About this work
This engraving is known colloquially as the ‘Headless Horseman’, after a number of surviving impressions in which the rider’s face is completely erased. Ironically, Pierre Lombart based this portrait of Oliver Cromwell on Anthony van Dyck’s 1633 painting of Charles I on horseback. After Cromwell’s death and the fall of the republican Commonwealth in 1660, his head was erased and re-engraved as that of the French king, Louis XIV. Following Lombart’s death, Cromwell’s head was restored, driven by demand from print collectors. The horseman subsequently took on Charles I’s likeness, before Cromwell’s head was reinstated in the print’s final state.