Tobias and the Angel

Tobias and the Angel is an oil and tempera painting on poplar panel by the Florentine Renaissance painter Filippino Lippi, dating from c. 1475–1480. It is housed in the National Gallery of Art of Washington, DC. Description The work, in oil paint and tempera on a poplar panel, measures . It depicts a biblical scene of Tobias and Raphael. In the Book of Tobit, Tobias, son of the blinded Tobit, was sent from Nineveh to Ecbatana to collect a debt. The archangel Raphael, disguised as the human Azariah, was sent to accompany Tobias on his errand. On the journey, the angel will advise Tobias to catch a fish from the River Tigris and then to create remedy for his father's blindness using the fish's gall. The two main figures are depicted walking through a landscape, accompanied by a white dog, with trees and a river, and a tall tower to the right. They are arm in arm, their blond heads inclined towards each other, with their slightly unstable posture indicating they are walking. The winged Raphael in a blue gown and Tobias in a blue tunic with red cloak. The boy holds the fish in his left hand, and the angel holds a small golden mortar to make the remedy in his right hand. The subject of Tobias and the Angel was popular with the wealthy merchants of Renaissance Florence, combining themes of the recovery of debts, the healing of the sick, a youth taking good advice from his elders and developing into adulthood, and Christ (the fish) and baptism (the waters of the Tigris). It also had resonances with the common experience of merchants' sons being sent on trading missions to distant locations.