Tobias and the Angel (Verrocchio)

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Tobias and the Angel (Andrea del Verrocchio)
Tobias and the angel
Andrea del Verrocchio , around 1470–1475
Tempera on wood
84 × 66 cm
National Gallery, London

Tobias and the Angel is a painting from the workshop of the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 / 1436–1488). It is dated around 1470 to 1475 and is in the holdings of the National Gallery in London .

The work

The work shows a scene from the apocryphal book of Tobit in the Old Testament . Tobias , the son of Tobits, is accompanied on a journey by the Archangel Raphael . He helps him later to heal his father from blindness with the gall from a fish .

Tobias and the Angel ,
Piero and Antonio Pollaiuolo ,
Galleria Sabauda , Turin

The archangel in the left half of the picture leads Tobias with his left arm. Tobias is elegantly dressed in a short blue doublet , a coat of the same color that blows in the wind, red trousers and high boots. In his left hand he carries the fish with the bile of which he will cure his father's blindness. The dog, in the lower left corner of the painting, is also mentioned in the biblical story as Tobias 'travel companion: “ The two of them set off and young Tobias' dog ran with them. "( Tob 5.17  EU ).

Probably an older painting by the brothers Piero and Antonio Pollaiuolo on the same subject served as a model for the picture of Andrea del Verrocchio.

Participation by Leonardo da Vinci

In the artist workshops of the 15th and 16th centuries, it was common for the master not to carry out the creation of a work alone, but to entrust parts of the execution to his journeymen and students.

The British art historian Martin Kemp suspects that the work was made with the participation of the young Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who received his artistic training in Verrocchio's Florentine workshop from around 1470 to 1477 . According to Kemp, Leonardo could have painted the fish in Tobias's hand.

David Alan Brown , curator for Italian Renaissance painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC , also attributes the little dog at the angel's feet to Leonardo da Vinci.

The Leonardo biographer Charles Nicholl points out that Tobias's head of hair could also be painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The curl above the left ear shows left-handed brushstrokes . Leonardo was a pronounced left-hander who painted, drew and wrote with his left hand. According to Nicholl, the transparency of the puppy depicted, the landscape of the background shining through him, is no indication of an unfinished execution of the painting. Rather, this shows a virtuosity and perfection that Verrocchio was unable to achieve . If Leonardo was involved in the creation of this work, it would be the earliest surviving evidence of a painting involving Leonardo da Vinci.

  • Probable contributions by Leonardo da Vinci

  • The puppy

  • The fish

  • The lock of hair

literature

Web links

Commons : Tobias and the Angel by Andrea del Verrocchio  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luther (1984) : Tob 6,1 ; NRSV : Tob 5.17
  2. ↑ Brown, p. 24
  3. ↑ Kemp, p. 288
  4. ↑ Brown, p. 51
  5. ↑ a b Nicholl, p. 122 ff
  6. ^ Brown, p. 47