The Healing of Tobit (c. 1625): Art, History and Details

The Healing of Tobit (c. 1625) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bernardo Strozzi (Italian, 1581?-1644).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This scene is the moving conclusion of the story of Tobias, the young man at the right. It addresses the themes of family devotion and trust. Tobias’s father sent him on a long journey to retrieve family money. The angel Raphael appeared as a relative, offering the traveler protection against such things as an attack by a huge fish, whose organs Tobias took on Raphael’s advice. Upon his return home, Tobias discovers his father has gone blind, and Raphael advises him to place the fish’s gallbladder on his father’s eyes to cure him. Strozzi depicts the miraculous cure and the moment in which Raphael reveals that he is an angel.

Object facts

• Title: The Healing of Tobit
• Date: c. 1625
• Creator attribution: Bernardo Strozzi (Italian, 1581?-1644)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 57.2 x 80 x 10.2 cm (22 1/2 x 31 1/2 x 4 in.); Unframed: 42.7 x 65.5 cm (16 13/16 x 25 13/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 16th & 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1993.5

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund and Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chong, Alan. "Bernardo Strozzi: The Healing of Tobit." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXX, no. 4 (April, 1993):154-157.
• "1993 Annual Report." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXXI, no. 6 (July 1994): 143-218.
• Spicer, Joaneath, Peter M. Lukehart, and Martha Lucy. Bernardo Strozzi: Master Painter of the Italian Baroque (1581/2-1644). Baltimore, MD: Walters Art Gallery, 1995.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.