Much as fifteenth century printers viewed printing by moveable type as a less expensive way to reproduce texts that had previously been reproduced by manuscript copying, Jacob Christoph Le Blon viewed his process of color printing as a less expensive way of producing or reproducing color paintings.
In London Le Blon formed a company called The Picture Office to produce color prints. The historian of anatomical illustration Ludwig Choulant stated that in 1721 Le Blon issued a separate print depicting the male sexual organs entitled Préparation anatomique des parties de l’homme, servants a la generation, faites sur les decouvertes les plus modernes. This print, which I have not seen, may be the first, or among the first, color-printed mezzotints ever published.
Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920) 265-66.
