Jost Amman: Portrait of Gaspar de Coligny (1573)

(National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA)

An engraving by the Swiss artist Jost Amman (1539 – 1591). Gaspard II de Coligny, Seigneur de Châtillon (1519 – 1572) was a French noble who served as admiral and later as leader of the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) in the French Wars of Religion (1562 – 1598). Gaspard was murdered in the night of 23–24 August 1572 during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. During this massacre about 5,000 to 30,000 Huguenots were killed throughout France. On 22 August, an assassination attempt was made on Coligny's life as he made his way back to his house from the Louvre. He was shot from an upstairs window, and seriously wounded. The would-be assassin escaped in the ensuing confusion. Huguenots demanded justice from the French king and the Queen Mother but Catholics in Paris feared Huguenot reprisals. During a secret meeting on the evening of 23 August, the French king Charles IX, the queen mother Catherine de' Medici and the royal advisers decided to pre-emptively eliminate the Protestant leaders. The king's Swiss bodyguards were given the task to carry out the order the same night. Admiral de Coligny himself was killed on the night of 24 August by a group who busted into his house. The admiral remained calm but a soldier plunged a sword through Coligny's breast and threw his body out of a window. These scene's can be seen at the bottom (this is a copy of a print of Frans Hogenberg). Engraving from 1573.