This hand-coloured woodcut by Albert Schmidt, a German publisher of popular prints and playing cards, was printed in about 1700 in Augsburg, Germany, and coloured later by hand with watercolour. It represents sixteen lively figures from the biblical story of The Legend of the Prodigal Son, and even four boars and their feeding trough. It is one of a series of six prints relating to this story, leading us to believe that prints like this from biblical stories were the basis for an early form of German Toy Theatre.

From the way the characters are portrayed and set out on the sheet it appears that it was meant to be cut up and used in performance in conjunction with a text. It is unlikely that the images on this sheet were meant for one static three-dimensional image like a 'Nativity', but rather for performance.