The etching reproduces a painting of almost the same dimensions as the print, which is now on display in the Innsbruck museum, the Ferdinandeum. The painting is dated 1630. The etching was created three years later, after Rembrandt's departure from Leiden. Had Van Vliet already started his etching before, had Rembrandt left work behind in Leiden or did Van Vliet travel back and forth to Amsterdam? We do not know.
This depiction of a man in a high fur hat and a coat with a fur collar is an example of a ‘tronie’, the seventeenth-century name for a grotesque head. Rembrandt painted a number of such heads in his Leiden time and they continued to appear in his work afterwards. Rembrandt's self-portraits are also, in a sense, ‘tronies’. While he was certainly interested in his own looks and the changes the years brought, he also created types with theatrical costumes and attributes.
Like all the heads that Van Vliet made after Rembrandt - there are six of them - this etching also shows strong light-dark contrasts. These contrasts are already present in the painting, but are nuanced there by the colors and shades of the paint. The etching medium enhances the contrast between black and white. The effect is slightly softened here by the shading of the background, which is left blank in some of the other ‘tronies’. Nevertheless, here too the shadows are deep and difficult to read. The shaded part of the man's face is almost uniformly black. In fact, it is only around the left eye and nose that still reflects light.
In 1635 Van Vliet would contribute to two more large etchings by Rembrandt, the ‘Ecce homo’ and ‘The descent of the cross’. After that their collaboration ended. Rembrandt preferred to print his own etchings from now on and lost interest in reproducing his paintings in print.