Character Head No. 33: An Arch-Villain

In 1923 Vienna was in hard times after the First World War, and the Austrian Gallery was opening a new Baroque Museum in the Lower Belvedere. That year the museum bought this head at the Albert Kende auction house in the city, and within four years it had bought two more of Messerschmidt's heads there.

The head itself carries only a number, 33, stamped into the lower left of its base. The title An Arch-Villain came later, when the heads were exhibited in Vienna in 1793, ten years after the sculptor's death, and a brochure named each one.

What he left is the face. The head is pressed down into the chest, the eyes narrowed, the nose wrinkled, the lips clamped together. It is cast in metal, and analysis of this piece gives an alloy of about 80 per cent tin and 19 per cent lead. Across the series Messerschmidt mixed his metals in different proportions.