Charles II was a hugely popular monarch and portraits of him were widely collected and displayed. This mezzotint was made by Edward Luttrell, one of the first artists in Britain to use this new form of printmaking, and published by Edward Cooper, who specialised in selling them. Luttrell’s image of the king is after a portrait painted by Lely from about 1671. It shows Charles wearing a fashionable wig and cravat, but dressed in a stylised antique costume, making him appear as both a seventeenth-century monarch and a Roman general or emperor. Although we recognise the king’s features and the rather sardonic look on his face, the portrait also hints at a more serious side to the so-called ‘Merry Monarch’.