The Little Fortune

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Little Fortune

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

With the help of a staff, Fortuna, the goddess of fortune or chance, balances on a sphere and holds a sprig of flowers in her left hand. In addition to representing her instability, the sphere suggests the worldly domain over which she influences at random. The flowers, traditionally identified as Eryngium, held aphrodisiac powers, suggesting the fickle nature of love. A more recent interpretation identifies them as Sternkraut, a plant that symbolized the idea that one’s fate has already been written. Both readings of the engraving, whether it regards love or life, inform the viewer that destiny is not of one’s own choosing.

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record

Medium
engraving
Credit Line
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Type of artwork
Print
Department
Prints

Also in Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. The museum’s own label for these fields has not been confirmed yet, so each is named by its field in the museum’s data.

creation_date
c. 1497

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

Barely the size of a playing card, this engraving by Albrecht Dürer packs an entire philosophy into one precarious pose. Made around 1497, it shows Fortune balancing on a rolling sphere - one bare foot, a long staff for support, and a sprig of flowers raised in her hand. That sphere is the whole point: her gifts never hold still. Whether those flowers mean fickle love or a fate already written, Dürer's message is the same - destiny is never yours to keep.

Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.

What the image shows

A nude female figure stands on a sphere, holding a staff with flowers, draped with a cloth.

Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.S36h67pw1saEDj_U.Jdv6KtTzIi08DnmpfUC3S9EV57hpBbXHkHOOArZTXE8evefL-KeOiDjXru7-nwDK5GP-R0rtFaiVMQijyZkAu5XgMF0fhlCAYjaxJOUHtTHEg1uk60b4aiL7gx6w48fTC5VvwQNASBqKSBOcTVN_oavhwYVBuWb_BLRBwpNS71ZOlFrsYfP4GsNtz0Ss_Pwh_mc95alk6iCsH6QmnujiBTeuSbv1k5LwJ8t4LmvmM7XkjMBnetkj82SxW21hMfeGFE8OScmwOZQiJ9QgboOcLAgAzvoYqPCmSJVPYYR1ZJIPz-jhrQSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.pNGtz4ku0tUiKFJD.7e7JJk7Gs4AD-D-vNfmRWXdfhPUMG5Y6NLQwGCrEzzmKlOsEBMXz2X7K2wQZJALI02gt030zh2fiU68uCyojg_IFGtkPoQH2R1f1A2QN-f00bAH3SYN1G44PRg3cdpFLvxVOf5t6Dvlqcit7xPgvloZr9pXOXT4JBbeFDZcjp6C8Zn6cmeLVXqdcOYG5y_WmQvF6mLU4UcCE-aLR03idgHv2j6loJ5nfKUltP1MhX0cyAFNvr47T9J7KRFtec0p7NFTiWqTKsGXYH30Ba0DP08EATiENdND1XosbpqaU0A
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How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Cleveland Museum of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
135059
Object Type
Print
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Type of artwork” · copied as is
Creator
Albrecht Dürer
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creators (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Artist-role creator's description with life dates removed.
Culture
Germany, late 15th-early 16th Century
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
engraving
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Prints
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Tags
  • male
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field artists_tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
Credit Line
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
c. 1497
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1492
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1502
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_latest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

The Little Fortune

Jul 27, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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