Tobias and the Angel (1750s): Art, History and Details

Tobias and the Angel (1750s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Francesco Guardi (Italian, 1712–1793).

The work and its context

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

This series of paintings predominantly tells the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, and each of the canvases treats the interaction of humans and angels. In three works, angels appear to Abraham. However, the narrative of Tobias and the Angel comes from an entirely different book of the Bible. The blind Tobit sends his son Tobias off to collect a sum of money in the distant town of Media, with the angel Raphael accompanying him in disguise as a human. This particular work depicts Raphael overseeing Tobias catching a fish, which would later be used to cure his father's blindness.

Object facts

• Title: Tobias and the Angel
• Date: 1750s
• Creator attribution: Francesco Guardi (Italian, 1712–1793)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 70.5 x 90.5 x 6.5 cm (27 3/4 x 35 5/8 x 2 9/16 in.); Unframed: 56.5 x 75.5 cm (22 1/4 x 29 3/4 in.)
• Collection: P - Italian 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1952.235.2

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Binion, Alice. Antonio and Francesco Guardi, Their Life and Milieu: With a Catalogue of Their Figure Drawings. New York: Garland Pub, 1976.
• Pallucchini, Rodolfo. L'arte di Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. Bologna: Giuseppe Maylender, editore, 1934.
• Levey, Michael. The Eighteenth-Century Italian Schools. London: Publications Dept., National Gallery, 1956.

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.