This is one of Baselitz's earliest woodcuts. It was made after a trip to Florence, where he became interested in Italian Mannerist painting. The fractured face, overlaid with worm-like forms, is characteristic of his paintings of the same time, in which parts of the figures are cut up and rearranged or are missing altogether. The imagery may be influenced by the death and destruction of the Second World War; the shapes in the background look like smoke, which would support this reading.