Green, Valentine (after Sir Peter Lely)

Eleanor Gwynn (1650–1687), or “Pretty, witty Nell” as she used to be called in her heyday, moved to London as an orange-seller and became one of the leading actresses of the King’s Company in the late 1660s and early 1670s. She was the most popular of King Charles II’s mistresses. Her body was the means and guarantee of her status at court, to which the print alludes. Gwynn was a transgressive figure and her sexual availability and outward beauty caught the public’s imagination.