Head Study for the Goddess Fortune looking down to the right in 'The Wheel of Fortune'

This delicately drawn study is one of a number of sheets executed by Burne-Jones as he developed the figure of the goddess Fortune for his monumental painting The Wheel of Fortune, completed and immediately exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1883 and now in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (inv. no. RF 1980 3). There are at least four other versions of the composition in existence, all with slightly differing details, including one in the The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (inv. no. 381-2; see J. McPhee, Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1996, p. 48) and another in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (inv. no. NMW A 206; see M. Harrison & W. Waters, Burne-Jones, New York, 1973, p. 133).
The Wheel of Fortune was conceived as part of a larger project, The Story of Troy (The Troy Triptych) (Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, inv. no. 1922P1J8; see M. Harrison & W. Waters, op. cit., p. 103), which Burne-Jones had begun in 1870 following a trip to Italy, where he had encountered several sources of inspiration, including Andrea Mantegna's altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints at the Church of San Zeno, Verona, and Michelangelo's frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. The composition of The Wheel of Fortune was for one of the four allegorical figures (Fortune, Fame, Love and Oblivion) that frame and divide the predella panels of the Troy Triptych.