Cavalry Skirmish near a Bridge

Wouwerman painted this skirmish in the last years of his life, around 1665 to 1668. Riders clash on and around a bridge, and no particular battle is meant.

The man who later owned it knew cavalry at first hand. Prince Eugene of Savoy started out in the Habsburg army in 1683 in command of a regiment of dragoons, and in September 1706 he led the relief army that broke the French siege of Turin, fighting beside his kinsman, Duke Victor Amadeus II. After the prince died in 1736, his niece and heir sold his Flemish and Dutch paintings to the Savoy king, Charles Emmanuel III, and this canvas came to Turin with them. The gallery still hangs it among the prince's pictures. On the label it is simply Battaglia, battle, while the Dutch art-history institute RKD catalogues it as Riders fighting by a bridge.