The Leeuwarden Series: Others A scion of a noble Burgundian family, Gaspard de Coligny served in the French army, eventually attaining the rank of admiral in 1552. In the French wars of religion, which began in 1562, he led the Huguenot cause, and was killed on the eve of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. De Coligny had been the main advocate for French support of the Dutch rebels in their struggle against Spain. In August 1568, William the Silent concluded a treaty with De Coligny and Louis de Bourbon, declaring that their respective rulers, Philip II of Spain and Charles IX of France, were misguided by evil councillors who sought to eradicate Protestantism and the nobility. The treaty called for mutual support, specifying that if peace were attained in either the Netherlands or France help would be extended to the other country. Louise de Coligny (1555-1620), the fourth wife of William the Silent and mother of Frederik Hendrik, was a daughter of Gaspard de Coligny. The prototype has not been located. An oval portrait in the Louvre showing De Coligny may have been based on the same prototype.43 According to a number of the Rijksmuseum’s collection catalogues, including that of 1976, the portraits of Gaspard de Coligny and Robert Dudley (SK-A-505) only entered the collection in 1808.44 Both portraits, however, are recorded in Cornelis Sebille Roos’s 1801 list of the collection in Huis ten Bosch, together with the rest of the Leeuwarden Series. Jonathan Bikker, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 393.