Tobias and the Angel by Adam Elsheimer

APOCRYPHA WATCH: Tobias and the Angel (1607), painted by Adam Elsheimer, is profiled by Michael Glover in the Independent. Excerpt:

Only 34 paintings are known to exist by him, but a number of them are amongst the most exciting and innovative works of their time. Tobias and the Angel, which was probably painted three or four years before his death, is one of those tiny, innovative works which show us why he is so important. The subject itself is not uncommon – Verrocchio, Lippo Lippi and Raphael made paintings of the same title. But Elsheimer's way of dealing with the subject was quite different. If you look at the three treatments of the subject by the other masters, you will find them all to be brilliant, and almost gaudily worldly, displays of painterly excellence, bathed in the light of day – self-preeningly so, you might even add. Elsheimer turns the subject into a much more mysterious and almost hole-in-the-corner affair. What is more, the scene is mysteriously under-lit, and variously lit – another trait common to many of Elsheimer's best works.

The story is taken not from the Bible, but from the Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha, that collection of narratives which got excluded from the Bible by the Church Fathers. Tobias is the son of Tobit. A fish attacks him while he is washing beside the River Tigris. He kills it, removes its guts, and later uses them to exorcise a demon, and to cure his father of blindness. An angel guides him across the water to safety. One important matter which Elsheimer more than suggests is that Tobias, who is represented as a small, vulnerable boy stumbling his way across the waters in the half-light, does not necessarily know that his protector and guardian is an angel because Tobias is not looking at him.

The article has an enlargeable photo of the painting.