SIEGEN, LUDWIG VON, the inventor of mezzotinto engraving, was born at Utrecht in 1609, of an old Westphalian family. After receiving his education at the Collegium Mauritianum in the town of Capel, of which his father was superintendent, he was subsequently appointed a page to one of the princes of Hesse. He discovered the method of mezzotinto engraving between the years 1637 and 1641. On the 19th of August 1642 he sent a letter, dated from Amsterdam, to the landgrave, which disclosed his discovery, containing some proofs of a portrait of his mother done in the newly discovered style. Meeting afterwards with Prince Rupert in 1655 or 1656 at Brussels, after he had entered the military service of the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, he communicated to him his new method of engraving. Rupert brought over the discovery to England in 1660, and showing it to Evelyn, he afterwards got the credit of the invention. Evelyn was then engaged on his Sculptura, "to which is annexed a new manner of engraving or mezzotinto, invented and communicated by his Highness Prince Rupert," although in the author's paper, prepared for the Royal Society, the invention was ascribed to a "German soldier." Siegen had a paternal estate near Cologne, from which he took the style of Von Sechten. It is not known when he died. He was still living in 1676. (See Laborde's Histoire de la Gravure en Manière Noire, Paris, 1839.)