Michiel Janszoon van MIEREVELT (1566-1641, Dutch)
Half-length Portrait of Frederick, Elector of Palatine
oil on panel
28 x 22 inches
Price: Sold
Provenance:
Torridon House, Home of The Earls of Lovelace
The present sitter is Frederick V, (born August 26th 1596, Amberg, Upper Palatinate [Germany]—died November 29th, 1632, Mainz), elector Palatine of the Rhine, king of Bohemia (as Frederick I, 1619–20), and director of the Protestant Union.
Brought up a Calvinist, partly in France, Frederick succeeded his father, Frederick IV, both as elector and as director of the Protestant Union. In 1613 he married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England. In 1618 the Protestant estates of Bohemia revolted against their king, the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Matthias, and, after his death, the following year, offered the crown to Frederick. Confident of support from the German Protestants, from England, and from the Dutch Republic, he accepted and was crowned in Prague on November 4th, 1619. Little foreign assistance materialized, however, and the forces of the Catholic League under Johann Tserclaes, Count von Tilly, routed the Bohemians under Anhalt at the Battle of White Mountain, near Prague on November 8th, 1620. Frederick fled, and his short reign earned him the nickname “the Winter King.”
Frederick eventually found refuge in The Hague as Spanish and Bavarian troops occupied his German territories. Peter Ernst, Count von Mansfeld, and Christian of Brunswick raised armies and fought for Frederick’s cause in western Germany, but Tilly defeated them; meanwhile, Matthias’s successor, Emperor Ferdinand II, declared Frederick an outlaw. In 1623 Ferdinand transferred Frederick’s electoral dignities to Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria. Five years later Bavaria annexed the Upper Palatinate. Although many Protestant rulers called for the restoration of Frederick, they failed; he, therefore, continued to live in exile at The Hague on meager subsidies provided by the Dutch. After Gustav II Adolf of Sweden defeated Tilly at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, Frederick joined the victors and, the following year, took part in the Swedish invasion of Bavaria, driving Maximilian out of his duchy, playing tennis on his enemy’s courts, and plundering his library. He died a few months later.