Allegorical Comparison: Fortuna with a Purse

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Guido Reni, Fortuna with a Purse, 1636, 152 × 130 cm.

Description

The allegorical painting is an entirely autograph work by Guido Reni. It is a work of exceptional importance not only on account of its composition, which was immediately well-received, but also for the extraordinarily high quality of the painting.

Reni is known to have painted two versions of the Fortuna, showing, in both, the allegorical female figure full-length, holding a scepter and palm in her left hand, as she flies mid-air over the globe, with her hair playfully tugged back by Cupid behind her. The versions differ in only one detail: in one, she holds a crown in her right hand, in the other a purse. The intriguing story of how the two versions came about is told by Reni’s biographers Filippo Baldinucci and Carlo Cesare Malvasia[1]. Baldinucci recounts that he saw Fortuna, holding a crown, in Florence in the collection of Monsignor Jacopo Altoviti, before going on to detail the circumstances of the commission. Reni had first painted Fortuna with a Purse for the Abbate Giovanni Carlo Gavotti and had handed it over to him with a request that it was not to be shown to the public as it was not finished to his satisfaction. Reni’s wishes were not granted, however - the picture was exhibited without his permission in one of the grandest porticoes of Bologna on one of the most important feast days. Infuriated, Reni returned home and requested to be brought to his rooms a copy which he knew to have been painted by Antonio Gerola, il Veronese, on behalf of Monsignor Altoviti. This he completely reworked, painting a crown in the hand of Fortune in place of the purse to great acclaim, even, in Baldinucci’s eyes, surpassing Gavotti’s picture[2].

References

[1]Pepper, D. Stephen. 1984. Guido Reni: a complete catalogue of his works with an introductory text. New York: New York University Press.

[2]Pepper, Stephen, and Denis Mahon. “Guido Reni’s ‘Fortuna with a Purse’ Rediscovered.” The Burlington Magazine 141, no. 1152 (1999): 156–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/888409.