1721 Copper Engraving Portrait Ernest Bavaria Prince Archbishop Cologne EUM2

This is an original 1721 black and white copper engraving of "Ernst Churfüst zu Cöln, Herzog in Baÿern." This is a portrait of Ernest of Bavaria, Prince-Archbishop-Elector of Cologne from 1583 to 1612 and Bishop of Münster, Hildesheim, Freising, and Liège. Ernst was the successor of the expelled Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, who had converted to Calvinism and initiated a war of religion in northern Germany. The Electorate of Cologne was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire. It consisted of the temporal possessions of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cologne, and was ruled by the Archbishop in his function as Prince-Elector of the Empire. The capitals of the electorate were Cologne (until 1288) and then Bonn. It was secularized in 1803 during the German Mediatisation. The portrait is surrounded by a wonderful decorative motif featuring the Oldest Electoral Hat, signifying the subject as a Prince-Elector, or simply Elector, a member of the electoral college of t