After Wtenbogaert returned from exile in 1629, Rembrandt made two portraits of him. The first is a painting from 1633, and the second, two years later, is this etching in which Wtenbogaert is portrayed as a scholar looking up from his work. The accompanying poem by Hugo de
Groot (Grotius) refers to his return and underlines that the humiliations he suffered notwithstanding, he remained unbroken. Several states of the etching have been preserved.