Art lovers regard Rembrandt’s etchings as highlights of his oeuvre. They admire his spontaneous drawing style, his dramatic light effects and his bold experiments with the technique. Despite their small size, Rembrandt’s etchings are often just as ambitious in design as his paintings. What is often forgotten is that Rembrandt’s prints are the mirror image of what the artist saw when he was drawing with the etching needle—the image is reversed when the plate is printed. Rembrandt did not worry about this when he made an etching: he captured his compositions on the copper plate exactly as he did on a sheet of drawing paper.