The painter Robert Robinson was among the first generation of English mezzotint engravers. Although the majority of his prints were original inventions, many of them copied figures from Continental engravings. The central figure in this work derives from an unknown engraving after Lambert Sustris's sixteenth-century painting Venus and Cupid (Louvre, Paris). Copying was rampant in the hungry print market, and a number of Robinson's mezzotints were soon pirated by his Dutch contemporaries.