We are grateful to Dr Konrad Schlegel for his assistance in identifying the bust as a portrait of Prince Eugene of Savoy.

Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignano, from the House of Savoy, served as field marshal in the Imperial Army and statesman of the Holy Roman Empire. He is remembered as one of the most successful military commanders in modern European history, and he rose through the ranks of state to the highest offices at the Imperial court in Vienna.

Born in Paris and raised at the court of Louis XIV, Prince Eugene was initially expected to pursue a clerical career, as the youngest son of noble parents. He rejected this plan, however, determined to enter the military, although his slight stature led to his rejection from the French Royal Army. Undeterred, Eugene moved to Austria and declared his loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire. He went on to enjoy a sixdecade career under three Holy Roman Emperors: Leopold I, Joseph I, and Charles VI.

Prince Eugene fought in a number of significant battles, but the one that cemented his reputation across Europe was the Battle of Zenta, which saw the Holy Roman Empire defeat the Ottomans in 1697. He also fought alongside the Duke of Marlborough against his native France at Blenheim (1704), Oudenarde (1708) and Malplaquet (1709), and defeated the Ottomans again in the battle of Petrovaradin (1716) and the Siege of Belgrade (1717).

Beyond the battlefield, Prince Eugene was also one of his generation’s great patrons of the arts, and his legacy can be seen around Vienna today. Prince Eugene’s most significant undertaking was the construction of Vienna’s two Belvedere palaces, with the Lower Belvedere completed in 1716 and the larger Upper Belvedere, which now houses the museum, between 1720 and 1722. Prince Eugene also collected on a vast scale, favouring Baroque Italian, Dutch and Flemish art, as well as prints, books and manuscripts.

This portrait bust can be identified as Prince Eugene based on its resemblance to numerous securely identified portraits in both painting and sculpture. The ringlet hairstyle, which represented the fashion in the first decades of the eighteenth century, allows us to date the portrait to around 1710-15, at the height of Prince Eugene’s period of military triumph. This work also closely resembles the portrait bust by François Coudray now in the Rijksmuseum, which is engraved with the sitter’s name and dated to before 1724. Prince Eugene is normally depicted in armour, but there are certainly precedents for his depiction in court dress, or even informally costumed as a gentleman scholar, as we see in a portrait of Prince Eugene in his library attributed to Jan Kupecky.

Guillielmus de Grof was born in Antwerp in 1676. After training in his native city he worked in in Paris and Munich as court sculptor, firstly to King Louis XIV. Primarily a metal sculptor, De Grof was a versatile artist who could work in many materials. His style combined the court aesthetic of Louis XIV with the exuberant Flemish Baroque, which had its roots in Rubens’ work. In 1714, when Maximilian Emanuel was in Paris, he took De Grof into his service, and the sculptor travelled to Munich in the spring of 1716, where he carried out a wide range of activities as the leading court sculptor until his death in 1742.

In Munich, De Grof set up a ‘state studio’ in the Herzog-Max-Burg. It became a large workshop, which employed fourteen journeymen and had a foundry. He held a prominent social position among the artists at the Munich court, and on occasion self-confidently expressed his claim to be viewed as a free artist whose work could not be compared with that of craftsmen. In 1714 he created his seminal equestrian group, the magnificent bronze Apotheosis of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria. From what is known of his work, his style is characterised by the dynamic design of the hair and drapery in his portraits and the inclusion of rich ornamental details.

The most compelling comparison is between the present bust and the bronze Bust of Maximilian II Emanuel in the Liechtenstein collections, which is attributed to De Grof. In both, the late Baroque flamboyance and influence of Bernini in the twisting, flowing movement of the forms are central to the character of the busts. The deeply furrowed modelling of the thick wigs, more heavily piled in the present bust reflecting the fashions of Vienna, is addressed in a similarly lively fashion, with a precision in the tooling of each strand of hair. Most strikingly, there is a slight hardness to the modelling of the facial features, particularly the cheekbones, and an enigmatic movement to the eyes. As Peter Volk noted, we are reminded in De Grof ’s work of Dutch sculpture, such as that of Jan van Delen or Pieter Scheemaeckers the Elder, in the way the different material character of flesh, hair and clothing is emphasised.

Complicating the matter of the attribution is the lack of wider knowledge of De Grof ’s activities as a sculptor and the confluence of European styles at this period. Giuseppe Volpini’s (1670–1729) Statue of Maximillian Emmanuel has a similar sprawling assertiveness, although it takes the theatrical representation of the sovereign to new heights. Prince Eugene of Savoy was primarily based in Vienna and we have no record of him sitting to De Grof in Paris or Munich, or of De Grof making a trip to Vienna, although there is no reason to discount it, especially as Prince Eugene was allied at certain times to his distant cousin Maximilian Emanuel in the fight against the Ottoman Turks.