Fortuna e Psiche

Fortune meets the soul — two mythological figures entwined in a single image.

Fortuna e Psiche is a studio work by artist Neve, pencils and spray on MDF, 193 × 120 cm, created in 2017 for Galerie Bartoux.

"Fortuna e Psiche" is a 2017 pencils and spray on MDF made for Galerie Bartoux, 193 × 120 cm — the third work in a series that includes "Selene ed Endimione," "Pentheus," and "Spleen et Idéal." The dimensions of each work are proportioned to the golden ratio: 193/120 ≈ φ (1.618). The two figures are in combat. Fortuna stands on the left — blonde, clear-eyed, looking directly at the viewer with an expression of cold intensity. She wears a violet drape and holds a cornucopia: gold coins scatter from it into the darkness, dispersed, uncontrolled, falling into the space below. Her other hand reaches for Psyche — not to guide but to grip, to press, to impose. Psiche is on the right — dark-haired, wearing deep blue and black, blindfolded. She pulls back, her body in resistance, her face turned away from the force pushing toward her. The blindfold is not acceptance; it is the condition she fights within, sight denied to the soul that must nonetheless choose. The coins pour from the cornucopia and fall into the void — unasked for, ungrasped, scattered into nothing. This is not luck being bestowed. This is the eternal contest between predestination and the construction of destiny: between the force that says your fate is already written, and the soul that insists on building its own. Fortuna represents the blind dispensation of fate — she sees, yet what she holds spills uselessly. Psyche, though blindfolded, pushes back: the soul that cannot see still refuses to be simply what luck makes it. The question the image holds is the oldest one: is the life you live the one you were given, or the one you made? The two figures locked together offer no resolution — only the struggle itself, perpetual, the coins falling through it into nothing. The Bartoux series approaches a single question from four angles: Selene descends to Endymion (the divine that arrives as gift, as desire, unopposed); Pentheus stands surrounded by Bacchic temptation and refuses (the divine that offers, the human that resists); Fortuna and Psyche fight over whether the soul is made or given (predestination against will); Spleen and Idéal face each other across a solar eclipse (the soul divided between earth and aspiration). "Spleen et Idéal" completes the series.