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The Wheel of Fortune
Edward Burne-Jones

The Wheel of Fortune

1883Musée d'Orsay · Paris

The Wheel of Fortune is an oil painting on canvas by the British Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, made from 1875 to 1883. 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.

Subject
laurel wreath, Wheel of Fortune, slave, sceptre, king, slavery, man, wheel, woman

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