The Little Executioner

Prince Ruprecht of the Rhine—a nobleman who was the nephew of England’s King Charles I—was among the earliest practitioners of mezzotint, a printmaking technique first used in Germany in the 1600s. Prince Ruprecht is credited with bringing the technique to England around 1660, where he introduced it to John Evelyn, who was engaged in writing a book on the history of printmaking. Ruprecht created this image (after a painting thought to be by Jusepe de Ribera) to illustrate the mezzotint process in Evelyn’s book, making it the first mezzotint printed in England.