The Katzenelnbogen Series The second son of Jan the Elder, from whom he inherited the Nassau county in Germany in 1606, Jan the Middle regularly took part in military campaigns in the Netherlands. He fought, for example, at Steenwijk and Coevorden in 1592, and later for the Swedish army in Poland. Like his older brother Willem Lodewijk and his cousin Prince Maurits, he had a penchant for military theory. Jacques de Gheyn II’s book on the exercise of arms from 1607 resulted from a plan devised by Jan the Middle shortly after 1595 to make his experience in drilling troops available for his colleagues.9 The prototype for the present painting is a three-quarter length portrait of Jan the Middle by Van Ravesteyn in the Municipal Collection, Vianen.10 The present portrait has been attributed to Van Ravesteyn himself in the past, but was undoubtedly executed by a studio assistant, probably the same one who executed the portraits of Jan the Elder (SK-A-538), Philips (SK-A-542), Jan the Younger (SK-A-539), Adolf (SK-A-562, now missing), and Willem (SK-A-543). 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. 397.