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The nude personification of Fortune, holding aloft her sack of gold, entices a haggard knight to pursue the pleasure and riches she represents. At his back the figure of Care, with her shroud and wings, embraces him; while in the background, in low relief, the hazy figure of Truth, also winged but holding a torch, seems to fade and grow dim as the hero rides to his undoing. Below, under the horse's belly, lies the skull of an unlucky precursor.

Post Equitem Sedet Atra Cura ("Behind the Rider Sits Dark Care"), a tag from Horace familiar to Victorians from its use” by Thackeray in The Newcomes and Philip, was Gilbert's second commission from Somerset Beaumont. It was Beaumont Bho encouraged his young protege to visit Venice for the first time, and Post Equitem represents the artist's response to that city, which he called '.. . the Enchanted Island, where fairies and knights-errant abode in the midst of noble grandeur ..." Specifically, of course, the central figure of the mounted condottiere recalls both Verrocchio's equestrian Bartolommeo Colleoni (148I-96) and Donatello's Gattamelata (1445-50). He also belongs to a type of chivalrous knight on horseback in works of art from Durer's engraving Knight, Death, and Devil (1513) to John Everett Millais's painting Dream of the Past: Sir Isumloras at the Ford (1856-7; Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). And Gilbert surely knew Watts's Orlando Pursuing the Fata Morgana (begun 1846; Leicester Museum and Art Gallery) and Life's Illusions (1849; Tate Gallery) in both of which an armored knight vainly chases a nude woman symbolic of elusive Fortune. Three figures in No. 93 — nude Fortune, armored knight, and cloaked Care — reappear a few years later under different Sir Alfred Gilbert, RAs (Sympathy, Fortitude, and Zeal) on the Fawcett Memorial of I887 (fig. 37), and continue to turn up in one form or another in most of Gilbert's works throughout the 1880s and 1890s."— British Sculpture 1850-1914

Bibliography

British Sculpture 1850-1914. A loan exhibition of sculpture and medals sponsored by The Victorian Society. London: Fine Art Society, 1968. no. 65.

Dorment, Richard. Victorian High Renaissance. Minneapolis: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1978. No. 93.

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Created 28 May 2008

Last modified 5 February 2020