József Róna’s statue of Prince Eugene of Savoy is a diminished variant of the monument which is now in front of the main entrance of the Hungarian National Gallery. In that era, it was common to make reductions of monumental sculptures (identical variants on a far smaller scale), but it was also a general practice to make small models of planned monuments. The bronze variant of the statue might both be a reduction or a preliminary model. At the spring exhibition of 1899, both variants (the small and the large one) were presented simultaneously, so the small one was probably the model for the monument. József Róna made the statue, an expensive undertaking, upon commission from the town of Zenta, but the town was unable to afford it eventually. The Prime Minister Kálmán Széll came to Róna’s aid and saved him from bankruptcy: he propositioned the statute to be purchased by state and erected outside the palace of Buda. The model for the horse was one of count Tivadar Andrássy’s Lipitzaners, while the horseman was modelled after a young trainee at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.
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