Otto van Veen (Leiden c. 1556-1629 Brussels)

Professor J.B.Trapp and Dr. Elizabeth McGrath of the Warburg Institute have identified the subject of these paintings as follows: the first two paintings show the unfair way that fortune favors the unworthy. The latter two illustrate the moral that it is better to work hard and to trust in God rather than to sit in poverty and misery lamenting the ironies of fate. An emblem on the subject of 'Fortune usually favors the sleeper' is recorded in A. Schöne (Emblemata, 1967, col.1798). The moral 'Fortune regularly favors the unworthy' is a variation of the saying 'casting pearls before swine'. Manum admoventes invocate Numina is a translation into Latin of one of the Spartan sayings of Plutarch; a looser translation might be 'God helps those who help themselves'. The last painting showing a pauper lost in self-pity includes a lengthy inscription in Latin: ostensibly from Sallust, it does not in fact correspond with any known work by that author. The cabbages at the feet of the pauper were a symbol of poverty for Horace and appeared in Vaenius's Emblemata horatiana of 1607, although the quotation does not appear to have been taken directly from Horace. The landscapes may be the work of another hand.