Ludwig von Siegen

He obtained a place in a German school for Marcus but Ludwig remained in Holland with his step-mother's family to avoid the dangers of the recently begun Thirty Years War in Germany.

By 1641 he had decided to convert to Catholicism, which in the atmosphere of the Thirty Years War would not have been compatible with his position in the strictly Calvinistic court of Hesse-Kassel.

[1] In Amsterdam Siegen must have been aware of Rembrandt's increasingly tonal etchings, achieved by conventional methods, filling in the dark areas by repeated lines.

In August 1642, he finally finished the first known mezzotint engraving, a portrait of the Landgravine Amalia Elisabeth, Regent of Hesse-Kassel, the widow of his former employer.

[1] The portrait is rather stiff, but the full range of tones from the very light ones on the layered lace collars to the solid black of the left background make it a very effective showpiece for the potential of mezzotint.

In 1643–44, he produced portraits of Elizabeth of Bohemia, (the "Winter Queen", daughter of James I of England), William II of Orange and his wife, Mary, all after paintings by Gerard van Honthorst.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine (i.e. of the Palatinate), a famous Royalist commander in the English Civil War, was the cousin of William VI of Hesse-Kassel, and the son of Elizabeth of Bohemia.

Prince Rupert was also an amateur artist, and in about 1654 learned of the process, either from his cousin, or possibly from Siegen himself - whether they ever met is a point of scholarly controversy.