Through his beauty, social graces and astuteness, George Villiers worked his way up from minor gentry to becoming King James I’s closest advisor and beloved friend, moving through successive titles to the primary dukedom in England, Master of the Horse, Knight of the Garter, and Admiral of the Fleet. His abuse of power, however, earned him an assassination at the age of 36. Delff engraved with great ability many of the royal European portraits that Van Miereveld, his father’s father-in-law, was commissioned to paint, as well as some of those by his pupil Mijtens. The painted source of this print is now in the Art Gallery of South Australia.