Eugene of Savoy: refused a commission by Louis XIV, he took service with the Emperor instead and spent forty years beating the French and the Turks — Zenta, Blenheim, Belgrade — while building the Belvedere and buying books. Mühlbach was Klara Mundt, who wrote nearly three hundred volumes; her Eugene is the small, ugly, brilliant outsider the courts underestimated, which is the historical record. Fifty-seven plates of battle pieces, palace dancing and autumn landscape, with painters like Platzer and Casteels supplying the martial and courtly world Eugene knew.
