oblivion and Love. In Fortune, blind Fortune turns a huge wheel, to which is bound a slave, a king and a poet. Burne-Jones was obsessed with the head of Fortune and he made many studies for it, both drawings and paintings. The present drawing reveals Burne-Jones's deep interest in Renaissance art in the early 1870's. He began to accumulate photographs of paintings and drawings at this time and some of his albums are in the collection of University College. In 1871 he wrote to his friend Charles Norton asking for photographs, stating You know what I like - all helpful pieces of modelling and sweet head drawing and I love Da Vinci and Michael Angelo most of all (3). These two artists exerted the strongest influence on this drawing. The intricacies of plaited hair, which began to fascinate him in this period, relate to a group of Leonardo's drawings in Windsor Castle. The swathed head, which he finally used for the painting, derived from Michelangelo's Sybils on the Sistine ceiling. Burne-Jones visited Rome for the first time in 1871 and in the Sistine chapel `folded his railway rug thickly, and, lying down on his back, read the ceiling from beginning to end, peering into every corner and revelling in its execution', using the best opera glasses he could buy.(4) Would that this was still possible today! (1) For the painting: John Christian, `La Roue de la fortune' de Burne-Jones, La Revue du Louvre et des Musees de France, number 34, 1984, pages 204-211. (2) See catalogue entry (number) for the study of Venus for Venus Discordia for an account of the Troy Triptych. (3) G. B-J., Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Macmillan, London 1904, Volume 2, pages 20-21. (4) G. B-J., op.cit., Volume 2, page 26.PLATE 37
Burne Jones' interest in women's complex plaited coiffures would appear to have its origin in drawings by Michelangelo in the collections of the British Museum and Windsor Castle, as in the above plate British museum number 1895,0915.493 which is another version of a drawing in the library of Windsor Castle which Burne Jones visited in the early 1870s with his friend,Richard Rivington Holmes, the curator, with who he had become acquainted when Holmes was a curator at the British Museum Prints and drawing dept.