With looming, sinewy figures, Van Heemskerck translated the aesthetic of the High Renaissance observed in his travels to Italy. Most conspicuously, his pose of the angel is adapted from that of a figure of God the Father in Michelangelo’s scene of Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The fame of this print rests on the later adoption of this figure by Rembrandt in his 1637 painting of the same theme in the Louvre. Although famous, Coornhert’s print is extremely rare. At the time it was made, engravings had become more common and prized, and although artists continued to experiment with woodcut, the technique was increasingly relegated to inexpensive images for everyday use. Instead of being preserved in albums, they were displayed on walls, and as a result became faded, worn or damaged, and were often discarded. The condition of this impression reflects such handling, in sharp contrast to the good preservation of many of the engravings made after later designs by Van Heemskerck.