Gaetano GANDOLFI San Matteo della Decima, 1734 - Bologna, 1802 Fortune Black pencil and white chalk Without frame The Fortune, black pencil and white chalk, by G. Gandolfi 42 x 30 cm (16.54 x 11.81 in.) Provenance: Émile Chambon Collection (Geneva, 1905-Collonge-Bellerive, 1993), painter, Geneva ; Private European collection Comment: Our depiction of Fortune is original and dynamic, inventive and illustrative of the various attributes of this allegorical figure who inspires both wisdom (for fortune turns like the wheel and is blind) and daring and enthusiasm (for everyone dreams that she will cross his path at some point). Gaetano Gandolfi reveals himself here to be a formidable draughtsman, as Donatella Biagi Maino enthuses in her comprehensive study of the drawing, which celebrates the play of light, the movement of the body and hair, and the care given equally to every part of the sheet. She compares it to an Allegory of Time Covering Truth by the same Gaetano Gandolfi, in the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville1, and dates our sheet to the last years of the century, when the Cisalpine Republic closed convents and other religious establishments, sounding the death knell for commissions of paintings with religious subjects. 1 - Mary Cazort, Catherine Johnston, Bolognese Drawings in North American Collections 1500-1800, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1982, p.149-150 We would like to thank Professor Donatella Biagi Maino for kindly confirming the attribution of this drawing from a photograph on 5 December 2023 and for her help in writing this note.