Alchemists, sorcerers, and witches were popular in the Dutch art of the 17th century. In a radial light appearing across the bearded old man’s books, de Gelder, Rembrandt’s last master student, draws from one of his teacher’s etchings, in which a vision of light appears to an alchemist. Goethe used a copy of this well-known image as the frontispiece for the first, fragmentary publication of his Faust (Faust. Ein Fragment, 1790).