JOST AMMAN’S PORTRAIT OF GASPARD DE COLIGNY
INCLUDING VIGNETTES OF HIS ASSASSINATION
AND THE BARTOLOMEW DAY MASSACRE

[HUGUENOTS / COLIGNY, Gaspard de].

AMMAN, Jost.

Effigies Gasparis de Coligni D. de Castilione Amir. alij Franciae etc.

Nuremberg, Jost Amman, 1574.

Engraved broadside [52.3 x 37.5cm], Some light spotting, large folds on the right and lower right corner, small marginal paper folds, and a few small tears, none affecting image area; five small old repairs to marginal tears on verso of sheet.

Etched portrait by Jost Amman of Gaspard de Coligny (1519-1572), a French national hero and influential Huguenot leader, issued in 1573 in the aftermath of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572. The portrait and its scenes of the massacre, including the murder of Coligny on the orders of Henry I, Duke of Guise and head of the Catholic League, serve as a sort of “video clip”, broadcasting the events and their horrors throughout France and Europe while they were still fresh. States of the etching exist showing the panel below Coligny completely blank, without scenes from the massacre.

Coligny’s distinguished career as a soldier led to a favorable place at the courts of Louis XII and Francis I, while he was promoted to Admiral in 1553 at the age of 33. Sometime in the mid 1550s he came under the influence of the reformed religion, probably due to his brother’s earlier conversion; the first known letter to Coligny from Calvin is dated 1558. Thanks to his fortuitous social standing, Coligny quickly became the most important leader of the Huguenots. He was particularly instrumental in helping to organize overseas settlements – in Rio de Janeiro, Florida, etc. – almost all of which eventually failed. The latter part of Coligny’s career was mainly concerned with acting as a moderate between the two religious factions in France, at times angering both sides. In 1570, however, he finally threw his support behind Huguenot forces as the country was plunged into civil war. At the celebrations following the wedding between Henri II of Navarre and Margaret of Valois on August 22, 1572, an attempt was made on Coligny’s life, but the shot only grazed his finger. Pre-empting the expecting Huguenot retaliation for this crime, Catholic factions across Paris plotted and carried out the series of attacks which came to be known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, inciting similar incidents all over the country. Coligny himself was murdered on August 24, two days after the start of the massacres.

The reputation and output of Swiss engraver Jost Amman (1539–1591) arguably established him as the heir to Dürer. Born in Zurich, Amman relocated to Nuremberg in 1560, where he soon began undertaking commissions from publisher Sigmund Feyerabend and Nuremberg’s Pfinzing family. His work includes hundreds of engravings, etchings and woodcuts for Bibles, histories, genealogies, and books on trade and construction, as well as dozens of painted portraits. Rubens, Rembrandt and Joshua Reynolds, among others, acknowledged his prodigious skill and lasting influence.

* A. Andresen, Beiträge zur älteren niederdeutschen Kupferstichkunde des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (1868), 109, 2.II; A. Bartsch, Le Peintre graveur (1803-21), IX, 362, 17; F.W.H. Hollstein, The New Hollstein: German engravings, etchings and woodcuts 1400-1700 (1996), II, p. 9.

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