Relatively little is known about Johann Sautner, an Austrian sculptor active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He is recorded in Thieme-Becker as having worked with Beyer and Hagenaur on marble figures for the park of the palace of Schonbrunn, and a signed terracotta of Prometheus and the Eagle was sold from the Lanna collection in Prague in 1909 (vol. I of the sale catalogue, no. 1927, p. 191, pl. 110). The present lot may be identical with an alabaster 'kinderbacchanal' exhibited by Sautner in the Academy of Art, Vienna.