Like his contemporary, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden was internationally recognised within his lifetime and beyond. Giorgio Vasari, writing in 1568, praised Leyden's fine engraving style and his use of perspective. This early impression of Lucas van Leyden’s Raising of Lazarus shows that his engraved line was particularly fine and often produced a transluscent effect. In his earlier prints van Leyden created a strong contrast between light and shadow, using four-way cross-hatching for the darkest patches of shading, while his backgrounds were created out of very fine engraved line.

Something of van Leyden's working method can also be seen in this plate. Design lines still remain from when he scratched rough sketches directly onto the plate with a needle. These lines can be seen beside the two background figures beside the tree, and above the background trees, which were originally meant to be larger.

Placing the scene on top of an outcrop and introducing a steep decline to the right has enabled Leyden to combine strong detail and texture with a sketchy yet expansive landscape backdrop. The placement of figures in a naturalistic landscape setting was something for which Northern and especially Netherlandish artists were known, and inspired Italian artists and printmakers such as Marcantonio Raimondi, who is known to have copied landscapes from Leyden to use in his own compositions at this time.