The sudarium of St Veronica is the cloth with which, according to Christian legend, St Veronica wiped the face of Christ as He was carrying the Cross on the way to Calvary, the place of His crucifixion, and on which His features were miraculously impressed. The subject became a popular devotional image in Christian art.
The most striking feature of Dürer's print, as subsequent artists such as Dürer's follower Sebald Beham noticed and many commentators have indicated, is the similarity of the frontal gaze of Christ to a self-portrait of 1500 in Munich, in which Dürer paints himself as an iconic Christ-like figure. It is one of numerous occasions that Dürer associated the idea of his image with Christ.