The presentation in the Temple in the dark manner

Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and virtually abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work.[56] He took easily to etching and, though he also learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing, but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.[57] He worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge.[58] Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.
During the 1650s, the height of his career as a printmaker, Rembrandt produced numerous prints illustrating the life of Christ. Unlike his earlier treatment of such subjects, Rembrandt now focused his highly personal approach on the more intimate and private meaning of biblical events. In this scene, Simeon, to whom "it was revealed . . . by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ," holds the Infant Christ up toward the High Priest while behind them towers another priest who wears a high hat and holds an enormous crozier. The Virgin and Joseph humbly kneel in shadow at the left, and Hannah, who "spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem," appears in the top right background. Perhaps the greatest experimental printmaker in the history of art, Rembrandt combined etching, dry point, and engraving to create a rich pictorial effect. Using a network of fine crosshatching in the background and groups of parallel lines on the figures, he created an evocative atmosphere in which forms emerge from shimmering half-lights.