Maria Katharina, daughter of Maria and Thomas Höll, studied art with Johann Gottlieb Theophilus Amadeus Prestel in Nuremberg and the two married in 1769. Together, they operated a publishing establishment for etchings and aquatints, most often copying paintings or drawings of old masters. Paul de Praun was a noted German collector of German, Dutch, and Italian old master drawings, many of which he purchased when his business travels took him from Germany to Italy. The collection was eventually housed in Nuremberg and Johann and Maria Katharine Prestel made several print copies after Praun’s old master drawings. The marriage between Johann and Maria Katharina was not a happy one and the couple separated in 1786, at which point she moved to London with her daughter Ursula Magdalena Prestel. Here, she supported herself working for the publisher, John Boydell, making aquatints. Boydell’s printing firm flourished in the 1780s due to a popular trend he had created in Europe for collecting facsimile prints of old masters’ works. Boydell almost exclusively made reproductive prints, and was well known for printing beautiful aquatints. Prestel with her skills in aquatint would have been an asset to his business.  Maria Katharina Prestel’s work as a printmaker was both successful and prolific. Scholars can identify more than seventy-three etchings of reproduced works by Dutch, German, and Italian masters. Her daughter, Ursula Magdalena Prestel, also became a successful artist; she lived and worked in Belgium.