# Triumph of Poverty [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [VORSTERMAN, Lucas]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Pen in brown, with gray and brown wash, black and red chalks, and white highlights, 43,7 x 58,5 cm ## Commentary Hope \(Spes\) steers the straw-covered wagon of poverty \(Penia\); two donkeys, Stupidity \(Stupiditas\) and Laziness \(Ignavia\) and two oxen - Negligence \(Negligentia\) and Sloth \(Pigritia\) - pull it. Moderation \(Moderatio\), Diligence \(Diligentia\), Carefulness \(Soliticitudo\), and Labour \(Labor\) lead the horses and drive them. Like Wealth, poverty is also accompanied by good and evil forces: Industriousness \(Industria\), which hands out tools to the retinue, sits together with Experience \(Usus\), and Memory \(Memoria\) on the cart; behind Poverty, Misfortune \(Infortunium\) hands out thrashings. The text on the panel hanging from the tree ponders the vicissitudes of fate and the nature of wealth and poverty. Whereas the rich man should spend his life in delusion, in perpetual fear of a stroke of misfortune, the poor man should fear nothing and learn with industrious virtuousness to serve God. ## Related artworks - [Brutus]() - [Holy Family with St John and St Elizabeth]() - [Portrait of Nicolaas Rockox]() - [Portrait of Sculptor Johannes van Mildert]() - [Portrait of Wenceslas Cobergher]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()