Tobias and the Angel

This painting depicts an episode from the Book of Tobit, in which the archangel Raphael accompanies the young Tobias on a perilous journey. The moment chosen is not the usual one of walking on: Savoldo shows a pause, when the angel tells the boy to catch the fish whose entrails will cure his father's blindness. The little dog that travelled with them is curled up in the lower right corner. Tobias is not a teenager but a sturdy young man, kneeling, with lively flesh tones and an immediate realism typical of the Renaissance masters of Brescia, to which the painter belonged. The angel, with long hair and delicate features, closely resembles the one Titian painted in the Averoldi Polyptych, made a few years earlier for a church in Brescia. Notable details include the drapery with silvery highlights, which seems wet, and the light piercing the foliage, alongside the clouds veiling the distant landscape. The work was once attributed to Titian before being corrected to Savoldo. Sources date it to around 1527, while the record gives 1542.

Painter

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Date

1542

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

96 × 124 cm

Museum

Galleria Borghese, Paris

Genre

religious art

Depicts

Tobias

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