One of the great humanists, Erasmus Desiderius of Rotterdam (circa 1466-1536) was a European intellectual who had studied in Paris and lived in Italy, the Netherlands, England, Switzerland and Germany. Throughout a long and active life he corresponded with more than five hundred personalities of the highest importance in the world of politics and philosophy, and his advice on all kinds of subjects was eagerly sought, if not always followed. Although he remained a Roman Catholic, he was critical of what he considered the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church, and using humanist techniques he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament which raised questions that would be influential in the Reformation. Indeed, the Catholic Counter-Reformation often condemned Erasmus for having 'laid the egg that hatched the Reformation.'
Dürer and Erasmus met on several occasions during the artist's Netherlandish journey 1520-21, probably the first time at the end of August 1520 in Brussels. It seems that Erasmus was keen to be portrayed by Dürer, who notes in his diary around that time that he drew him 'once more'. However, only one drawing of Erasmus has survived (Paris, Louvre; W. 805), showing the scholar nearly frontally, wearing the same hat as in the engraving completed several years later.