An old man in a monk's habit is sitting on a stone in what is probably a cave. He can be seen as a hermit, a monk who chose a solitary life devoted to prayer and devotion instead of a life in a community with other monks. Such hermits already existed in the Eastern Mediterranean during early Christianity. They can be seen as the forefathers of later monasticism. In seventeenth-century Holland they were exceptional and Lievens' print of this recluse lost in thought can be regarded as a traditional theme rather than an image based on real life. In the 1630s Lievens had a keen interest in the subject of old and lonely men. He painted a penitent Hieronymus and a Job acquiescent in his misery. The subject can also often be found in his prints. In addition to several hermits, he ‘portrayed’ St. Anthony, one of the founders of solitary monastic life. As with Rembrandt, Lievens must have been more concerned with the expressiveness of the men and their melancholic appearance than with their religious practice.
The etching is undated, but will have been made approximately 1630. Not much later Lievens, like Rembrandt, would leave Leiden. Where Rembrandt chose Amsterdam, Lievens sought his fortune in England, where he found employment in circles of the court and nobility, and later in Antwerp. Lievens would visit Leiden again by 1640. On that occasion he received an honorable commission from the city council to paint a chimney piece in the town hall's common room, ‘The mercy of Scipio’. The painting was lost during the town hall fire of 1929 and is only known from an old photo and an eighteenth-century drawing. The painting is mentioned by Orlers in his description of Leiden from 1641.