Reference: Hollstein / German engravings, etchings and woodcuts c.1400–1700, no. 23. Erik Fischer, Copenhagen 2009, no. 1582,1.

The Latin text can be roughly translated as follows: Melchior Lorch drew the picture (of the king) 1580. And in (the king's) honor he made a copper engraving 1582.

Melchior Lorck’s known oeuvre made during his service for King Frederik II is scarce: A painted full-length portrait, a unique woodcut that seems to have meant as frontispiece for the Order of the Elephant, and the present portrait from 1582, engraved after a drawing from 1580.

In ”At brande Frederik 2.: Om Melchior Lorcks kobberstik af Frederik 2. (Branding Frederik II: On the engraved portrait by Melchior Lorck), (2006), senior research curator at the National Gallery of Denmark Hanne Kolind Poulsen suggests (in Danish): "the“cranachesque” schematic and de-personalised, almost petrified, character as a kind of Merckbild, and to “be understood as Lorck’s – and Frederik II's – visual strategy for branding the king as a true Lutheran monarch. Frederik’s interest in such a branding was rooted in his conflict with the electorate Saxony over his support to Philippism against the new Lutheran orthodoxy.”

Literature; Hanne Kolind Poulsen, “Branding Frederik II: On the engraved portrait by Melchior Lorck” in Renæssanceforum Vol. 2, 2006 (Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies).