Kenilworth Castle in 1575
Robert Dudley's Kenilworth Art Collection
22. The picture of the Emperor Charles, with a curtaine.
Charles V (1500-1558) ruled the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, and the Low Countries. His reign was dominated by wars, with France, the Ottoman Empire and the Protestants. He sanctioned the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. He abdicated in 1554, physically exhausted, seeking the peace of a monastery, where he died.
23. The picture of King Phillips Wife, with a curtaine.
Philip II had four wives: Maria of Portugal, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth of Valois, and Anna of Austria. This 1554 portrait of Mary (1516-1558) is by Antonis Mor. She was also known as ‘Bloody Mary’ for having over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in her attempts to reverse the Protestant Reformation during her five year English reign as Mary I.
24. The picture of the Prince of Orange, with a curtaine.
William I, Prince of Orange (1533-1584) by Adriaen Thomasz Key, a Flemish Renaissance portrait painter. Unhappy with the Spanish persecution of Dutch Protestants, William was the main leader of the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Years’ War, ultimately resulting in the formal independence of the Dutch republic.
25. The picture of the Wife of the Prince of Orange.
William had four wives: Anne of Egmont, Anne of Saxony, Charlotte of Bourbon, and Louisa de Coligny. Charlotte (1546-1582) was sent to a convent aged only thirteen, during which time her mother died. She escaped the convent in 1572 and announced her conversion to Calvinism. She allegedly died from exhaustion nursing her husband.
26. The picture of the Marques of Berges, with a curtaine.
Jan IV van Glymes (1528-1567) Marquis of Bergen op Zoom, a noble of the Low Countries. In 1554 he was sent to England with the Count of Egmont to arrange the marriage between Philip II of Spain and Mary Tudor. He participated in the war against France, but died from complications resulting from a wound from a ballgame wooden ball.
27. The picture of the Wife of the Marques, with a curtaine.
Inventory notes suggested this image was of the countess Mary of Nassau (1539-1599), sister of William of Orange, and wife of the third Count of Bergen. Instead, this is, more correctly, a portrait of Marie de Lannoy, who was born in Tourcoing, France in 1547, the wife of Jan IV van Glymes and daughter of Jean de Lannoy.
28. The picture of the Count de Horne, with a curtaine.
The Dutch Protestant martyr Filips van Montmorency (1524-1568). He was beheaded (with the Count of Egmont) in 1568 by the Duke of Alva for failing to supress a Protestant uprising. The Spanish ambassador to England wrote to Philip II mentioning that the Earl of Leicester was aggrieved that neither had been ‘heard in their defense’.
