Wenceslaus Hollar (23 July 1607 – 25 March 1677) was a prolific and accomplished Bohemian graphic artist of the 17th century, who spent much of his life in England.

[1] After his family was ruined by the Sack of Prague in the Thirty Years' War, the young Hollar, who had been destined for the legal profession, decided to become an artist.

[2][3] It was in 1636 that he attracted the notice of the famous nobleman and art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, then on a diplomatic mission to the imperial court of Emperor Ferdinand II.

In 1745, George Vertue paid homage to their association in the vignette he published on page one of his Description of the Works of the Ingenious Delineator and Engraver Wenceslaus Hollar.

It featured a bust of Arundel in front of a pyramid, symbolizing immortality, surrounded by illustrated books and the instruments of Hollar's trade.

With other royalist artists, notably Inigo Jones and William Faithorne the engraver, he stood the long and eventful siege of Basing House, and as there were some hundred plates from his hand dated during the years 1643 and 1644 he must have turned his enforced leisure to good purpose.

[1] An etching dated 1643 and entitled civilis seditio epitomizes the war with a snake with a head at each end pulling in opposite directions in front of the Giza pyramids and sphinx.

Hollar took his setting, presumably symbolizing longer term values, directly from an engraving published in George Sandys' Relation of a Journey begun An.

[1] In the following years, many books were published which he illustrated: Ogilby's Virgil and Homer, Stapylton's Juvenal, and Dugdale's Warwickshire, St Paul's and Monasticon (part one).

[6] During his return to England a desperate and successful engagement was fought by his ship, the Mary Rose, under Captain John Kempthorne, against seven Algerian men-of-war; a battle which Hollar etched for Ogilby's Africa,[1] published in 1670.

Examples of the complexity and scale of his projects include the eight-plate Portuguese Genealogy and 12-plate series of insects published as Muscarum Scarabeorum Vermiumque varie figure.

The work's lively figural decoration, typical of Hollar's style, includes a procession towards the entrance of the cathedral, a horse-drawn coach, and passers-by and dogs in a square in front of the church.

It comprises a plan of the city of Landrecies, with the Bois de Mourinal in the upper right, while it is under siege by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in 1647.

A very rare original copper plate produced by Hollar has survived, an engraving of the city of Kingston upon Hull in Yorkshire, and is held in the British Library.