Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness (c. 1640–45): Art, History and Details

Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness (c. 1640–45) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669).

The work and its context

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

This drawing is a prime example of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn's innovative approach to biblical narrative, in which he often humanized traditional pictorial formulas through the inclusion of observed details from everyday life. It depicts the climactic moment of the Book of Tobit, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament, in which, instructed by the archangel Raphael, Tobias heals his father Tobit's blindness by rubbing his eyes with fish gall. With spontaneity, a deft hand, and deceptive simplicity in his mark-making, Rembrandt depicts an intimate family scene including the archangel, Tobias, Hannah, and Sarah around a seated Tobit. Hannah’s spectacles, a unique detail among images of the scene created by Rembrandt and his circle, further thematizes sight. Rembrandt’s most innovative addition to the story centers on Tobias, who concentrates intensely to use a scalpel, rather than fish gall, to perform a cataract operation on his father’s left eye. Cataract surgery was a new procedure pioneered in Amsterdam in 1635 by Dr. Job Janszoon van Meekren, and Rembrandt may have witnessed the doctor perform it.

Object facts

• Title: Tobias Healing His Father's Blindness
• Date: c. 1640–45
• Creator attribution: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink, touched with white gouache; framing lines in pen and brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 21.1 x 17.7 cm (8 5/16 x 6 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1969.69

A detail from the museum

The seated figure in this drawing is receiving cataract surgery on his left eye, a procedure pioneered in Amsterdam in 1635 by Dr. Job Janszoon van Meekren.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Dutuit, Eugène. Tableaux et dessins de Rembrandt; catalogue historique et descriptif. Paris: A. Lévy, 1885.
• Hofstede de Groot, C. Die Urkunden über Rembrandt (1575-1721). Haag: M. Nijhoff, 1906.
• Greeff, R. Rembrandts Darstellungen der Tobiasheilung; nebst Beiträgen zur Geschichte des Starstichs; eine kulturhistorische Studie. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1907.

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.