Johann Gottfried Auerbach

Johann Gottfried Auerbach came to Vienna from Mühlhausen in Thuringia and became one of the portrait painters the Habsburg court relied on. Emperor Charles VI named him court painter in 1735, and a portrait of Charles wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, the dynasty's order of chivalry, is at the Hofburg.

His best-known sitter was Prince Eugene of Savoy, the general who had beaten the Ottomans and built the Belvedere as his summer palace. Auerbach painted three versions of a state portrait of the prince as a commander in armour, and one of them was acquired by the Belvedere in 2016.

After Charles VI he went on painting the next generation of the family, Maria Theresa and her husband Francis Stephen. He also made etchings, and in 1750, three years before his death, he became a member of the Vienna Academy.