The names of Rembrandt's sitters are often uncertain, as most of his etched portraits lack the identifying inscriptions that customarily appear in the lower margins of a plate. Long thought to be one of the artist's apprentices, the young man portrayed in this etching has recently been identified as Petrus Sylvius on the basis of an inscription in a contemporary hand on the verso of one impression. Sylvius's father was Jan Cornelis Sylvius, the uncle of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia.