Tobias and the Angel

The painter shows two figures facing one another on a track in a coastal landscape in the West of Ireland. This enigmatic scene prompts questions. Are we witnessing a meeting between strangers? Is one a ghost, or a hallucination? And—whether earthly or unearthly—is he a guide?

These possibilities might stand for the complex identities of Tobias’s own guide who is presented as Azariah—simultaneously an Israelite, the Archangel Raphael, and a vision (‘Take note that I ate no food; what appeared to you was a vision’; 12:20).

Regardless of identity, the apparently meaningful encounter between the two figures in Jack B. Yeats’s painting, and their intimate relationship with the landscape, resonate with Tobit 6 and 7. Tobias is altered both by his meeting with Raphael and by the journey itself, highlighting the potent nature of encounters ‘on the road’ and of pilgrimage more widely.

Samuel Beckett (1906–89) in his 1954 ‘Hommage à Jack B. Yeats’ concluded that ‘[his painting] incorporates into a single witness dead and living spirits, nature and void, everything that will cease and everything that will never be’ (Rosenthal 1993: x). This description reminds the viewer that Yeats is not depicting an actual scene but conjuring a vision based on ballad, folk tradition, and observation, terms which chime with commentaries that interpret the book of Tobit as folklore. The painter made sketches of the landscapes of the West of Ireland and its characters when travelling with the playwright and collector of folklore, John Millington Synge (1871–1909) for the Manchester Guardian in 1905. The sketches and reproductions of the oil paintings with which they were associated were published as Life in the West of Ireland in 1912 and the present painting is a revisiting of this theme.

Beckett’s compelling description of Yeats’s paintings does not acknowledge the unpretentious qualities of his subjects, an observation that draws attention to the fact that God is found in both the ordinary and extraordinary and reemphasizes just how human the narrative of Tobias and the Angel is.

References

Fuchs, Rudi et al. 1991. Jack B. Yeats: The Late Paintings (Bristol: Arnofini)

Pyle, Hilary. 1994. The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats: His Cartoons and Illustrations (Dublin: Irish Academic Press)

Rosenthal, T.G with Hilary Pyle. 1993. The Art of Jack B. Yeats (London: Andre Deutsch)

This panel does not depict a specific moment in the book of Tobit but offers a compressed version of 6:1–9.

Raphael, shown with outstretched wings and a halo, holds a box which we know contains the liver, heart, and gall of the fish; the cure for all the suffering narrated in Tobit.

Tobias, cast as a young Florentine, clutches a scroll inscribed Ricordo (memorandum)—a reference to the silver Tobit had deposited with Gabael in Media and the ostensible reason for his journey (4:20–21). Tobias also holds a string with a small fish at the end, hardly of a size that could threaten to swallow his foot as described in the text (6:2).

At their feet is a dog, a detail which is mentioned in passing in the text but is almost always included in images relating to it. The ground they are standing on is rocky but the path provides assurance that there is a way through—and indeed back—lending credence to Azariah’s [Raphael’s] insistence that Tobias should not worry (6:17).

Tobias and the Angel was a popular subject in Florentine devotional art between 1450 and 1480, a taste which can, in part, be attributed to a particular devotion to the Archangel Raphael. The panel was intended for private devotional use and Andrea del Verrocchio and his workshop have adopted particular devices to engage the viewer—for example, depicting Tobias and Raphael in Florentine dress within an Italian landscape rather than in third-century Media.

Arguably, it is the evident tenderness between the two figures that makes the panel so spiritually compelling. We know from the text that Tobias and his guide became swift companions (‘Tobias my friend’; 6:10) and this is suggested by the shared shapes of Tobias’s cloak and Raphael’s wings, their steps which have fallen in sync with one another, and most notably their interlinked arms. Tobias’s finger rests on Raphael’s wrist, a gesture which makes the angel seem tangible and present.

References

Covi, Dario. 2005. Andrea del Verrocchio Life and Work (Florence: Olschki)

Dunkerton, Jill et al. 1991. Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Paintings at the National Gallery (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Hammond, Joseph. 2011. ‘The Cult and Representation of the Archangel Raphael in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, St Andrews Journal of Art History and Museum Studies, 15: 79–86)

This glass fragment would have been one of a number of scenes drawn from both the Old and New Testaments ornamenting the inside of a glass bowl. The majority of such fragments have been found in Roman catacombs, although they might have been connected to festivals rather than funerary rites. As Tobit 3:8–10; 4:4–5; 8:15–18; 11:9–10, 14–15; 14:13–14 demonstrate, death and celebration are recurrent themes in the book of Tobit which begins with an account of Tobit’s charitable works, including burying the bodies of murdered Jews (1:17–19; 2:3–4, 7–8), and ends with a hymn of thanksgiving (13:1–16).

Tobias is shown following the Archangel Raphael’s instructions and seizing a fish from the River Tigris. The blue background is appropriate given that Tobias and Raphael stopped ‘when night overtook them’ (6:1). The absence of Raphael focuses attention on the fish which, for Christians, was a familiar symbol for Christ, as the confession Iēsous Christos Theou Huios Sōtēr (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour) generated the acronym ICHTHUS (‘fish’ in Greek).

The significance of the fish deepens with Raphael’s answers to Tobias’s questions, namely that the heart and liver could be used to cast out demons and the gall for the restoration of sight. Readers of the book of Tobit would have connected these remedies to the individual situations of Tobit (Tobias’s blind father) and Sarah (Tobias’s bedevilled wife-to-be)—a link that Tobias himself will eventually make too.

The medium in which this subject matter has been realized is fitting. Glass was viewed as an alchemical substance because the sand and ash from which it was formed appeared to vanish in its formation. Didymus the Blind (c.313–98 CE) used this process as a metaphor for describing the incarnation of Christ in his commentary on Psalm 44 (Gronewald 1970: 195–97). The idea of transformation is key to the passage: Tobias’s travelling companion from Azariah to Raphael; the fish from monster to the source of healing; and Tobit from blindness to sight.

References

Beretta, Marco. 2009. The Alchemy of Glass: Counterfeit, Imitation, and Transmutation in Ancient Glassmaking (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications)

Gronewald, Michael (trans.). 1970. Didymos der Blinde: Psalmenkommentar (Tura-Papyrus) V: Kommentar zu Psalm 40–44, 4 (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt)

Whitehouse, David. 2001. Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass (New York: Hudson Hills Press)