(Mühlhausen 1697–1753 Vienna)
Portrait of Prince Eugene of Savoy, as military commander, in a cuirass and with the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, his helmet presented to him by a young moor,
oil on canvas, 272 x 163.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of the Marquess of Tweeddale, Yester House, East Lothian, Scotland (Brigadier-General Lord John Hay (died 1706), son of the 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale, fought alongside Prince Eugene in the War of the Spanish succession);
from 1973 onwards in the collection of the composer Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007), Yester House, East Lothian;
Private collection, England

This impressive official portrait is of great historical interest. It is the most accomplished of three versions of a portrait conceived by Auerbach, each of which relies on a different compositional approach. The other two variants, both of which deviate considerably from the present version, are owned by the Counts Pilati, Riegersburg Castle/Lower Austria (see Prinz Eugen und das barocke Österreich, exhibition catalogue, Schlosshof and Niederweiden, 1986, p. 415) and Molsdorf Palace/Thuringia. When comparing the three paintings, all of which have almost identical dimensions, it becomes immediately noticeable that Auerbach did not simply produce two replicas of the prototype, as was usually the case in official Baroque portraiture, but indeed conceived three different compositions. The military commander’s striped tent was used for both the Riegersburg and the rediscovered Tweeddale versions, whereas the young moor carrying the helmet appears in the Molsdorf and Tweeddale versions, but is lacking in the Riegersburg variant. For the detail of the young moor, Auerbach closely followed Hyacinthe Rigaud’s example in the portrait of the Prince de Conti from 1697. This portrait has been reproduced in large numbers in the form of a print, because Conti as one of the candidates for the Polish throne, required propagandistic support at the European courts. Auerbach must certainly have known the engraving. Moreover, the three portraits also differ in terms of pose and attire.

The Riegersburg painting was formerly owned by the Princes of Khevenhüller-Metsch. In 1707, Count Ludwig Andreas Khevenhüller had been appointed colonel in Prince Eugene’s regiment of dragoons. Leading this regiment, he earned merits in the Battles of Petrovaradin and Belgrade and was therefore allowed to deliver the message of the victory in the Battle of Belgrade to Vienna. Prince Eugene thus knew the first owner of the Riegersburg painting very well, and it can be assumed that the two soldiers were tied to each other by a bond of comradeship or even friendship. The second portrait is now preserved in the Palace of Molsdorf in Thuringia, which was built by Gustav Adolf Reichsgraf von Gotter, the son of a patrician magistrate in Gotha who had a surprisingly successful career as a Prussian diplomat. From 1720 onwards he lived in Vienna as the envoy of the Duke of Saxony-Gotha-Altenburg, where he soon became a close friend of Prince Eugene. Prince Eugene presented Count Khevenhüller with his portrait in 1728. That same year, Count Gotter left Vienna in order to become a Prussian minister. Due to this coincidence of dates and events there is reason to believe that the Molsdorf version was a farewell present and that all of the three versions were commissioned in this very year. It thus seems that Prince Eugene entrusted Auerbach, the leading portraitist in Vienna towards the late 1720s, with three monumental portraits. Either the variations were agreed upon by contract or Auerbach did not wish to produce replicas and thus painted three individual versions out of his own initiative. By 1728, the year when he was asked to overpaint the portraits of Emperor Charles VI and Count Althann in Solimena’s dedicatory picture for the imperial collections, Auerbach had arrived at the acme of his fame. In 1735 he was appointed imperial court painter.


Additional image:
The painting in situ in Yester House, Garden Parlour; illustrated in Country Life, 23 August 1973, p. 493